"But I protest. You've no right to go without considering me."

"But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it is likely to do at any moment, you'd go, wouldn't you?"

"Why, of course."

"Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to struggle on as best I could without you. That is the way you would respond to your country's call, whether it was a righteous cause or not. Well, I am going to the front too. I am going to answer the women's call to fight for democracy. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not willing to join my comrades. I am sorry that you object, but if you will just put yourself in my place you will see that I cannot do otherwise."

It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive imaginations who urged women against their own hesitancy. They are the handful who gave women a hope that they would not always have to struggle alone for their liberation. And women passed by the daily picket line as spectators, not as participants. Occasionally a woman came forward to remonstrate, but more often women were either too shy to advance or so enthusiastic that nothing could restrain them. The more kind-hearted of them, inspired by the dauntless pickets in the midst of a now freezing temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces, golashes, wool -lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in thermos bottles and what not.

Meanwhile the pickets became a household word in Washington, and very soon were the subject of animated conversation in practically every corner of the nation. The Press cartoonists, by their friendly and satirical comments, helped a great deal in popularizing the campaign. In spite of the bitter editorial comment of most of the press, the humor of the situation had an almost universal appeal.

At the Washington dinner of the Gridiron Club, probably the best known press club in the world, - a dinner at which President Wilson was a guest,-one of the songs sung for his benefit was as follows:

"We're camping to-night on the White House grounds

Give us a rousing cheer;

Our golden flag we hold aloft, of cops we have no fear.

Many of the pickets are weary to-night,

Wishing for the war to cease; many are the chilblains and frost- bites too; It is no life of ease.

Camping to-night, camping to-night,

Camping on the White House grounds."

The White House police on duty at the gates came to treat the picketers as comrades.

"I was kinds worried," confessed one burly officer when the pickets were five minutes late one day. "We thought perhaps you weren't coming and we world have to hold down this place alone."

The bitter-enders among the opponents of suffrage broke into such violent criticism that they won new friends to the amendment.