Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/830

 814 HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE Mrs. Louise Norlund, Mrs. Jutta Bojsen Moller and Miss Henni Forchhammer for the National Council of Women. Dr. jur. Anita Augspurg of Germany, the first vice-president, responded for the Alliance. She was followed by Mrs. Catt, who, in her president's address, after describing in full the forming of the Alliance, gave a comprehensive report of the progress toward organizing suffrage associations in the various countries during the past two years and the growth and future prospects of the international movement. She touched a responsive chord in every heart when she said : Since we last met our cause has sustained a signal loss in the death of our honorary president. Susan 1>. Anthony. She has been the inspirer of our movement in many lands and we may justly say that her labors belonged to all the world. She passed in the ripeness of years and with a life behind her which counted not a wasted moment nor a selfish thought. Yheii one thinks of her it must be with the belief that she, was born and lived to perform an especial mission. All who knew her well mourn her and long will they miss her wise counsel, her hearty cheerfulness and her splendid optimism. There has been no important national sull meeting in the United States for half a century and no interna- tional meeting of significance at any time in which she has not been a conspicuous n^urr. This is the first to meet without her. We must hope that her spirit will be with us and inspire our deliberations with the same lofty purpose and noble energy which governed all her labors. Mrs. Catt reviewed the movement for woman suffrage, declar- ing that the most ambitious should be satisfied with the general progress, and said in conclusion: We have been like an army climbing slowly and laboriously up a steep and rocky mountain. We have looked upward and have seen uncertain stretches of time and effort between us and the longed for summit. We have not been discouraged for behind us lay fifty years of marvelous achievement. We have known that we should reach that goal but we have also known that there was no way to do it but to plod on patiently, step by step. Yet sud- denly, almost without warning, we see upon that summit another army. How came it there? It has neither descended from heaven nor made the long, hard journey, yet there above us all the women of Finland stand today. Each wears the royal crown of the sovereignty of the self-governing citizen. Two years ago these women would not have been permitted by the law to organize a