ll, the storm center of the movement has been located in
England. In other lands there have been steps in evolution; in England
there has been a revolution. There have been no guns nor powder nor
bloodshed but there have been all other evidences of war.... Yet the
older and more conservative body of workers have been no less
remarkable. With a forbearance we may all do well to imitate, they
quadrupled their own activities. Every class, including ladies of the
nobility, working girls, housewives and professional women, has
engaged in the campaign and not a man, woman or child has been
permitted to plead ignorance concerning the meaning of woman
suffrage."

Mrs. Catt reviewed at length the "militant" movement in Great Britain,
showing how it had awakened interest in votes for women in all
quarters of the globe, and recalled the struggle of the barons in
wresting the Magna Charta from King John. She then passed to the
United States and to the persistent charge that its experiment in
universal male suffrage had been a failure, to which she replied:
"Although the United States has gathered a population which represents
every race; although among its people are the followers of every
religion and the subjects of every form of government; although there
has been the dead weight of a large ignorant vote, yet the little
settlement, which 150 years ago rested upon the eastern shores of the
Atlantic a mere colonial possession, has steadily climbed upward until
today it occupies a proud position of equality among the greatest
governments of the world.... The fact that woman suffrage must come
through a referendum to the votes of all men has postponed it but man
suffrage in the United States is as firmly fixed as the Rock of
Gibraltar...."

In an eloquent peroration Mrs. Catt said: "Within our Alliance we must
try to develop so lofty a spirit of internationalism, a spirit so
clarified from all personalities and ambitions and national
antagonisms that its purity and grandeur will furnish new inspiration
to all workers in our cause. We must strike a note in this meeting so
full of sisterly sympathy, of faith in womanhood, of exultant hope, a
note so impelling, that it will be heard by the women of all lands and
will call them forth to join our world's army."

The business sessions opened with all the officers present; over one
hundred delegates and alternates from the now sixteen auxiliary
countries; delegates sent by their govern