decried all "pacifists" as despicable creatures to whom no attention should be paid. To speak of peace was made a crime, equal to illoyalty and sedition, and so the resolutions of the Woman's Peace Conference were drowned under waves of detraction and calumny.
One of the most glaring examples of this sort of warfare was that of Miss Jeanette Rankin, who in 1917 had been sent by the State of Montana as the first woman member to the House of Representatives. Her first act in this body was very dramatic. When on the memorable April 6th, 1917, the House voted on the question, if the United States should enter the World War, she answered the call with the words: "I love my country and I want to stand by it. But I cannot vote for war! No!" After these words she sank, tears in her eyes, into her chair. Although Miss Rankin had without doubt expressed the feeling of the overwhelming majority of American women, she nevertheless excited the wrath of the notorious "National Security League," who in 1918 defeated the re-election of Miss Rankin by sending broadcast to Montana tons of literature in which her vote against the declaration of war was stigmatized as an "infamous and damning act."
Undaunted by such persecutions the gallant women once more raised their voices when it became evident that the so-called Peace Congress of the allied delegates at Versailles, instead of giving quick relief to the starving millions, and instead of promoting good will and better understanding among the different nations, was degenerating into an orgy of autocracy, merciless extortion and land-grabbing, repudiating all the high-sounding phrases of humanity, democracy, self-government, political and economic liberty, with which the war had been carried on.
On May 12th, 1919, delegates of the "International Women's Party for Permanent Peace" assembled at Zurich, Switzerland, to discuss the work of the Peace Congress in Versailles and the movement for a League of Nations. Sixteen countries were represented, the neutral with thirty-five, the countries of the Entente with forty-nine, and the Central Powers with thirty-six delegates. Among the twenty-three delegates of the United States were Jane Addams, and Jeanette Rankin, ex-member of Congress for Montana. Again Miss Addams acted as president.
The noble spirit, that had brought these women together, found expression first in the following address of the French delegates to the German women:
To-day for the first time our hands which have sought each other in the night can be joined. We are a single humanity, we women. Our work, our joys, our children, are the same. French and Germans! The soldiers which have
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