ions of international relationships, of
preparedness, of the national defense, of finance, are vexing the
wisest minds. Is it a time to further the propaganda of this new crop
of hyphenated Americans--Suffrage-Americans--who place their
propaganda above every need of the country?"

* * * * *

With the women of eleven States now eligible to vote for all
candidates at the general election of 1916 and the large number in
Illinois possessing the Presidential franchise woman suffrage had
become a leading issue. Most of the House Judiciary Committee of
twenty-one members, including the chairman, Edwin Y. Webb of North
Carolina, an immovable opponent, were present at the hearing on
December 16 and they faced sixteen speakers for the Federal Amendment
and twelve opposed. Three hours were granted to the former, divided
between the National American Association and the Congressional Union,
and two hours to the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage.
Dr. Shaw opened the hearing by referring to the thirty-seven years
that had seen the leaders of her association pleading with Congress
for favorable action on this amendment and introduced Mrs. Carrie
Chapman Catt, president of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance,
comprising twenty-six nations.

Mrs. Catt said in part:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee, I fear that the
hearings before this Judiciary Committee have become in the eyes
and understanding of many of the members a rather perfunctory
affair which you have to endure. May I remind you that since the
last hearing something new has happened in the United States and
that is that more than a million men have voted for woman
suffrage in four of the most conservative States of the East? I
consider that that big vote presents to this committee a mandate
for action which was never presented before. There are those,
doubtless, who will say that this is a question of State rights.
I have been studying Congressmen for a good many years and I have
discovered that when a man believes in woman suffrage it is a
national question and when he does not believe in it he says it
is a question for the States....

Mrs. Catt told of the prominent educator who was sent from Belgium to
investigate the working of woman suffrage in the United States and
after he had made a visit to the States where it existed he summed up