little or no elation even in circles which had been loudest in
demanding the vote. The bulk of the women of the country had been
indifferent or hostile to the franchise agitation, and the most
fanatical Suffragettes began to wonder what they had found so
attractive in the prospect of putting ballot-papers into a box.
In the country districts the task of carrying out the provisions
of the new Act was irksome enough; in the towns and cities it
became an incubus. There seemed no end to the elections.
Laundresses and seamstresses had to hurry away from their work to
vote, often for a candidate whose name they hadn't heard before,
and whom they selected at haphazard; female clerks and waitresses
got up extra early to get their voting done before starting off to
their places of business. Society women found their arrangements
impeded and upset by the continual necessity for attending the
polling stations, and week-end parties and summer holidays became
gradually a masculine luxury. As for Cairo and the Riviera, they
were possible only for genuine invalids or people of enormous
wealth, for the accumulation of o10 fines during a prolonged
absence was a contingency that even ordinarily wealthy folk could
hardly afford to risk.

It was not wonderful that the female disfranchisement agitation
became a formidable movement. The No-Votes-for-Women League
numbered its feminine adherents by the million; its colours,
citron and old Dutch-madder, were flaunted everywhere, and its
battle hymn, "We don't want to Vote," became a popular refrain.
As the Government showed no signs of being impressed by peaceful
persuasion, more violent methods came into vogue. Meetings were
disturbed, Ministers were mobbed, policemen were bitten, and
ordinary prison fare rejected, and on the eve of the anniversary