Page:Letters to a friend on votes for women.djvu/72

 passion, intensified by feminine emotion, may deprive the country both of the calmness which foresees and the resolution which repels the onslaught of foreign enemies? There is, we venture to say, no man, and no woman either, who at moments of calm reflection can believe that, at a time of threatened invasion, the safety of the country would be increased by the possibility that British policy might be determined by the votes and the influence of the fighting suffragists.

.—The grant of votes to women settles nothing. If conceded tomorrow, it must be followed by the cry of 'Seats in Parliament for women!' 'Places in the Cabinet for women!' 'Judgeships for women!' For the avowed aim of every suffragist, down from John Stuart Mill to Mrs. Pankhurst, is the complete political equality of men and of women. The opening of the Parliamentary franchise to women is the encouragement, not the close, of a long agitation.

.—The proposed concession of sovereignty to women is in one im-