When the great European war broke out in 1914, the suffragists tried to use the situation to further their propaganda. They remind me of the mad philosopher who suggested it would be well to profit by an eruption of Vesuvius in order to boil an egg.
The incongruity of suffragists attempting to pose as a peace party is obvious to anyone with a memory and a sense of humor. Before the war broke out, American suffrage leaders were applauding, feasting, and subsidizing the British virago who instigated the setting on fire of 146 public buildings, churches, and houses, the explosion of 43 bombs, the destruction of property valued at nearly two million dollars (not including priceless works of arts), and many cases of personal assault. In 1912 they justified the destruction of the Rokeby Venus; in 1914 they professed horror at the bombardment of the Cathedral of Rheims. Is this insincerity or hypocrisy, or mere aberration of mind?
The best time to work for peace is before war breaks out. The suffrage organization was not conspicuous in seizing the many opportunities for furthering the cause of peace before it was too late. In 1911 Mrs. Frederick Nathan, a prominent suffragist, was asked to contribute to the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of Disputes. She sent the following characteristic refusal:
"Mrs. Frederick Nathan prefers to give her money to the Woman Suffrage Association.... She has no faith in Courts of Law and Equity which deny justice to women."
Was this boycotting of the peace movement condemned by the suffragists? Not at all; Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, President of the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, was glad to print the refusal in the official organ of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Miss Blackwell, in holding up this example to its members, scornfully declared that several of the peace society were "prominent opponents of equal rights for women." In those days, the suffragists were not hitching their wagon to the quiet star of peace; it has been their constant practice to attach themselves, for publicity's sake, to whatever movement is conspicuous on the front pages of the newspapers—eugenics, or sex drama, or red-light abatement, or what not—and to abandon that ephemeral interest whenever it has ceased to serve the purpose of advertisement.
And so, when the war broke out, the boycotters of peace societies, and colleagues of militants, made a rapid shift of costumes, and tried to play roles in the Woman's Peace Party. So hurried was their change of mental attitude that their thoughts on the subject were splendid instances of snap judgment.
In truth, the breaking out of the war was most embarassing to them. Like a bull in a china shop, the rush of brutal fact destroyed many of their pretty theories. The stereotyped suffrage answer, when anti-suffragists pointed out that physical force was the fundamental basis of government, had been that this was no longer true. For example, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobs, speaking of women's demand for the ballot, said, about 1895: "Women could not claim the ballot while it was necessary to defend opinions by arms, but this is no longer necessary or expected." And Mrs. Susan Fitzgerald in 1912 declared: "The age of the fighting man is passing. The world is coming to be ruled by intellect." When will the suffragists learn Lowell's maxim: "Don't never prophesy—onless ye know!" It is, however, a characteristic of professional false prophets not to lose their imperturbality and effrontery, but to trust that their followers will forget their mistaken guesses and listen open-mouthed to a new dispensation.
The essential dogma of the Woman's Peace Party (none but suffragists admitted!) was that the adoption of woman suffrage was a necessary and effectual step toward abolishing war. "If women had had the vote in all countries now at war," said Mrs. Catt, "the conflict would have been prevented." History shows women at least as much inclined to war as men—a fact illustrated in the French Revolution, in our Civil War, in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and in other instances too numerous to mention. The suffragists, ignorant of that fact, or ignoring it, advanced in support of their proposition a series of specious arguments designed to catch popular opinion. Of these arguments two were at the outset of the movement especially harped upon: (1) the alleged "international solidarity of women," and (2) the supposed likelihood of woman's opposition to militarism.
What was meant by the "solidarity of women" is explained in Mrs. Pethick Lawrence's words: "The interests of women, being fundamentally the same, are so universal that no national distinctions can cut deeply into them, as may possibly sometimes happen with the national distinctions between men." Following that notion, Dr. Anna Howard Shaw issued an appeal to the women's organizations in the belligerent countries, urging them to put a stop to the war. The replies received showed that the expected "international solidarity of women" was imaginary. The Association of Austrian Women's Clubs, for example, replied that nobody understanding the causes of the war, would have addressed such a request to them. "Being women of those countries," ran this reply, "where our husbands, brothers, and sons are fighting for the existence or non-existence of our state, for our homes, for their wives and children, we cannot say: 'Do not fight'!" Similarly, the women's societies of France refused to accept any invitations to peace palavers. In short, the real "solidarity" was discovered to exist, not between women of different nations, but between the women and the men of each nation.