A brave new world

From ‘The New Reform Bill’, The Spectator, 19 May 1917: Though we used to be opposed to the suffrage for women, and have only accepted it in view of the great upheaval of the war, we feel most strongly that it had better be ‘a clean cut’ and a generous cut. Just as we opposed it on the ground not of the incompetency of women, but because we held that the suffrage had better be confined to one sex, so, now this view is untenable, we hold it is very much better that women should be put upon an entire electoral equality with men. The women who will be excluded … at the poll will probably be those who will need the franchise most — the unmarried women earning their own livelihood. There are a great number who do not marry till they are over 30. But it is just this class — i.e., persons who are self-supporting for the first ten years of their adult life — who should have the vote.