t the cradle, last at the cross and
first at the tomb. Women have stood shoulder to shoulder with men
always in their efforts.... Some tell us that we have not made
great progress. It is impossible to change the attitude of all
the conflicting elements of humanity in three-score years. If
Christianity in 1900 years, with the teaching of such a Leader,
has not yet made Peace Congresses unnecessary, what can be
expected of other reforms?

The secretary's report of Miss Gordon contributed this bit of history:

At this junction of the work a question arising upon the
advisability of securing a petition of a million signatures to
present to President Roosevelt in order to influence a
recommendation of suffrage for women in his annual message, a
request was made that he receive at Oyster Bay a committee from
our association. The President reasonably declined to have his
vacation interrupted with committees but offered to receive our
request in writing. Your secretary accordingly wrote him to the
effect that we wished to know--before going to the labor and
expense involved in securing such a petition--whether its
influence would have any weight in leading him to recommend woman
suffrage in his message. Courteously but emphatically came the
reply that it would not, but at the same time extending an
invitation for the National Association to appoint a committee to
see him on his return to Washington. The committee appointed was
composed of your national treasurer, Mrs. Upton, Mrs. Henry
Dickson Bruns of New Orleans, Mrs. Katharine Reed Balentine of
Maine and your corresponding secretary, and at the appointed time
it was received by the President, who again reiterated his
opinion on the absolute valuelessness of such a petition. In so
doing he ignored what for the women of this republic is their
only right--the right of petition. The interview was fruitful of
no suggestion beyond the time-honored recommendation to "get
another State." Women who worship as a fetish the power of this
right to petition may well catalogue this fallacy with those
other American fallacies that "taxation without representation is
tyranny"; that "governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed," and that the Government guarantees
"equal rights for all an