At the other side of the house and at the same moment, another member of the crowd climbed up the balcony and pulled down the American flag which hung beside the tri-color. Immediately Virginia Arnold and Lucy Burns appeared on the balcony carrying, the one the Kaiser banner and the other the tri-color. The crowd began to throw eggs, tomatoes, and apples at them, but the two girls stood, Virginia Arnold white, Lucy Burns flushed, but—everybody who saw them comments on this—with a look of steady consecration, absolutely motionless, holding the tri-color which had never before been taken from its place over the door at Headquarters.
Suddenly a shot rang out from the crowd. A bullet went through a window of the second story, directly over the heads of two women who stood there—Ella Morton Dean and Georgiana Sturgess—and imbedded itself in the ceiling of the hall. The only man seen to have a revolver was a yeoman in uniform, who immediately ran up the street. By this time Elizabeth Stuyvesant had joined Lucy Burns and Virginia Arnold on the balcony; others also came. Three yeomen climbed up onto the balcony and wrested the tri-color banners from the girls. As one of these men climbed over the railing, he struck Georgiana Sturgess. “Why did you do that?” she demanded, dumbfounded. The man paused a moment, apparently as amazed as she. “I don’t know,” he answered; then he tore the banner out of her hands and descended the ladder. Lucy Burns, whose courage is physical as well as spiritual, held her banner until the last moment. It seemed as though she were going to be dragged over the railing of the balcony, but two of the yeomen managed to tear it from her hands before this occurred. New banners were brought to replace those that had disappeared.
While this was going on, Katherine Morey and I went out the back way of Headquarters, made our way to the White House gates, unfurled a Kaiser banner, and stood there for seventeen minutes unnoticed. There was a policeman standing beside each of us, but when the yeoman who had led the mob and who was apparently about to report for duty, tore at the banner, they did not interfere. We were dragged along the pavements, but the banner was finally destroyed.
By this time the crowd had thinned a little in front of Headquarters. The front door had been unlocked when we went back. Five different times, however, we and others, led always by Lucy Burns, made an effort to bear our banners to the White House gates again. Always, a little distance from Headquarters, we were beset by the mob and our banners destroyed.
About five o’clock, the police reserves appeared and cleared the street. Thereupon, every woman who had been on picket duty that day, bearing aloft the beautiful tri-color, went over to the White House gates, marched up and down the pavements three times. The police protected us until we started home. When, however, our little procession crossed the street to the park, the crowd leaped upon us again, and again destroyed our banners. Madeline Watson was knocked down and kicked. Two men carried her into Headquarters.
While the crowd was milling its thickest before Headquarters, somebody said to a policeman standing there, “Why don’t you arrest those men?” “Those are not our orders,” the policeman replied.
Twenty-two lettered banners and fourteen tri-color flags were destroyed that day.
During all the early evening, men were trying to climb over the back fence of the garden to get into Cameron House. None of us went to bed that night. We were afraid that something—we knew not what—might happen.
The next day, August 15, was only a degree less violent. The Suffrage pickets went on duty as usual at twelve o’clock, and picketed all that afternoon.
All the afternoon yeomen, small boys, and hoodlums attacked the women without hindrance. Elizabeth Stuyvesant was struck by a soldier who destroyed her flag. Beulah Amidon was thrown down by a sailor, who stole her flag. Alice Paul was knocked down three times. One sailor dragged her thirty feet along the White House sidewalk in his attempts to tear off her Suffrage sash, gashing her neck brutally. They were without protection until five o’clock.