the right to vote under
the National Constitution. Mrs. Evans closed the hearing.

FOOTNOTES:

[82] Part of Call: Our task will be to formulate judgment on those
great issues of the day which nearly concern women; to choose the
leaders who during the coming year are to guide the fortunes of our
cause; and finally, to deliberate how the whole national body may on
the one hand best give aid and succor to the States working for their
own enfranchisement and on the other press for federal action in
behalf of the women of the nation at large....

Since the last convention met all the horror of a great war has fallen
upon the civilized world. The hearts of thousands of women have been
torn by the death and wounds of those they bore, of those they love,
yet never has their will and power to help been greater, never man's
need of such help been more clearly seen. We, who are spared the
anguish of war, well understand that as weight is given in the world's
affairs to the voice of women, moved as men are not by all the tragic
waste of battles, the chances of such slaughter must perpetually
diminish. Now is the time when all things point to the violence that
rules the world, now is the very time to press our claim to a share in
the guidance of our country's fortunes, to urge that woman's vision
must second and ratify that of man. Let us then in convention
assembled kindle with the thought that, as we consider methods for the
political enfranchisement of our sex, our wider purpose is to free
women and to enable their conception of life in all its aspects to
find expression.... Let us set a fresh seal upon the great new loyalty
of woman to woman; let our response be felt in the deep tide of
fellowship and understanding among all women which today is rising
around the world.

ANNA HOWARD SHAW, President.
JANE ADDAMS, First Vice-President.
MADELINE BRECKINRIDGE, Second Vice-President.
CAROLINE RUUTZ-REES, Third Vice-President.
SUSAN WALKER FITZGERALD, Recording Secretary.
KATHARINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, Treasurer.
HARRIET BURTON LAIDLAW,}
LOUISE DEKOVEN BOWEN, } Auditors.

[83] Complete, universal suffrage was conferred by the Parliament in
1917.

[84] For a number of years Mrs. Quincy A. Shaw of Boston gave Dr. Shaw
a fund for c