The President Sails Away
No sooner had we set ourselves to a brief, hot campaign to compel
President Wilson to win the final votes than he sailed away to France
to attend the Peace Conference, sailed away to consecrate himself to
the program of liberating the oppressed peoples of the whole world. He
cannot be condemned for aiming to achieve so gigantic a task. But we
reflected that again the President had refused his specific aid in an
humble aspiration, for the rosy hope of a more boldly conceived
ambition.
It was positively impossible for us, by our own efforts, to win the
last 2 votes. We could only win them through the President. That he had
left behind him his message urging the Senate to act, is true. That
Administration leaders did not consider these words a command, is also
true. It must be realized that even after the President had been
compelled to publicly declare his support of the measure, it was almost
impossible to get his own leaders to take seriously his words on
suffrage. And so again the Democratic Chairman of the Rules Committee,
in whose keeping the program lay, had no thought of bringing it to a
vote. The Democratic Chairman of the Woman Suffrage Committee assumed
not the slightest responsibility for its success, nor could he produce
any plan whereby the last votes could be won. They knew, as well as did
we, that the President only could win those last 2 votes. They made it
perfectly clear that until he had done so, they could do nothing.
Less than fifty legislative days remained to us. Something had to be
done quickly, something bold and offensive enough to threaten the
prestige of the President, as he was riding in sublimity to unknown
heights as a champion of world liberty; something which might penetrate
his reverie and shock him into concrete action. We had successfully
defied the full power of his Administration, the odds heavily against
us. We must now defy the popular belief of the world in this apostle of
liberty. This was the feeling of the four hundred officers of the
National Woman’s Party, summoned to a three days’ conference in
Washington in December, 1918. It was unanimously decided to light a
fire in an urn, and, on the day that the President was officially
received by France, to burn with fitting public ceremonies all the
President’s past and present speeches or books concerning “liberty”,
“freedom” and “democracy.”
It was late afternoon when the four hundred women proceeded solemnly in
single file from headquarters, past the White House, along the edge of
the quiet and beautiful Lafayette Park, to the foot of Lafayette’s
statue. A slight mist added beauty to the pageant. The purple, white
and gold banners, so brilliant in the sunshine, became soft pastel
sails. Half the procession carried lighted torches; the other half
banners. The crowd gathered silently, somewhat awe-struck by the scene.
Massed about that statue, we felt a strange strength and solidarity, we
felt again that we were a part of the universal struggle for liberty.
The torch was applied to the pine-wood logs in the Grecian Urn at the
edge of the broad base of the statue. As the flames began to mount,
Vida Milholland stepped forward and without accompaniment sang again
from that spot of beauty, in her own challenging way, the Woman’s
Marseillaise. Even the small boys in the crowd, always the most
difficult to please, cheered and clapped and cried for more.
Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., chairman of the National Advisory Council, said,
as president of the ceremony:
“We hold this meeting to protest against the denial of liberty to
American women. All over the world to-day we see surging and sweeping
irresistibly on, the great tide of democracy, and women would be
derelict in their duty if they did not see to it that it brings freedom
to the women of this land . . . .
“Our ceremony to-day is planned to call attention to the fact that
President Wilson has gone abroad to establish democracy in foreign
lands when he has failed to establish democracy at home. We burn his
words on liberty to-day, not in malice or anger, but in a spirit of
reverence for truth.
“This meeting is a message to President Wilson. We expect an answer. If
the answer is more words we will burn them again. The only answer the
National Woman’s Party will accept is the instant passage of the
amendment in the Senate.”
The few hoots and jeers which followed all ceased, when a tiny and aged
woman stepped from her place to the urn in the brilliant torch light.
The crowd recognized a veteran. It was the most dramatic moment in the
ceremony. Reverend Olympia Brown of Wisconsin, one of the first
ordained women ministers in the country, then in her eighty-fourth
year, gallant pioneer, friend and colleague of Susan B. Anthony, said,
as she threw into the flames the speech made by the President on his
arrival in France:
“ . . . I have fought for liberty for seventy years, and I protest
against the President’s leaving our country with this old fight here
unwon.”
The crowd burst into applause and continued to cheer as she was
assisted from the plinth of the statue, too frail to dismount by
herself. Then came the other representative women, from Massachusetts
to California, from Georgia to Michigan, each one consigning to the
flames a special declaration of the President’s on freedom. The flames
burned brighter and brighter and leapt higher as the night grew black.
The casual observer said, “They must be crazy. Don’t they know the
President isn’t at home? Why are they appealing to him in the park
opposite the White House when he is in France?”
The long line of bright torches shone menacingly as the women marched
slowly back to headquarters, and the crowd dispersed in silence. The
White House _was_ empty. But we knew our message would be heard in
France.