Another resolution protested against the prolongation of the blockade as bringing starvation and death to innumerable innocent women and children of the Central Powers. It also urged that all resources of the world, food, raw materials, finance, transport should be organized immediately for the relief of the peoples, in order to serve humanity and bring about the reconciliation and union of the peoples. A third resolution demanded representation in the League of Nations for women, and that Miss Addams be the first woman representative. At its concluding session the Congress voted unanimously to call a world-wide strike of women in the event another war be declared, even if such a war should be sanctioned by the League of Nations.
WOMAN TRIUMPHANT.
The wonderful spirit displayed by many millions of women during the World War gave foundation to the hope that universal suffrage would be an inevitable result of the war, and that the law-makers of all the belligerent countries would no longer deny this crowning privilege to those mothers, wives, and sisters, who had worked so nobly, suffered so keenly, and endured so patiently through the long years of this cruel catastrophe. In a large number of countries this expectation has been verified. To name them in chronological order, we begin with neutral Denmark, which in 1915 granted to her women full parliamentary suffrage and eligibility. Nine women were elected to Parliament. Iceland extended to her women the same rights, and one woman was sent to Parliament.
The next country was England, for many years the storm center of the suffrage movement. While in all other lands had been steps in evolution, England was the scene of a revolution. Not one with guns, and powder and bloodshed, but nevertheless with all other evidences of war. As Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, graphically described, “there were brave generals and well trained armies, and many a well-fought battle; there have been tactics and strategies, sorties, sieges, and even prisoners of war, many of whom had to be released as they went on a hunger-strike. But in time, by the restless activity of the leaders, every class, including women of the nobility, working girls, housewives and professional women, became engaged in the campaign, and not a man, woman or child in England was permitted to plead ignorance concerning the meaning of woman suffrage. Together, men and women suffragists carried their appeal into the byways and most hidden corners of the kingdom. They employed more original methods, enlisted a larger number of women workers, and grasped the situation in a bolder fashion than had been done elsewhere. In other countries persuasion had been the chief, if not the only, weapon relied upon; in England it was persuasion plus political methods.
“First, the world expressed disgust at the alleged unfeminine conduct of English suffragists. Editorial writers in many lands scourged the suffrage workers of their respective countries over the shoulders of these lively English militants. But time passed; comment ceased; and the world, which had ridiculed, watched the contest in silence, but with never an eye closed. It assumed the attitude of the referee who realizes he is watching a cleverly played game, with the chances hanging in the balance. Then came a laugh. The dispatches flashed the news to the remotest corners of the globe that English Cabinet Ministers were “protected” in the street by bodyguards; the houses of Cabinet Ministers were “protected” by relays of police, and even the great Houses of Parliament were “protected” by a powerful cordon of police. Protected! and from what? The embarrassing attack of unarmed women! In other lands police have protected emperors, czars, kings and presidents from the assaults of hidden foes, whose aim has been to kill. That there has been such need is tragic; and when, in contrast, the vision was presented of the Premier of England hiding behind locked doors, skulking along side streets, and guarded everywhere by officers, lest an encounter with a feminine interrogation point should put him to rout, it proved too much for the ordinary sense of humor.
“Again, the dispatches presented another view. Behold, they said, the magnificent and world-renowned House of Parliament surrounded by police, and every woman approaching that sacred precinct, halted, examined, and perhaps arrested! Behold all this elaborate precaution to save members of Parliament from inopportune tidings that women would have votes; yet, despite it all, the forbidden message is delivered, for over the Houses floats conspicuously and defiantly a huge “Votes for Women” kite. Perhaps England did not know the big world laughed then; but the world did laugh, and more, from that moment it conceded the victory to the suffragists. The only question remaining unanswered, was: ‘How will the Government surrender, and at the same time preserve its dignity and consistency?’”
Surrender came when in January, 1917, the Lower House of Commons adopted a resolution favoring a bill making women eligible as members of Parliament.
The bill was discussed again in October, 1918, and a vote of 274 to 25 on October 24th gave women the right to sit as members of Parliament.
Voting in the general elections on December 14th, 1918, for the first time, the British women enjoyed at last the victory for which they bravely fought. While they did not succeed to elect one of their women candidates for a seat in the Parliament, the election was nevertheless one of the most notable in years. Nearly in all districts the women voters made a satisfactory showing as compared to that of men. In Ireland one woman, Countess Georgina Markievicz, an Irish by birth and the leading female figure in the Sinn Fein movement, was elected to the House of Commons, the first woman ever sent to this body.