The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI

by Unknown

"Four countries, Greece, Spain, Argentina and Uruguay, sent delegates from newly formed National Suffrage Societies, which were accepted in the Alliance. In addition there were present women from Armenia, the Crimea, Lettonia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, New Zealand, Poland, Turkey and Ukrainia. For the first time women from India and Japan came to tell of the beginnings of the organized movement among the women of the East. It was only the difficulties of travel which prevented the delegates who had started on their journeys from China, Egypt and Palestine from arriving in time for the congress. For the first time more than half the voting delegates represented countries in which women had the full suffrage. The consequent increased political importance of the congress was recognized by the governments of the world, of which eighteen in Europe appointed official representatives, and the United States of America and Uruguay of South America. The Secretariat of the League of Nations also sent a representative....

"The outstanding feature of the first business session was the announcement of particulars by representatives of the many nations which had given the political and suffrage and eligibility to women between 1913 and 1920—Austria, British East Africa, Canada, Crimea, Czecho-Slovakia, Denmark, Esthonia, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Iceland, Lettonia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Poland, Rhodesia, Russia, Sweden, Ukrainia and six more of the United States. It was announced that women sit as members of Parliament in the majority of these countries, while large numbers are members of municipal councils. In the United States of America the Federal Suffrage Amendment had passed both Houses of Congress and had been ratified by thirty-five of the necessary thirty-six States. Serbia, Belgium and Roumania had granted Municipal suffrage to women and the Zionists of Palestine and the Commune of Fiume had given to them full equal suffrage and eligibility.... It was decided to arrange at the next congress a session at which only enfranchised women should speak.... The Catholic Woman Suffrage Society of Great Britain was accepted as a member of the Alliance....

"Each of the three evening meetings, besides that of Sunday, which were all crowded and enthusiastic, was characteristic of a different aspect of the present development of the suffrage movement. On Monday, a special feature was the speeches of five women members of Parliament—Helen Ring Robinson (State Senate), Colorado; Elna Münch, Denmark; Annie Furuhjelm, Finland; Lady Astor, Great Britain; Tekla Kauffman, Wurtemberg. In all, nine women members of Parliament attended the Congress. The others, who spoke at later meetings, were Frau Burian and Adelheid Popp of Austria; Mme. Petkavetchaite of Lithuania and Adele Schrieber-Krieger, whose election to the German Reichstag was announced during the Congress. On Wednesday at the great meeting in the Hall of the Reformation, three-minute speeches were given by representatives of each of the enfranchised countries in the Alliance. Yet another new aspect was illustrated by the meeting of Thursday, addressed by women from India and China. The speeches showed how similar are the difficulties of the women of both the East and the West and how much new ground has still to be broken before the object of the Alliance is achieved."

The forenoons were devoted to business meetings relating to the future work of the Alliance and they were in session simultaneously in different rooms in the great building—Women and Party Politics, Legal Status of Women, Civil Equality, Economic Value of Domestic Work of Wives and Mothers, Equal Pay for Equal Work, Single Moral Standard, Protection of Childhood—questions affecting the welfare of all society in all lands, pressing for solution and in all practically the same. The afternoons were given largely to the reports from many countries.[229] The Woman's Leader, organ of the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship of Great Britain, in its account of the Congress said:

The effect of these reports was intensely dramatic, mingled, as it inevitably was, with the memories of the strange and bitter conditions under which the change had come. In some of the countries that had been at war enfranchisement came in the midst of revolution, riot and disaster; in others it came fresh and new with the beginning of their independent national life and almost as a matter of course. "Our men and women struggled together for our national freedom," said delegate after delegate from the new States of Europe, "and so when any of us were enfranchised we both were." The report on the election of women to national or municipal bodies was deeply interesting and in many respects surprising. Germany easily surpassed other countries in this respect, having had 39 women members in the last National Assembly, 155 in the Parliaments of the Federated States and 4,000 on local and municipal bodies. In Denmark the record of success that followed the election of women was astonishing. "We have done," said the spokeswoman, "what we set out to do; we have introduced equal pay and equal marriage laws; our equality is a fact."

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the Alliance, welcomed each new representative in the name of all the countries, and, although the victories had been won in times of stress and war, the rejoicing was without rivalry, for in the Congress from the first day until the last no sign or mark of ill-feeling or enmity was to be found. Not that the delegates forgot or disregarded the recent existence of the war; no one who saw them would suppose for a moment that they were meeting in any blind or sentimental paradise of fools. Their differences and their nations' differences were plain in their minds and they neither forgot nor wished to forget the ruined areas, the starving children and the suffering peoples of the world. They met differing perhaps profoundly in their national sentiment, their memories and their judgments but determined to agree where agreement was to be found; to understand where understanding could be arrived at and to cooperate with the very best of their will and their intelligence in assuring the future stability of the world.

An important report was that of the Headquarters Committee, consisting of Mrs. Catt, Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, first vice-president of the Alliance, Mrs. Adela Stanton Coit, treasurer, and Miss Macmillan. Mrs. Coit was chairman the first two years and Mrs. Fawcett the rest of the time. After the Congress at Budapest in 1913 the official monthly paper Jus Suffragii was removed from Rotterdam to London and the international headquarters established there. For the next seven years the three members of the committee resident in London held regular meetings, seventy altogether, consulting Mrs. Catt by letter or cable when necessary. Miss Mary Sheepshanks was editor and headquarters secretary. "She occupied that post with great acceptance till 1919," said the report, "when it was with much regret that her resignation was accepted. Mrs. Elizabeth Abbott was appointed to the place, where in connection with the preparations for the present Congress her organizing capacity has been of special value." Miss Rosika Schwimmer of Hungary was appointed press secretary to furnish the news to the international press but her work had hardly begun when the war broke out and she resigned the position to take up work for peace.

The report told of the meeting of the international officers and a number of the national presidents which took place in London in July, 1914, to make arrangements for the Congress in Berlin the next year. Among the many social receptions given were one in the House of Commons and one at the home of former Prime Minister Balfour. Mrs. Catt had just started on her homeward voyage when the war began. The officers in London at once issued a Manifesto in the name of the Alliance and presented it to the British Foreign Office and the Ambassadors and Ministers in London, which after pointing out the helplessness of women in this supreme hour said: "We women of twenty-six countries, having banded ourselves together in the International Woman Suffrage Alliance with the object of obtaining the political means of sharing with men the power which shapes the fate of nations, appeal to you to leave untried no method of conciliation or arbitration for arranging international differences which may help to avert deluging half the civilized world in blood." They decided to cooperate with the British branch of the Alliance in a public meeting, which was held August 3 with Mrs. Fawcett in the chair, and a resolution similar to the above was adopted. In the next issue of the International News, when war had been declared, Mrs. Fawcett in her official capacity wrote:

We are faced by the disruption, the animosity, the misunderstanding caused by war but notwithstanding the cruel strain we must firmly resolve to hold our International Alliance together. We must believe all through that good is stronger than evil, that justice and mercy are stronger than hatred and destruction, just as life is stronger than death. We women who have worked together for a great cause have hopes and ideals in common; these are indestructible links binding us together. We have to show that what unites us is stronger than what separates us. Between many of us there is also the further link of personal friendship cemented by many years of work together. We must hold on through all difficulties to these things which are good in themselves and must therefore be a strong help to us all through these days of trial.

"In this spirit the Headquarters Committee has endeavored to carry out its task," said its report, "and it has so far succeeded that it is in a position today to lay down its work without any society having been lost to the Alliance and with a considerable group of countries never before associated with it now seeking affiliation." The great difficulty of getting the paper into the various countries was described but it was accomplished; the paper never missed an issue; it remained absolutely neutral and the number of subscribers largely increased. It was the one medium through which the women of the warring nations came in touch during the four and a half years of the conflict. All through the war it had news of some kind from the various countries showing that their women were still engaged in organized work for many useful purposes. It was evident that in practically all of them they were demanding that women should have a voice in the government.

The headquarters cooperated with other international organizations in forming the International Woman's Relief Committee and the work was conducted in its rooms. More than a thousand foreign girls were sent or taken to their countries and hundreds of British, French and Belgian women brought from Germany and Belgium to London. The work among Belgian refugees would require many pages to describe.