Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/799

 Federal Amendment. She will be sorely missed and deeply mourned, first and foremost in America and Great Britain, but really all over the world, in every country where woman's cause is a living issue.

Honorary President, National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship of Great Britain.

My deepest sorrow and sympathy go out to the family of Dr. Shaw, to the National Council of Women of the United States and to the International Council and the Woman Suffrage Alliance. Her passing is indeed a great loss to the women of the whole world.

President International Council of Women.

Truly all womanhood has lost a faithful friend.

President Northeastern Federation of Women's Clubs (colored).

Loving and appreciative tributes were sent from the officers of National and International Associations in all parts of the world.

Gentlemen of the Senate: The unusual circumstances of a World War in which we stand and are judged in the view not only of our own people and our own consciences but also in the view of all nations and peoples, will, I hope, justify in your thought, as it does in mine, the message I have come to bring you.

I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged. I have come to urge upon you the considerations which have led me to that conclusion. It is not only my privilege, it is also my duty to apprise you of every circumstance and element involved in this momentous struggle which seems to me to affect its very processes and its outcome. It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.

I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment, because no disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is to be now extended to women. There is and can be no party issue involved in it. Both of our great national parties are pledged, explicitly pledged, to equality of suffrage for the women of the country.

Neither party. therefore, it seems to me, can justify hesitation as to the method of obtaining it, can rightfully hesitate to substitute Federal initiative for State initiative if the early adoption of this measure is necessary to the successful prosecution of the war, and if the method of State action pro-