Nor was it to be expected that eager young boys, all agog to fight Germans, would be averse to attacking women in the meantime. They were out to fight and such was the public hysteria that it did not exactly matter whom they fought.
And so those excited boys of the Army and Navy attacked the women and the banner. The banner was destroyed. Another was brought up to take its place. This one met the same fate. Meanwhile a crowd was assembling in front of the White House either to watch or to assist in the attacks. At the very moment when one banner was being snatched away and destroyed, President and Mrs. Wilson passed through the gates on their way to a military review at Fort Myer. The President saw American women being attacked, while the police refused them protection.
Not a move was made by the police to control the growing crowd. Such inaction is always a signal for more violence on the part of rowdies. As the throng moved to and fro between the White House and our Headquarters immediately opposite, so many banners were destroyed that finally Miss Lucy Burns, Miss Virginia Arnold and Miss Elizabeth Stuyvesant took those remaining to the second and third floor balconies of our building and hung them out. At this point there was not a picket left on the street. The crowd was clearly obstructing the traffic, but no attempt was made to move them back or to protect the women, some of whom were attacked by sailors on their own doorsteps. The two police officers present watched without interference while three sailors brought a ladder from the Belasco Theater in the same block, leaned it against the side of the Cameron House, the Headquarters, climbed up to the second floor balcony, mounted the iron railing and tore down all banners and the American flag. One sailor administered a severe blow in the face with his clenched fist upon Miss Georgina Sturgis of Washington.
“Why did you do that?” she demanded.
The man halted for a brief instant in obvious amazement and said, “I don’t know.” And with a violent wrench he tore the banner from her hands and ran down the ladder.
The narrow balcony was the scene of intense excitement.
But for Miss Burns’ superb strength she would have been dragged over the railing of the balcony to be plunged to the ground. The mob watched with fascination while she swayed to and fro in her wrestle with two young sailors. And still no attempt by the police to quell the riot!
The climax came when in the late afternoon a bullet was fired through one of the heavy glass windows of the second floor, embedding itself in the ceiling. The bullet grazed past the head of Mrs. Ella Morton Dean of Montana. Captain Flather of the 1st Precinct, with two detectives, later examined the holes and declared they had been made by a 38 caliber revolver, but no attempt was ever made to find the man who had drawn the revolver.
Meanwhile eggs and tomatoes were hurled at our fresh banners flying from the flag poles on the building.
Finally police reserves were summoned and in less than five minutes the crowd was pushed back and the street cleared. Thinking now that they could rely on the protection of the police, the women started with their banners for the White House. But the police looked on while all the banners were destroyed, a few paces from Headquarters. More banners ,went out,—purple, white and gold ones. They, too, were destroyed before they reached the White House.