CITIZENS WHEN HE HAS FORCED MILLIONS OF AMERICAN BOYS
OUT OF THEIR COUNTRY TO DIE FOR LIBERTY.
For two hours, Lucy Ewing and Mary Winsor stood holding this banner. It attracted the largest crowd that the pickets had as yet experienced. But the police managed them perfectly—although in the courts there had been plenty of testimony that they could not manage similar crowds—and without a word of protest—although half a block was completely obstructed for two hours.
The following day saw scenes the most violent in the history of the pickets. This was August 14. Catherine Flanagan’s story of this period of terror is one of the most thrilling in the annals of the Party:
That day a new banner was carried for the first time by Elizabeth Stuyvesant—the “Kaiser” banner. The banner read:
KAISER WILSON, HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN YOUR SYMPATHY WITH
THE POOR GERMANS BECAUSE THEY WERE NOT SELF-GOVERNING?
TWENTY MILLION AMERICAN WOMEN ARE NOT SELF-GOVERNING.
TAKE THE BEAM OUT OF YOUR OWN EYE.
I do not remember when Elizabeth took this banner out, but I think she was on the four o’clock shift. For a half an hour people gathered about the banner. The crowd grew and grew. You felt there was something brewing in them, but what, you could not guess. Suddenly it came—a man dashed from the crowd and tore the banner down. Immediately, one after another, the other banners were torn down. As fast as this happened, the banner bearers went back to Headquarters; returned with tri-colors and reinforcements; took up their stations again. Finally the whole line of pickets, bannerless by this time, marched back to Headquarters. The crowd, which was fast changing into a mob, followed us into Madison Place. As the pickets emerged again, the mob jumped them at the very doors of Cameron House, tore their banners away from them and destroyed them. By this time the mob, which had become a solid mass of people, choking the street and filling the park, had evolved a leader, a yeoman in uniform, who incited everybody about him to further work of destruction. Suddenly, as if by magic, a ladder appeared in their midst. A yeoman placed it against Cameron House, and accompanied by a little boy, he started up. He pulled down the tri-color of the Woman’s Party which hung over the door. In the meantime, it was impossible for us to take any banners out. We locked the door, but two strange women, unknown to the Woman’s Party, came in. They opened a window on the second floor and were about to push the ladder, on which the sailor and the little boy still stood, back into the street when Ella Morton Dean drew them away.