It is time that the women who are opposed to the concession of the parliamentary franchise to women should make themselves fully and widely heard. The matter is urgent. Unless those who hold that the success of the women's suffrage movement would bring disaster upon England are prepared to take immediate and effective action, judgement may go by default and our country drift towards a momentous revolution, both social and political, before it has realised the dangers involved.

Women's suffrage is a more dangerous leap in the dark than it was in the 1860s because of the vast growth of the Empire, the immense increase of England's imperial responsibilities, and therewith the increased complexity and risk of the problems which lie before our statesmen - constitutional, legal, financial, military, international problems - problems of men, only to be solved by the labour and special knowledge of men, and where the men who bear the burden ought to be left unhampered by the political inexperience of women.

All through that wonderful day, when we watched a German counter-attack in the Ypres salient from one of the hills south-east of Poperinghe, the ruined tower of Ypres rising from the mists of the horizon, the news was intermittently with me as a dull pain, breaking in upon the excitement and novelty of the great spectacle around us. I was looking over ground where every inch was consecrated to the dead sons of England, dead for her; but even though their ghostly voices came the voice of Henry James, who spiritually, had fought in their fight and suffered in their pain.

On Monday Mrs. Humphry Ward spoke at a meeting of the Croydon branch of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League. While admitting that in the long run opposition to woman suffrage turned on the fundamental fact of maternity, she rested her own objections on two convictions : first, that the Parliamentary vote represented a fraction of the executive power and responsibility of the English democracy in political affairs, and not only the opinion of that democracy but the power behind that opinion ; secondly, that it was not patriotic for women to claim that executive power and responsibility. All the reforms that Mill said could not be got without the vote had been steadily obtained by the force of publics opinion ; and if many reforms were still wanted, never bad the opinion of women been so carefully and scrupulously consulted as it was to-day. In conclusion, Mrs. Humphry Ward gave the results of a recent postcard canvass of women householders in Southampton, Westminster, Central Finsbury, and Croydon, in which the anti-suffragist majority varied from nine to one to about three to one. We note that on the same day Miss Christabel Pankhnrst declared that if facilities were refused for the passage of the Conciliation Bill, it would be a challenge to women to do their worst.

We have been betrayed by our leader Lord Curzon. Coward! After making a long anti-suffrage speech, with every appearance of believing in the arguments against the Vote which he was advancing - he suddenly announced that in view of the gravity of the conflict with the Commons at this moment he was not going to vote and advised noble Lords not to vote.

It would have been impossible to essay the great task of enlightening foreign countries as to the justice of the Allied cause and the magnitude of the British effort without the co-operation of our leading writers, and we have been most fortunate in receiving that co-operation in full and ungrudged measure.

Mary would soon find herself on the same side as Emmeline Pankhurst after the First World War broke out. As an author she was called on to make her own special contribution to the war effort - a book aimed at persuading Americans their nation should join the war. So while Emmeline made propaganda efforts to the east, in Russia, Mary set her literary cap westwards, towards the United States. The episode began with a call to arms from the former American President, Theodore Roosevelt, whom she had met in the US during a visit in 1908. He suggested she should write a series of articles in support of the British campaign to bring the Americans in. The British War Office approved and Mary was sent with Dorothy to view the allied efforts in France, where they even watched a battle through field-glasses. She described it as `a wonderful day ... I was looking over ground where every inch was consecrated to the dead sons of England. It was the high point of her war. The low point was fast approaching.

News had already reached the family in England that Arnold had got himself into trouble in Cairo, where he was stationed, by running up gambling debts. The amount was around £6,000, and Mary agreed to pay it in installments of £500 every six months. There were only two possible means of finding such a huge sum - sell Stocks, or hold on to it but sell off its contents to survive and pay the bills. Mary and Humphry, believing they would not live long, chose the latter option. Although Mary's wartime work, England's Effort, was a success she knew she could no longer rely on her novels to make her the kind of money she now needed to earn. It was a depressing end to a glorious career.

Mary still found the energy for one last fling, though, when the bill which would finally enfranchise women was put before Parliament. In many senses she was resigned to having lost the suffrabe war - she had written to Cromer as early as 1915 that she sometimes "wondered in my secret thoughts whether we are not already beaten."In fact the war had changed her views on the subject and she, like the suffragettes, felt the women's roles on the "Home Front" had changed them. A statement by the Anti-Suffrage League, which she signed, concluded that some people might rightly think "the experience gained during the war has introduced some new elements into the case which will require careful consideration".

But Mary and her colleagues were not going to give in without at least a semblance of a fight, so the Anti-Suffrage League issued a statement saying it would oppose the measure. In January 1918 Mary led a deputation to the House of Lords to point out the "injustice" of introducing women's suffrage without first holding a consultative referendum. But the tone at the league's final meeting in Central Buildings, Westminster, was one of resignation. Mary spoke, claiming the antis might have won the day if they had started actively campaigning sooner. But she also looked to the future with the hope that the war might have had a positive effect on those who would benefit from the vote: "More life - more opportunity - more leisure - more beauty! - for the masses of plain men and women, who have gone so bare in the past, and are now putting forth their just and ardent claim on the future". Lord Weardale, presiding, paid tribute to her energy and generosity, saying she had done "everything that even a woman could do in circumstances of this kind". To add insult to injury Lord Curzon, as leader of the Lords, was forced to pilot the bill through the House.