The meeting, though disfigured and degraded by the scenes we
have described, was undoubtedly a great personal triumph for Mr. Lloyd George, who stood his ground throughout,
never lost his temper, and, though it took him two hours to deliver a speech intended to occupy a quarter of that time, finally wore down the interrupters by his inexhaustible patience. What he had to say as to the intentions of the Government amounted to little more than an endorsement and explanation of the Prime Minister's statement. We may note, however, that he paid a significant tribute to the influence and weight of the Anti-Suffrage League, and warned his hearers that they would make a great mistake if they underestimated the resistance there would be in the country even if the Government to-morrow announced their intention of putting woman suffrage first upon the King's Speech. Personally, he thought that the existing political inequality between the sexes was irrational and indefensible, and must come to an end. But the great difficulty was that neither party was committed to woman suffrage as a whole. There was a powerful minority in both parties of influential, responsible men with whom no party would risk a quarrel if it could possibly carry them along, in view of what they had suffered from such dissensions in the past.
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