WOMAN TRIUMPHANT.
The wonderful spirit displayed by many millions of women during the World War gave foundation to the hope that universal suffrage would be an inevitable result of the war, and that the lawmakers of all the belligerent countries would no longer deny this crowning privilege to those mothers, wives, and sisters, who had worked so nobly, suffered so keenly, and endured so patiently through the long years of this cruel catastrophe. In a large number of countries this expectation has been verified. To name them in chronological order, we begin with neutral Denmark, which in 1915 granted to her women full parliamentary suffrage and eligibility. Nine women were elected to Parliament. Iceland extended to her women the same rights, and one woman was sent to Parliament.
The next country was England, for many years the storm center of the suffrage movement. While in all other lands had been steps in evolution, England was the scene of a revolution. Not one with guns, and powder and bloodshed, but nevertheless with all other evidences of war. As Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, President of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, graphically described, "there were brave generals and well trained armies, and many a well-fought battle; there have been tactics and strategies, sorties, sieges, and even prisoners of war, many of whom had to be released as they went on a hunger-strike. But in time, by the restless activity of the leaders, every class, including women of the nobility, working girls, housewives and professional women, became engaged in the campaign, and not a man, woman or child in England was permitted to plead ignorance concerning the meaning of woman suffrage. Together, men and women suffragists carried their appeal into the byways and most hidden corners of the kingdom. They employed more original methods, enlisted a larger number of women workers, and grasped the situation in a bolder fashion than had been done elsewhere. In other countries persuasion had been the chief, if not the only, weapon relied upon; in England it was persuasion plus political methods.
"First, the world expressed disgust at the alleged unfeminine conduct of English suffragists. Editorial writers in many lands scourged the suffrage workers of their respective countries over the shoulders of these lively English militants. But time passed; comment ceased; and the world, which had ridiculed, watched the contest in silence, but with never an eye closed. It assumed the attitude of the referee who realizes
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