Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/621

 Woman's Party, in charge of its vice-chairman, Miss Anne Martin of Nevada. Mrs. William Kent of California introduced the speakers—Mrs. Richard Wainwright, Mrs. Townsend Scott, Miss Ernestine Evans, Mrs. Francis J. Heney, Miss Elizabeth Gram, Miss Maud Younger, Mrs. Adeline Atwater, Mrs. Ellis Meredith.

Monday morning the hearing of the Anti-Suffrage Association was resumed, Mrs. Wadsworth presiding and speaking at length, saying: "We never have and never will ask a man to vote with us against his conscience but the men we do blame are those spineless opportunists who for political expediency or because they are too lazy to fight are preparing to surrender their principles for the sake of a dishonorable and, we believe, a temporary peace." Mrs. Edwin Ford followed and then Miss Lucy Price. Her remarks and the committee's questions filled fourteen pages of the report. About fifty telegrams opposing the amendment were received, nearly half of them from men and all from Massachusetts. One purported to represent 250 women of Wellesley and another 1,000 of New Bedford. Henry A. Wise Wood was introduced as president of the Aero Club of America. During his speech he declared that "this was no time to unman the Government by this foolhardy jeopardizing of the rights of both sexes"; that "one wonders at the spectacle of strong, masculine personalities urging at such an hour the demasculinization of Government—the dilution with the qualities of the cow, of the qualities of the bull upon which all the herd safety must depend"; that "this from now on is a man's job—the job of the fighting, the dominating, not the denatured, the womanlike man." Referring to Miss Rankin's vote against war he said: "I do not think she cried; I was speaking of the real woman, the woman that men love." He also said that during his campaign for "preparedness" he discovered that "the woman suffrage movement was hopelessly given over to pacifism in its extreme socialistic form." In closing he said that "for any sentimental or political reason it is a damnable thing that we should weaken ourselves by bringing into the war the woman, who has never been permitted in the war tents of any strong, virile dominating nation." This speech was made Jan. 7, 1918, after nearly a year's experience in the United States of the war work done by women.