Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/857

The Congress was formally opened in the afternoon of June 12 with addresses of welcome from Miss Anna Whitlock, acting president of the National Suffrage Association of Sweden, and the Hon. Ernest Beckman, M. P., president of the National Swedish Liberal Association, and response from the Alliance was made by Miss Chrystal Macmillan of Great Britain, proxy for Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett, its first vice-president. Miss Anna Kleman, president of the Stockholm suffrage society, then presented the beautiful white satin, gold embroidered Alliance banner, which was carried by six university students in white dresses with sashes of the Swedish colors. Mrs. Catt announced that the Alliance flag was now flying over the Grand Hotel where they were assembled. The banner was the gift of Miss Lotten von Kroemer, a pioneer suffragist of Sweden, and the flag of the resident Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific Tea Co., U. S.A. A suffrage song written by K. G. Ossian-Nillson and the music composed by Hugo Alfven for the occasion was sung by the Women's Choir of Goteborg, after which an official delegate of the Government extended its greeting while the audience rose and the flags of the nations waved from the galleries. Mrs. Catt received an ovation as she came to the front of the platform to make her address. It filled twenty-three pages of the printed minutes and was a complete resumé of the early position of women, the vast changes that had been wrought and the great work which the Alliance was doing. Only a few quotations are possible:

In the recent debate on the bill in the Swedish Parliament a university professor said in a tone of eloquent finality: "The woman suffrage movement has reached and passed its climax; the suffrage wave is now rapidly receding." With patronizing air, more droll than he could know, the gentleman added: 'We have permitted this movement to come thus far but we shall allow it to go no farther." Thus another fly resting upon the proverbial wheel of progress commanded it to turn no more. This man engages our attention because he is a representative of a type to be found in all our lands; wise men on the wrong side of a great question, modern Joshuas who command the sun to stand still and believe that it will obey.

 

Long centuries before the birth of Darwin an old-time Hindoo wrote: "I stand on a river's bank. I know not whence the waters come or whither they go. So deep and silent is its current that I know not whether it flows north or south; all is mystery to me;