"I do want to say this: I do not see how anybody can fail to observe from the utterances of the last campaign that the Democratic Party is more inclined than the opposition to assist in this great cause, and it has been a matter of surprise to me, and a matter of very great regret that so many of those who were heart and soul for this cause seemed so greatly to misunderstand arid misinterpret the attitude of parties. In this country, as in every other self-governing country, it is really through the instrumentality of parties that things can be accomplished. They are not accomplished by the individual voice but by concerted action, and that action must come only so fast as you can concert it. I have done my best and shall continue to do my best to concert it in the interest of a cause in which I personally believe."

Dead silence. The President stands for a brief instant at the end of his words as if waiting for some faint stir of approval which does not come. He has the baffled air of a dis- appointed actor who has failed to "get across." Then he turns abruptly on his heel and the great doors swallow him up. Silently the women file through the corridor and into the fresh air.

The women returned to the spacious headquarters across the park all of one mind. How little the President knew about women! How he underestimated their intelligence and penetration of things political,! Was it possible that he really thought these earnest champions of liberty would merely carry resolutions of sorrow and regret to the President?

But this was not the real irony. How lightly he had shifted the responsibility for getting results to his party. With what coldness he had bade us "concert opinion," a thing which he alone could do. That was pretty hard to bear, coming as it did when countless forms of appeal had been 'exhausted by which women without sufficient power could "concert" anything. The movement was almost at the point of languishing so universal was the belief in the nation that suffrage for women was inevitable. And yet he and his party remained immovable.

The three hundred women of the memorial deputation became on their return to headquarters a spirited protest meeting.

Plans of action in the event the President refused to help had been under consideration by Miss Paul and her executive committee for some time, but they were now presented for the first time for approval. There was never a more dramatic moment at which to ask the women if they were ready for drastic action.

Harriot Stanton Blatch, daughter of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a powerful leader of women, voiced the feeling of the entire body when she said, in a ringing call for action: