"Silly women" . . : "unsexed" . . ." pathological" . . . "They must be crazy" . . . "Don't they know anything about politics?" . . . "What can Wilson do? He does not have to sign the constitutional amendment." . . . So ran the comment from the wise elderly gentlemen sitting buried in their cushioned chairs at the gentlemen's club across the Park, watching eagerly the "shocking," "shameless" women at the gates of the White House. No wonder these gentlemen found the pickets irritating! This absorbing topic of conversation, we are told, shattered many an otherwise quiet afternoon and broke up many a quiet game. Here were American women before their very eyes daring to shock them into having to think about liberty. And what was worse-liberty for women. Ah well, this could not go on,-this insult to the President. They could with impunity condemn him and gossip about his affairs. But that women should stand at his gates asking for liberty that was a sin without mitigation.

Disapproval was not confined merely to the gentlemen in their Club. I merely mention them as an example, for they were our neighbors, and the strain on them day by day, as our beautiful banners floated gaily out from our headquarters was, I am told, a heavy one.

Yet, of course, we enjoyed irritating them. Standing on the icy pavement on a damp, wintry day in the penetrating cold of a Washington winter, knowing that within a stone's throw of our agony there was a greater agony than ours there was a joy in that!

There were faint rumblings also in Congress, but like so many of its feelings they were confined largely to the cloak rooms. Representative Emerson of Ohio did demand from the floor of the House that the "suffrage guard be withdrawn, as it is an insult to the President," but his protest met with no response whatever from the other members. His oratory fell on indifferent ears. And of course there were always those in Congress who got a vicarious thrill watching women do in their fight what they themselves had not the courage to do in their own. Another representative, an anti-suffrage Democrat, inconsiderately called us "Iron-jawed angels," and hoped we would retire. But if by these protests these congressmen hoped to arouse their colleagues, they failed.

We were standing at the gates of the White House because the American Congress had become so supine that it could not or would not act without being compelled to act by the Presi- dent. They knew that if they howled at us it would only afford an opportunity to retort "Very well then, if you do not like us at the gates of your leader; if you do not want us to `insult' the President, end this agitation by taking the matter into your own hands and passing the amendment." Such a sug- gestion would be almost as severe a shock as our picketing. The thought of actually initiating legislation left a loyal Demo- cratic follower transfixed.