e reports from many
countries.[229] _The Woman's Leader_, organ of the National Union of
Societies for Equal Citizenship of Great Britain, in its account of
the Congress said:

The effect of these reports was intensely dramatic, mingled, as
it inevitably was, with the memories of the strange and bitter
conditions under which the change had come. In some of the
countries that had been at war enfranchisement came in the midst
of revolution, riot and disaster; in others it came fresh and new
with the beginning of their independent national life and almost
as a matter of course. "Our men and women struggled together for
our national freedom," said delegate after delegate from the new
States of Europe, "and so when any of us were enfranchised we
both were." The report on the election of women to national or
municipal bodies was deeply interesting and in many respects
surprising. Germany easily surpassed other countries in this
respect, having had 39 women members in the last National
Assembly, 155 in the Parliaments of the Federated States and
4,000 on local and municipal bodies. In Denmark the record of
success that followed the election of women was astonishing. "We
have done," said the spokeswoman, "what we set out to do; we have
introduced equal pay and equal marriage laws; our equality is a
fact."

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the Alliance, welcomed
each new representative in the name of all the countries, and,
although the victories had been won in times of stress and war,
the rejoicing was without rivalry, for in the Congress from the
first day until the last no sign or mark of ill-feeling or enmity
was to be found. Not that the delegates forgot or disregarded the
recent existence of the war; no one who saw them would suppose
for a moment that they were meeting in any blind or sentimental
paradise of fools. Their differences and their nations'
differences were plain in their minds and they neither forgot nor
wished to forget the ruined areas, the starving children and the
suffering peoples of the world. They met differing perhaps
profoundly in their national sentiment, their memories and their
judgments but determined to agree where agreement was to be
found; to understand where understanding could be arrived at and
to cooperate with