Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/797

 Women and mere extracts can give little idea of its strength and beauty. After speaking of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense, the Peace Treaty and President Wilson's declaration that the United States did not want any material advantage out of the war, she ended:

While Mr. Wilson declared we want nothing out of the war, I said in my own heart: "It may be that we want nothing material out of the war, but, oh, we want the biggest thing that has ever come to the world—we want Peace now and Peace forever." If we cannot get that peace out of this war what hope is there that it will ever come to humanity? Was there ever such a chance offered to the world before? Was there ever a time when the peoples of all nations looked towards America as they are looking to-day because of our unselfishness in our dealings with them during the war? We have not always been unselfish but we have been in this war.

The war is over as far as the fighting is concerned but it is only begun as far as the life of the people is concerned. What would there be of inspiration to them to come back to their ruined homes and build up again their cities if within a few years the same thing could be repeated and homes destroyed and cities devastated, the people outraged and made slaves as they have been?

Men and women, they are looking to us as the hope of the world and whenever I gaze on our flag, whenever I look on those stars on their field of blue and those stripes of red and white, I say to myself: "I do not wonder that when that flag went over the trenches and surmounted the barriers, the people of the world took heart of hope. It was then that they began to feel they could unite with us in some sort of security for the future. And that flag means so much to me. I never look on its stars but that I see in every star the hope that must stir the peoples of the old world when they think of us and the power we have of helping to lead them up to a place where they may hope for their children and for their children's children the things that have not come to them."

We women, the mothers of the race, have given everything, have suffered everything, have sacrificed everything and we say to you now: "The time is come when we will no longer sit quietly by and bear and rear sons to die at the will of a few men. We will not endure it. We demand either that you shall do something to prevent war or that we shall be permitted to try to do something ourselves." Could there be any cowardice, could there be any injustice, could there be any wrong, greater than for men to refuse to hear the voice of a woman expressing the will of women at the peace table of the world and then not provide a way by which the women of the future shall not be robbed of their sons as the women of the past have been?

To you men we look for support. We look for your support back of your Senators and from this day until the day when the League of Nations is accepted and ratified by the Senate of the United States, it should be the duty of every man and every woman to see that the Senators from their State know the will of the people; know that the people will that something shall be done, even though not perfect; that there shall be a beginning from which we shall construct something more perfect by and by; that the will of the people is that this League shall be accepted and that if, in the Senate of the United States, there are men so blinded by partisan desire for present advantage, so blinded by personal pique and narrowness of vision, that they cannot see the large problems which involve the nations of the world, then the people of the States must see to it that other men sit in the seats of the highest.

In the beautiful Memorial issued by the Board of Directors of the National American Woman Suffrage Association were affectionate tributes from those who were officially associated with her for many years. Among the many from eminent men and women which were reproduced in the Memorial were the following: