Alice Paul answered, “No; if we withdraw our speakers from the campaign, we withdraw the issue from the campaign. The main thing is to make the Suffrage Amendment a national issue that the Democrats will not want to meet in another campaign.”
After the election, somebody said to her, “The people of the United States generally think you made a great mistake in fighting Wilson. They think your campaign a failure.” Alice Paul answered, “In this case, it is not important what the people think but what the Democratic leaders know.”
The most magical thing about Alice Paul’s political-mindedness was, however, a quality which is almost indescribable. Perhaps it should be symbolized by some term of the fourth dimension—although Helena Hill Weed’s happy word “prescience” comes near to describing it. Maud Younger gives an extraordinary example of this. She says again and again, lobbyists would come back from the Capitol with the news of some unexpected manœuver which perplexed or even blocked them. Congressmen, themselves, would be puzzled over the situation. Again and again, she has seen Alice Paul walk to the window, stand there, head bent, thinking. Then, suddenly she would come back. She had seen behind the veil of conflicting and seemingly untranslatable testimony. She had, in Maud Younger’s own words, cloven “straight to the heart of things.” Often her lobbyists had the experience of explaining to baffled members of Committees in Congress the concealed tactics of their own Committee.
It was small wonder that they were so busy at Headquarters during those first months. They were preparing for a monster demonstration in the shape of a procession which was to occur on March 3, 1913, on the eve of President Wilson’s first inauguration. That procession, which was really a thing of great beauty, brought Suffrage into prominence in a way the Suffragists had not for an instant anticipated. About eight thousand women took part. The procession started from the Capitol, marched up Pennsylvania Avenue past the White House and ended in a mass-meeting at the Hall of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Although a permit had been issued for the procession, and though this carried with it the right to the street, the police failed to protect the marchers as had been rumored they would. The end of the Avenue was almost impassable to the parade. A huge crowd, drawn from all over the country, had appeared in Washington for the Inauguration festivities. They chose to act in the most rowdy manner possible and many of the police chose to seem oblivious of what they were doing. Disgraceful episodes occurred. Secretary of War Stimson had finally to send for troops from Fort Meyer. There was an investigation of the action of the police by a Committee of the Senate. The official report is a thick book containing testimony that will shock any fine-minded American citizen. Ultimately, the Chief of Police for the District of Columbia was removed.
The investigation, however, kept the Suffrage procession in the minds of the public for many weeks. It almost over-shadowed the Inauguration itself.
On this occasion, the banner—in a slightly modified form to be afterwards always known as the Great Demand banner—was carried for the first time. This banner marched peremptorily through the history of the Woman’s Party until the Suffrage Amendment was passed. It said:
WE DEMAND AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES ENFRANCHISING THE WOMEN OF THE COUNTRY.