Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/805

 WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN MANY COUNTRIES 789 and used $50,000 for its work. The struggle was continued but two years later not 1,000 members could be found. In December, 1908, the first Women's Congress in Russia was held in St. Petersburg, welcomed by the Mayor and addressed by members of Parliament and eminent women, and was favorably received. Many women's societies were formed but worked under great difficulties. Woman suffrage bills came before the Douma and it passed one giving the Municipal franchise, after striking out eligibility, but the Czar did not sign it. A bill for adult suffrage was taken up and Professor Miliukov made a brilliant plea for enfranchising women but it was not passed and the suffrage had not been granted to women at the beginning of the war in 1914. In the second revolution in 1917 women took practically the same part as men and in the Provisional Government which was the result there was no question as to their equal rights in suffrage and office holding. They were elected to the City Council of St. Petersburg and put on all public committees. Then came the counter revolution and chaos. From the beginning of the Inter- national Woman Suffrage Alliance in 1904 Russian delegates, women of great ability, had come to its congresses with their reports but at the first meeting after the war, in Geneva in 1920, there was no word. When Russia eventually secures a stable government it probably will make no distinction between the polit- ical rights of men and women. GERMANY. When the International Woman Suffrage Alliance met in Buda- pest in June, 1913, delegates were present from affiliated societies in twenty-one countries; national associations from several had applied for admission and committees had been formed in several others. Over a hundred fraternal delegates were sent from organizations in twelve countries having woman suffrage as one of their objects or as tin- only one. In every direction the prospect looked encouraging and then one year later the great War burst upon the world! The fn>t thought of the suffrage leaders was that the work of years had been swept away and after the War it would have to be commenced again. They did not dream that &