ing will be encouraged away
from home that is forbidden here." Yet, away from home, he says,
the fixed foreign policy is that "the people shall have such
officers as they desire," and that these officers must have "the
consent of the governed." That is precisely what we women demand.
Are the Mexican peons more to our Government than are the women
of America? If the Mexican officials must be disciplined, unless
they are ready to admit that "the consent of the governed must be
obtained" before there can be a legitimate government which we
can recognize, how it is possible for you and for the President
and for the State Department absolutely to ignore or refuse the
same ethical and political principle here at home for one-half of
all the people, who form what you call and hold up to the world
as a republic?

No one who lives, who ever lived, who ever will live understands
or really accepts and believes in a republic which denies to
women the right of consent by their ballots to that government.
Such a position is unthinkable and the time has come when an
aristocracy of sex must give place to a real republic or the
absurdity of the position, as it exists, will make us the
laughing stock of the world. Let us either stop our pretence
before the nations of the earth of being a republic and having
"equality before the law" or else let us become the republic that
we pretend to be.

This concluded the hearing for the suffrage associations and as the
"antis" also had asked for one they occupied the afternoon. Mrs.
Arthur M. Dodge, the president of the National Association Opposed to
Woman Suffrage, said in opening the discussion: "We begin to hear from
all over the country a very decided demand for help. The women are
beginning to be frightened. They are frightened at exactly the same
sort of thing by which the suffragists try to frighten you
men--noise--so that in many States women are beginning to organize for
the first time against suffrage. We are here today rather against our
wishes. We did not want to bother you men again because the matter has
been pretty well settled for this session of Congress at least. But
the suffragists had demanded a hearing of you gentlemen, and so we
asked you to hear us, and you have very courteously extended to us
that privilege. We are here to represent the majority of women still