In his opening address to Congress, the President again appealed to the Senate in these words:
“And what shall we say of the women—of their instant intelligence, quickening every task that they touched; their capacity for organization and coöperation, which gave their action discipline and enhanced the effectiveness of everything they attempted; their aptitude at tasks to which they had never before set their hands; their utter self-sacrifice alike in what they did and in what they gave? Their contribution to the great result is beyond appraisal. They have added a new luster to the annals of American womanhood.
“The least tribute we can pay them is to make them the equals of men in political rights, as they have proved themselves their equals in every field of practical work they have entered, whether for themselves or for their country. These great days of completed achievement would be sadly marred were we to omit that act of justice. Besides the immense practical services they have rendered, the women of the country have been the moving spirits in the systematic economies in which our people have voluntarily assisted to supply the suffering peoples of the world and the armies upon every front with food and everything else we had, that might serve the common cause. The details of such a story can never be fully written but we carry them at our hearts and thank God that we can say that we are the kinsmen of such.”
Again we looked for action to follow this appeal. Again we found that the President had uttered these words but had made no plan to translate them into action.
And so his second appeal to the Senate failed, coming as it did after the hostility of his party to the idea of conferring freedom on women nationally, had been approved and fostered by President Wilson for five solid years. He could not overcome with additional eloquence the opposition which he himself had so long formulated, defended, encouraged and solidified, especially when that eloquence was followed by either no action or only half- hearted efforts.
It would now require a determined assertion of his political power as the leader of his party. We made a final appeal to him as leader of his party and while still at the height of his world power, to make such an assertion and to demand the necessary two votes.
Chapter 20
The President Sails Away
No sooner had we set ourselves to a brief, hot campaign to compel President Wilson to win the final votes than he sailed away to France to attend the Peace Conference, sailed away to consecrate himself to the program of liberating the oppressed peoples of the whole world. He cannot be condemned for aiming to achieve so gigantic a task. But we reflected that again the President had refused his specific aid in an humble aspiration, for the rosy hope of a more boldly conceived ambition.
It was positively impossible for us, by our own efforts, to win the last 2 votes. We could only win them through the President. That he had left behind him his message urging the Senate to act, is true. That Administration leaders did not consider these words a command, is also true. It must be realized that even after the President had been compelled to publicly declare his support of the measure, it was almost impossible to get his own leaders to take seriously his words on suffrage. And so again the Democratic Chairman of the Rules Committee, in whose keeping the program lay, had no thought of bringing it to a vote. The Democratic Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee assumed not the slightest responsibility for its success, nor could he produce any plan whereby the last votes could be won. They knew, as well as did we, that the President only could win those last 2 votes. They made it perfectly clear that until he had done so, they could do nothing.
Less than fifty legislative days remained to us. Something had to be done quickly, something bold and offensive enough to threaten the prestige of the President, as he was riding in sublimity to unknown heights as a champion of world liberty; something which might penetrate his reverie and shock him into concrete action. We had successfully defied the full power of his Administration, the odds heavily against us. We must now defy the popular belief of the world in this apostle of liberty. This was the feeling of the four hundred officers of the National Woman’s Party, summoned to a three days’ conference in Washington in December, 1918. It was unanimously decided to light a fire in an urn, and, on the day that the President was officially received by France, to burn with fitting public ceremonies all the President’s past and present speeches or books concerning “liberty”, “freedom” and “democracy.”