this meeting was the organization of the "Woman's Peace Party," which adopted the following
Preamble and Platform.
"We women of the United States, assembled in behalf of World Peace, grateful for the security of our own country, but sorrowing for the misery of all involved in the present struggle among warring nations, do hereby band ourselves together to demand that war be abolished.
"Equally with men pacifists, we understand that planned for, legalized, wholesale, human slaughter is to-day the sum of all villainies.
"As women, we feel a peculiar moral passion of revolt against both the cruelty and the waste of war. As women, we are especially the custodians of the life of the ages. We will not longer consent to its reckless destruction.
"As women, we are particularly charged with the future of childhood and with the care of the helpless and the unfortunate. We will not longer endure without protest that added burden of maimed and invalid men and poverty-stricken widows and orphans which war places upon us.
"As women, we have builded by the patient drudgery of the past the basic foundation of the home and of peaceful industry. We will not longer accept without a protest, that must be heard and heeded by men, that hoary evil which in an hour destroys the social structure that centuries of toil have reared.
"As women, we are called upon to start each generation onward toward a better humanity. We will not longer tolerate without determined opposition that denial of the sovereignty of reason and justice by which war and all that makes war to-day render impotent the idealism of the race.
"Therefore, as human beings and the mother half of humanity, we demand that our right to be consulted in the settlement of questions concerning not alone the life of individuals but of nations be recognzied and respected.
"We demand that women be given a share in deciding between war and peace in all the courts of high debate—within the home, the school, the church, the industrial order, and the state.
"So protesting, and so demanding, we hereby form ourselves into a national organization to be called the Woman's Peace Party.
"We hereby adopt the following as our platform of principles, some of the items of which have been accepted by a majority vote, and more of which have been the unanimous choice of those attending the conference that initiated
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