he mind and
heart, and, as visions of that sort come to the sight of those
who are spiritually minded America comes more and more into its
birthright and into the perfection of its development; so that
what we have to realize is that in dealing with forces of this
sort we are dealing with the substance of life itself.

I have felt as I sat here tonight the wholesome contagion of the
occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic
City I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct
myself when _I have not come to fight anybody but with somebody_.

I have come to suggest among other things that when the forces of
nature are working steadily and the tide is rising to meet the
moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood.
We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it, and _we shall
not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it_, because,
when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of
opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The
whole art and practice of government consist not in moving
individuals but in moving masses. It is all very well to run
ahead and beckon, but, after all, you have got to wait for them
to follow. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you
have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there has
been a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be
triumphant and for which you can afford a little while to wait.

When President Wilson had finished amid enthusiastic applause Mrs.
Catt asked Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, honorary president, to respond. She
was much moved by the occasion and taking the last sentence of the
address for a text she eloquently told how women had already worked
and waited for more than three score years. "We have waited long
enough for the vote, we want it now," she exclaimed, and then turning
to the President with her irresistible smile she finished, "and we
want it to come in your administration!" He smiled and bowed and the
whole audience rose in a sea of waving handkerchiefs as he took his
departure. The President of the United States had said: "Your cause is
going to prevail; I have come to fight with you; we shall not quarrel
as to the method!"

The other speeches of the evening were all of a high order. Mrs.
Robins, as always, made an unanswerable argument