THE SUFFRAGETTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 219, 4 February 1913, Page 2

THE SUFFRAGETTES.

j MINISTERS INTERVIEWED. 1 SCENE IN WHITEHALL. J j A cable message to the Sydney Sun J thus describes the recent deputation to j 'Miiiisters: J The non-militant suffragettes had a ! field day to-day. All their forces were gathered from the four corners of the Kingdom. They Hooded Whitehall. ! Twenty selected organisations from the big cities rolled up in private omnibuses ! with flags Hying and ribbons streaming and banners blazoned with the women's mottoes waving in the breeze. When Mrs. Drummond, who holds the ) title of "general," arrived there w.as a j shrill cheer, and the trafllo was stopped | while the rest of the vote-seekers crowded round their leader.

There were some strange sights to he seen. Buxom dames in short skirts of wondrous lines walked cheek by jowl with Lancashire lassies in clogs and shawls. Aristocratic ladies in fur.;, anil lowly maidens wearing the apron of servitude, stood side by side. The suffragettes interviewed Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey. The speeches were generally temperate, though a Mrs. Norton, a Yorkshire weaver, said that if the vote was not given to women the tactics that had hitherto been adopted would soon be recognised as mere pinpricks as compared with what would happen. Mr. Lloyd George told the ladies that the Ministry was divided. But Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, had authorised him to announce that if the amendment proposed by Sir Edward Grey to the Franchise Bill, affirming the general principle of voles for women, were carried, the Government would accept it and endeavor to make the Bill law as a Ministerial measure.

The deputation urged Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Edward Grey to resign if the amendment were not carried, but the two Ministers declined to discuss the \ suggestion, Sir Edward Grey remarking I that a united Cabinet was of no use without a majority in the House of Commons. When they came out from interviewing the Ministers, the suffragettes found one side of the street being paraded by men carrying sandwich-boards bearing the words, ''Women don't want votes," while on the other side of the thoroughfare marched a line of women bearing more placards with the sentence, "Men, why deny women votes V