XI
BURNING THE PRESIDENT’S WORDS AGAIN
On December 16, a woman carrying an American flag, emerged from Headquarters. Behind her came a long line of women bearing purple, white, and gold banners. Behind them came fifty women bearing lighted torches. Behind them came women—more women and more women and more women. Always a banner’s length apart they marched and on they came ... and on ... and on ... and on.... People who saw the demonstrations say that it seemed as though the colorful, slow-moving line would never come to an end. Witnesses say also that it was the most beautiful of all the Woman’s Party demonstrations. They marched to the Lafayette Monument. Their leader, Mrs. Harvey Wiley, stopped in front of a burning cauldron which had been placed at the foot of the pedestal. The torch bearers formed a semi-circle about that cauldron. The women with the purple, white, and gold banners—who were the speakers—grouped themselves around the torch bearers.
Among these women were the State Chairman or a Woman’s Party representative from almost all the forty-eight States; some of whom had come great distances to be present on this occasion. There were three hundred in all.
In the meantime, a huge crowd, which augmented steadily in numbers and in excitement as the long line of Suffragists came on and on and on, formed a great, black, attentive mass, which hedged in the banner bearers, as the banner bearers hedged in the torch bearers. In that crowd were the National Democratic Chairman and many prominent Democratic politicians.
Dusk changed into darkness, and the flames from cauldron and torches mounted higher and higher.
After the Suffragists had assembled, there came a moment of quiet. Then Vida Milholland stepped forward and without accompaniment of any kind, sang with her characteristic spirit the Woman’s Marseillaise. Immediately afterwards, Mrs. John Rogers opened the meeting, and introduced, one after another, nineteen speakers, each of whom, first reading them, dropped some words of President Wilson’s on democracy into the flaming cauldron.
Mrs. John Rogers declared:
We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to American women. All over the world today we see surging and sweeping irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be derelict to their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom to the women of this land.
England has enfranchised her women, Canada has enfranchised her women, Russia has enfranchised her women, the liberated nations of Central Europe are enfranchising their women. America must live up to her pretensions of democracy!