But as I say, Vivie was a bitter and most effective speaker.  She inflamed to action many a warm-hearted person like myself, like Rossiter (who got into trouble—­though it was hushed up—­in 1910-1911 for slapping the face of a Secretary of State who spoke slightingly of the women Suffragists and their motives).  Yet I seem to be stranded now, with a few others, in my pre-war enthusiasm over the woman’s cause, or, later, my horror at the German treatment of Belgium.

Where are the snows of yester-year; where is the animosity which in the years between the burking of the Conciliation Bill and the spring of 1914 grew up between the disinterested Reformers who wanted Woman enfranchised and the Liberal ministers who fought so doggedly, so unscrupulously, against such a rational completion of representative government?  The other day I glanced at a newspaper and saw that Sir Michael and Lady Rossiter had been dining at the Ritz with the Grandcourts, Princess Belasco, Sir Abel Batterby, the great Police Surgeon, knighted for his skill and discretion in forcible feeding, and the George Bounderbys (G.B. was the venomous Private Secretary of a former Chancellor of the Exchequer and put him up to most of his anti-suffrage dodges); and meeting Vivien Rossiter soon afterwards I said, “How could you?” “How could I what?” “Dine with the people you once hated.”  “Oh I don’t know, it’s all past and done with; we’ve got the Vote and somehow after those years in Brussels I seem to have no hates and few loves left”—­However this is anticipating.  I only insert this protest because I may seem to be expressing a bitterness the protagonists have ceased to feel, a triumph at the victory of their cause which produces in them merely a yawn.

Where is Mrs. Pankhurst?  Somehow one thought she would never rest till she was in the Cabinet.  And Christabel?  And Annie Kenney?  Married perchance to some permanent under Secretary of State and viewing “direct action” with growing disapproval.

And the Pethick Lawrences?  Some one told me the other day that they’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be forcibly fed.

But in November, 1910, we all—­we that were whole-hearted reformers, true Liberals, not wolves in sheep’s clothing, took very much to heart what happened on the 18th of that month, when the Prime Minister of the time announced that the Conference between the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the Veto question having broken down he had advised His Majesty to dissolve Parliament.  This meant that the Conciliation Bill was finally done for; while the declaration of the Prime Minister as to the future Programme of the Liberal Party, if it was returned to power, excluded any mention of a Woman’s enfranchisement Bill.

On Black Friday, November 18th, Vivie was present at the meeting in Caxton Hall when Mrs. Pankhurst explained the position to the Suffragist women assembled there.  Her blood was fired by the recital of their wrongs and she was prominent among the four hundred and fifty volunteers who came forward to accompany Mrs. Pankhurst, Dr. Garret Anderson and Susan Knipper-Totes (the two last, infirm old ladies) when they proposed to march to the Houses of Parliament to exercise their right of presenting a petition.