It was late afternoon when the four hundred women proceeded solemnly in single file from headquarters, past the White House, along the edge of the quiet and beautiful Lafayette Park, to the foot of Lafayette’s statue. A slight mist added beauty to the pageant. The purple, white and gold banners, so brilliant in the sunshine, became soft pastel sails. Half the procession carried lighted torches; the other half banners. The crowd gathered silently, somewhat awe-struck by the scene. Massed about that statue, we felt a strange strength and solidarity, we felt again that we were a part of the universal struggle for liberty.
The torch was applied to the pine-wood logs in the Grecian Urn at the edge of the broad base of the statue. As the flames began to mount, Vida Milholland stepped forward and without accompaniment sang again from that spot of beauty, in her own challenging way, the Woman’s Marseillaise. Even the small boys in the crowd, always the most difficult to please, cheered and clapped and cried for more.
Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., chairman of the National Advisory Council, said, as president of the ceremony:
“We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be derelict in their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom to the women of this land . . . .
“Our ceremony to-day is planned to call attention to the fact that President Wilson has gone abroad to establish democracy in foreign lands when he has failed to establish democracy at home. We burn his words on liberty to-day, not in malice or anger, but in a spirit of reverence for truth.
“This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect an answer. If the answer is more words we will burn them again. The only answer the National Woman’s Party will accept is the instant passage of the amendment in the Senate.”
The few hoots and jeers which followed all ceased, when a tiny and aged woman stepped from her place to the urn in the brilliant torch light. The crowd recognized a veteran. It was the most dramatic moment in the ceremony. Reverend Olympia Brown of Wisconsin, one of the first ordained women ministers in the country, then in her eighty-fourth year, gallant pioneer, friend and colleague of Susan B. Anthony, said, as she threw into the flames the speech made by the President on his arrival in France:
“ . . . I have fought for liberty for seventy years, and I protest against the President’s leaving our country with this old fight here unwon.”
The crowd burst into applause and continued to cheer as she was assisted from the plinth of the statue, too frail to dismount by herself. Then came the other representative women, from Massachusetts to California, from Georgia to Michigan, each one consigning to the flames a special declaration of the President’s on freedom. The flames burned brighter and brighter and leapt higher as the night grew black.
The casual observer said, “They must be crazy. Don’t they know the President isn’t at home? Why are they appealing to him in the park opposite the White House when he is in France?”