Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/643

 work for the National Association has always been valuable but who has made her greatest contribution in work for the passage of the Federal Amendment in the campaign to secure special sessions and the overwhelming number of ratifications in Republican States.

Mrs. Shuler told of the Oversea Hospitals, which are considered in another chapter. She gave an eloquent tribute to Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and spoke of the beautiful memorial booklet prepared by a committee of officers of the National Association, who distributed 5,000 copies. It also aided in circulating 10,000 copies of her last speech—What the War Meant to Women— prepared as a memorial by the League to Enforce Peace. She spoke tenderly of the death of Mrs. Rachel Foster Avery, corresponding secretary of the National Association twenty-one years; of that of Mrs. Elizabeth Wheeler Walker, who presided so charmingly over the headquarters in Washington, and of Miss Aloysius Larch-Miller, who as secretary of the committee on ratification in Oklahoma sacrificed her life through her work for it. Reference was made to the contributory work of the National Board in stabilizing the League of Women 'Voters; to the Citizenship Schools and Travelling Libraries, and the very complete report closed with a testimonial to the immeasurable value of the national organization which read in part:

Our State suffrage associations welded into a great chain have made the National Association. Our members have been one in heart, one in hope, one in purpose. We have held the same standards, the same ideals. When the way has seemed long and dark and the goal of our efforts afar off, we have supported, cheered and encouraged each other. We have rejoiced over even the smallest victory and have never been a downhearted group. The suffrage spirit has ever buoyed us up and carried us on even when the road was the steepest and the obstructions seemed almost insurmountable. These experiences could not have been realized through fifty-one years without "lengthening the cords and strengthening the stakes of friendship" but more—the result has been a liberal training, a greater belief in each other and more confidence in the merits of our cause.

While the value of any movement depends upon the success with which its practical details are worked out, yet in the final analysis the idealism of a movement is the mainspring of its vitality.