Picturesque events continued to happen on the picket line. Arthur Balfour, the leader of the British Mission, called at the White House to pay his respects. He was confronted with forty pickets. Their banners were inscribed with the President’s own words:
WE SHALL FIGHT FOR THE THINGS WHICH WE HAVE ALWAYS HELD NEAREST OUR HEARTS—FOR DEMOCRACY, FOR THE RIGHT OF THOSE WHO SUBMIT TO AUTHORITY TO HAVE A VOICE IN THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS.—President Wilson’s War Message, April 2, 1917.
This quotation from the President’s words became a slogan among the Suffragists.
The pickets recalled that when Arthur Balfour used to emerge into Downing Street, where the English militants were producing a demonstration, he always wore a bunch of violets in his buttonhole, to show his sympathy with them.
The spring brought its usual beautiful metamorphosis to Washington. If the pickets had seemed beautiful in the winter, they were quadruply so when the fresh green came. Everywhere that luxuriance of foliage, exquisitely tender and soft, which marks Washington, made an intensive background for their great golden banners and their tri-color. The pickets found it a delightfully humorous coincidence that, when they came to take up their station at the White House, the White House lawns were ablaze with their tri-color—the white of hyacinths, the purple of azalea, and the gold of forsythia. The Little White House itself was not exempt from this burst of bloom. The huge wistaria vine on its façade turned to a purple cascade; and out of it spirted the purple, white, and gold of their tri-color and the red, white, and blue of the national banner. When the French Commission, including Joffre and Viviani, passed all this massed color, they leaped to their feet, waving their hats and shouting their approval.
On June 20, the Mission headed by Bakmetief, sent by the new Russian Republic which had just enfranchised its women, was officially received by President Wilson. When they reached the White House gates, they were confronted by a big banner—since known as the “Russian” banner—borne by Lucy Burns and Mrs. Lawrence Lewis.
PRESIDENT WILSON AND ENVOY ROOT ARE DECEIVING RUSSIA.
THEY SAY “WE ARE A DEMOCRACY. HELP US WIN THE
WAR SO THAT DEMOCRACIES MAY SURVIVE.”