he action of the 'militant' suffragettes brought the
question into such prominence that the opponents began to state their
objections, the college women were aroused and became more and more
active, but as a whole they were in favor of peaceful rather than
militant tactics." She told also of the growth of favorable sentiment
in the men's colleges.

This was the first appearance at a national suffrage convention of
Mrs. Frances Squire Potter, professor of English in the University of
Minnesota, and her address on Women and the Vote was one of the ablest
ever given before this body which was accustomed to superior
addresses. Limited space forbids extended quotation:

Louis XIV said an infamous thing when he declared: "I am the
State," but he announced his position frankly. He was an autocrat
and he said so. It was a more honest and therefore less harmful
position than that of a majority of voters in our country today.
Can it help but confuse and deteriorate one sex, trained to
believe and call itself living in a democracy, to say silently
year by year at the polls, "I am the State"? Can it help but
confuse and deteriorate the other sex, similarly trained to
acquiescence year after year in a national misrepresentation and
a personal no-representation? This fundamental insincerity of our
so-called democracy is as insidious an influence upon the minds
and morals of our franchised men, our unfranchised women and our
young Americans of both sexes, as hypocrisy is to a church member
or spurious currency to a bank. It is to be remembered that the
evils which are pointed out in our commonwealth today are not the
evils of a democracy but of an amorphous something which is
afraid to be a democracy. Whether the opposition to women's
voting be honestly professed or whether it is concealed under
chivalrous idolatry, distrust and skepticism are behind it....
When pushed to the wall, objectors to woman suffrage now-a-days
take refuge behind one of two platitudes: The first is used too
often by women whose public activities ought logically to make
them suffragists--the assertion that equal suffrage is bound to
come in time but that at present there are more pressing needs.
"Let us get the poor better housed and fed," these women say.
"Let us get our schools improved and our cities cleaned up and
then we