Back Jailed for Freedom
Chapters (39)
  1. Feature
  2. Preface
  3. Part I
  4. Chapter 1
  5. Chapter 2
  6. Part II
  7. Chapter 1
  8. Chapter 2
  9. Chapter 3
  10. Part III
  11. Chapter 1
  12. Chapter 2
  13. Chapter 3
  14. Chapter 4
  15. Chapter 5
  16. Chapter 6
  17. Chapter 7
  18. Chapter 8
  19. Chapter 9
  20. Chapter 10
  21. Chapter 11
  22. Chapter 12
  23. Chapter 13
  24. Chapter 14
  25. Chapter 15
  26. Chapter 16
  27. Chapter 17
  28. Chapter 18
  29. Chapter 19
  30. Chapter 20
  31. Chapter 21
  32. Chapter 22
  33. Chapter 23
  34. Chapter 24
  35. Chapter 25
  36. Chapter 26
  37. Chapter 27
  38. You are reading a Deluxe Edition:
  39. Copyright

While pondering on what was happening to our comrades and wondering if they, too, would be arrested, or if they would just be beaten up by the police and mob, a large, fat jail matron came up and began to deliver a speech, which, ran something like this:

"Now, shure and you ladies must know that this is goin' a bit too far. Now, I'm for suffrage alright, and I believe women ought to vote, but why do you keep botherin' the President? Don't you know he has got enough to think about with the League of Nations, the Peace Conference and fixin' up the whole world on his mind?"

In about half an hour we were taken from our cells and brought before the Lieutenant, who now announced, "Well, you ladies may go now,-I have just received a telephone order to release you."

We accepted the news and jubilantly left the station house, returning at once to our comrades. There the battle was still going on, and as we joined them we were again dragged and cuffed about the streets by the police and their aids, but there were no more arrests. Elsie Hill succeeded in speaking from a balcony above the heads of the crowd:

"Did you men turn back when you saw the Germans coming? What would you have thought of any one who did? Did you expect us to turn back? We never turn back, either and we won't until democracy is won! Who rolled bandages for you when you were suffering abroad? Who bound your wounds in your fight for democracy? Who spent long hours of the night and the day knitting you warm garments? There are women here to-night attempting to hold banners to remind the President that democracy is not won at home; who have given their sons and husbands for your fight abroad. What would they say if they could see you, their comrades in the fight over there, attacking their mothers, their sisters, their wives over here? Aren't you ashamed that you have not enough sporting blood to allow us to make our fight in our own way? Aren't you ashamed that you accepted the help of women in your fight, and now to-night brutally attack them?"

And they did listen until the police, in formation-looking now like wooden toys-advanced from both sides of the street and succeeded in entirely cutting off the crowd from Miss Hill.