As they attempted to take up their posts, two by two, in front of the Reviewing Stand, opposite the White House, they were gathered in and swept away by the police like common street criminals- their golden banners scarcely flung to the breeze.

MR. PRESIDENT, HOW LONG MUST WOMEN BE DENIED A VOICE IN A GOVERNMENT WHICH IS CONSCRIPTING THEIR SONS? was the offensive question on the first banner carried by Miss Eleanor Calnan of Massachusetts and Miss Edith Ainge of New York.

The Avenue was roped off on account of the parade. There was hardly any one passing at the time; all traffic had been temporarily suspended, so there was none to obstruct. But the Administration's policy must go on. A few moments and Miss Lucy Branham of Maryland and Mrs. Pauline Adams of Virginia marched down the Avenue, their gay banners waving joyously in the autumn sun, to fill up the gap of the two comrades who had been arrested. They, too, were shoved into the police automobile, their banners still high and appealing, silhouetted against the sky as they were hurried to the police station.

The third pair of pickets managed to cross the Avenue, but were arrested immediately they reached the curb. Still others advanced. The crowd began to line the ropes and to watch eagerly the line of women indomitably coming, two by two, into the face of certain arrest. A fourth detachment was arrested in the middle of the Avenue on the trolley tracks. But still they came.

A few days later more women were sent to the workhouse for carrying to the picket line this question:

"President Wilson, what did you mean when you said: `We have seen a good many singular things happen recently. We have been told there is a deep disgrace resting upon the origin of this nation. The nation originated in the sharpest sort of criticism of public policy. We originated, to put it in the vernacular, in a kick, and if it be unpatriotic to kick, why then the grown man is unlike the child. We have forgotten the very principle of our origin if we have forgotten how to object, how to resist, how to agitate, how to pull down and build up, even to the extent of revolutionary practices, if it be necessary to readjust matters. I have forgotten my history, if that be not true history."'

The Administration had not yet abandoned hope of removing the pickets. They persisted in their policy of arrests and longer imprisonments.

Chapter 6

Prison Episodes

During all this time the suffrage prisoners were enduring the miserable and petty tyranny of the government workhouse at Occoquan. They were kept absolutely incommunicado. They were not allowed to see even their nearest relatives, should any be within reach, until they had been in the institution two weeks.