Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/774

 occasion to accuse them of disloyalty, pacifism, pro-Germanism and of placing the interests of woman suffrage above those of the nation! These attacks were repeatedly made in the press and on the platform, Mrs. Catt, the president of the National Association, being especially the victim. At times they grew so virulent that it became necessary to answer them through the newspapers.

Her letters were published with headlines and widely quoted. One of these letters, under date of Oct. 2, 1917, addressed to Mrs. Margaret C. Robinson of Cambridge, Mass., chairman of the press committee of the National Anti-Suffrage Association, began: "My attention has been called to the fact that you are  circulating by public letter and bulletin various statements that  impugn my loyalty as an American and thereby put in jeopardy  my good name and reputation. 'These assertions are made by  you either with wilful intent to injure my name and standing  in the community or without having made an effort to establish  their proof. I hereby set forth the facts which have been distorted  by you into untruths, either by contrary statements or by implications." It ended: "In the name of our common womanhood, I ask you to meet the suffrage issue fairly and squarely, and I warn you that for personal attacks tending to injure my name or  those of my fellow-workers, you will be held responsible."

Another letter dated Nov. 1, 1917, addressed by Mrs. Catt to Mrs. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., president of the Anti-Suffrage Association; Mrs. Robinson and Miss Alice Hill Chittenden, president of the New York State Anti-Suffrage Association, took up and refuted the charges saying: 'To every single and collective insinuation, implication or direct charge, published or spoken in any place at any time by professional anti-suffrage  campaigners, which has conveyed the impression that I or any other officially responsible leader of the National Suffrage Association has by word or deed been disloyal to our country, I make complete and absolute denial here and now." It said in closing: "In this connection I wish to call your attention to the fact that  the late John Hay, the father of the president of the National  Association of Anti-suffragists, had his own experiences with  people who challenged his loyalty and 'cursed me,' he says, 'for  being the tool of England.' In May, 1898, when our country