WE WOMEN OF AMERICA TELL YOU THAT AMERICA IS NOT A
DEMOCRACY. TWENTY MILLION WOMEN ARE DENIED THE
RIGHT TO VOTE. PRESIDENT WILSON IS THE CHIEF OPPONENT
OF THEIR NATIONAL ENFRANCHISEMENT.
HELP US MAKE THIS NATION REALLY FREE. TELL OUR
GOVERNMENT THAT IT MUST LIBERATE ITS PEOPLE BEFORE
IT CAN CLAIM FREE RUSSIA AS AN ALLY.
The appearance of this banner produced strange results. A man standing at the White House gates leaped at it—the instant the Russian Mission had vanished—and tore the sign from its supports.
The crowd closed in around them. The two women continued to stand facing them. Nina Allender, who saw this from across the street, said that the surging back and forth of straw hats as the crowd closed in upon the women gave her a sense of faintness. “One instant the banners were there, the next there were only bare sticks.”
Later, a prominent member of the Mission said to a no less prominent American, “You know, it was very embarrassing for us, because we were in sympathy with those women at the gates.”