Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/883

 THE INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ALLIANCE 867 that it is in a position today to lay down its work without any society having been lost to the Alliance and with a considerable group of countries never before associated with it now seeking affiliation." The great difficulty of getting the paper into the various countries was described but it was accomplished ; the paper never missed an issue; it remained absolutely neutral and the number of subscribers largely increased. It was the one medium through which the women of the warring nations came in touch during the four and a half years of the conflict. All through the war it had news of some kind from the various countries showing that their women were still engaged in organized work for many useful purposes. It was evident that in practically all of them they were demanding that women should have a voice in the government. The headquarters cooperated with other international organiza- tions in forming the International Woman's Relief Committee and the work was conducted in its rooms. More than a thousand foreign girls were sent or taken to their countries and hundreds of British, French and Belgian women brought from Germany and Belgium to London. The work among Belgian refugees would require many pages to describe. Mrs. Fawcett and Mrs. Catt were preparing to send a deputa- tion from the Alliance to the Peace Conference to ask for a declaration for woman suffrage when the National Woman Suffrage Association of France, through its president, Mine. DeWitt Schlumberger, took the initiative and called for the national associations of the allied countries to send representa- tives to Paris to bring pressure on it. They were cordially re- ceived by the members of the Conference and a pronouncement in favor of the political equality of women and eligibility to the secretariat was placed in the constitution of the League of Nations, which attracted the attention of the world. When the plan of holding the Congress of ihe Alliano Berlin in 1915 had to be given up Holland sent an urgent invita- for that year but its accept.! ^hle. Swedish Auxiliary wanted it held at tin- tune and place of the Peace Conference but this was found to be inadvisable. The majority of the officers and auxiliaries in ti.e various coun