A curious feature of this case was that at Police Headquarters the police decided to confiscate, along with the banners, the Suffragist regalia—a sash of purple, white, and gold without any lettering whatever. The women refused to relinquish these sashes, and there was in every case a struggle, in which wrists were twisted, fingers sprained; bruises and cuts of all kinds administered. All the thirty-eight women were, however, released unconditionally.
On August 14, the women held two meetings of protest at the Lafayette Monument—one at half-past four in the afternoon, and one at eight o’clock in the evening.
This double protest came about in this way.
At the afternoon demonstration, the women were immediately arrested. They were held at Police Headquarters for two hours. The authorities feeling then that the hour was too late for further demonstrations, released them. They did not require bail, or a promise to appear in Court.
The women went at once to Headquarters, snatched a hasty dinner; slipped quietly out of the building, and marched to the Lafayette Monument. Everybody agrees that this evening demonstration was very beautiful. It was held in the soft dusk of the Washington August. The crescent moon, which seemed tangled in the trees of the park, gave enough light to bring out the Suffrage tri-color and the Stars and Stripes. As the women gathered closer and closer around the statue, the effect was of color, smudged with shadow; of shadow illuminated with color.
Elsie Hill, carrying the American flag in one hand, and the purple, white, and gold banner in the other spoke first; spoke wonderfully—as Elsie Hill always spoke. She said in part:
We know that our protest is in harmony with the belief of President Wilson, for he has stood before the world for the right of the governed to a voice in their own government. We resent the fact that the soldiers of our country, the men drafted to fight Prussia abroad, are used instead to help still the demand of American women for political freedom. We resent the suppression of our demands but our voices will carry across the country and down through time. The world will know that the women of America demand the passage of the Federal Suffrage Amendment and that the President insists that the Senate act.
There were only two policemen on duty. For two policemen to try to arrest nine lively and athletic pickets was a little like a scene in Alice in Wonderland. They would pull one woman down from the statue, start to get another, whereupon the first would be back again with her flying banner.
Finally, the police reserves arrived, but every woman had managed to make a speech.