the 1901 elections they won nine seats. The party always remained rather small, but because of its strategic position and the quality of its MPs, the party was very influential. Although the VDB had split from the Liberal Union and the other liberal split, the League of Free Liberals, was against universal suffrage, they still needed each other to form a liberal alternative to the Christian democratic Coalition. In many districts there was only one liberal candidate supported by all three liberal parties. In 1905 the VDB won two additional seats. From 1905 to 1908 the Liberal Union and the VDB formed a liberal minority cabinet led by Theo de Meester. The cabinet was supported by Social Democratic Workers' Party (SDAP). In the 1909 election the Coalition regained its majority. The VDB lost two seats, making its total nine. In the 1913 election the Christian democrats lost their majority. The VDB lost four seats, because it was not the only liberal party in favour of universal suffrage; the Liberal Union and the League of Free Liberals had also included in their programmes. Furthermore, the SDAP performed exceptionally well in these elections. The leader of the VDB, Dirk Bos, attempted to form a government with the liberals, free liberals, socialists and free-thinking democrats. The socialists refused to cooperate, because one of their major issues (unilateral disarmament of the Netherlands) could not be realised. A liberal extra-parliamentary cabinet was formed, led by Pieter Cort van der Linden. It implemented universal suffrage and proportional representation. During this cabinet a conflict between the VDB parliamentary party and minister Willem Treub led to his resignation. Treub left the party and founded the Economic League, which would merge with the Liberal Union to form the Liberal State Party. Interwar years In the 1918 elections, with universal suffrage and proportional representation in place, the liberal alliance lost nearly half its seats. The VDB remains relatively stable with five seats, but they were nonetheless forced to a position in opposition to a Christian democratic cabinet. In 1919, however, VDB leader Henri Marchant initiated the law for female suffrage. In the 1922 elections the party retained its five seats. Betsy Bakker-Nort became the party's first female member of the House of Representatives. In 1925 the party was instrumental in the fall of the cabinet led by Hendrikus Colijn: each year the orthodox Protestant Reformed Political Party (SGP) proposed that