Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/444

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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

go wrong. I should think a glance at the pay-roll would give them the answer."

Miss Rosika Schwimmer of Budapest, who had come with a petition to President Wilson from the women of fifteen countries that were at war to use his influence to bring about peace, made an eloquent and impassioned address. A storm of applause greeted her appeal to the men of this country to avoid the catastrophe of war in the future by granting the vote to women, who would always use it for peace. Mrs. Desha Breckinridge, president of the Kentucky Equal Rights Association, one of the most brilliant and forceful of the suffrage speakers, took for a subject The South Needs her Women. "Do not call upon the women of the South to help you solve your cotton problems while you are using up the children of women in the cotton mills," she said. "Women must have the ballot to cope with all the hard conditions of life. When we think of war and patriotism we think of men. We forget the little army of women that always follow in the wake of the big armies and brave the bullets and the fearful conditions of warfare that they may become ministering angels on the battlefields; the Florence Nightingales who undergo the hardships to nurse the wounded. We are also likely to forget the large army that stays behind, the women on whom the hardships of war fall heavily, those who must endure the sorrow and waiting. Is it fair to say woman shall have no part in the every-day affairs of life when she must bear so much in war?"

The program closed with an address by Mrs. Kate Waller Barrett on The Attitude toward Woman Suffrage of the International Council of Women, of which she was an officer. She described its quinquennial meeting in Rome the preceding May, shortly before the breaking out of the war, and said the desire for the suffrage was the connecting link between the women of all nations. She declared that the safety of the country depended on women's having a vote in the administration of all that concerned the welfare of men as well as of women and children. In the evening the officers, delegates and visitors were entertained by Mrs. Benjamin F. Wilson at her beautiful home, Wilmor Manor.