Part 34 (1/2)

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the workhouse to the District, where he kept himself discreetly hidden for several days. When a deputy was found, six attempts were made to serve the writ. All failed. Finally by a ruse, Mr.

Whittaker was caught at his home late at night. He was aroused to a state of violent temper and made futile threats of reprisal when he learned that he must produce the suffrage prisoners at the Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the day of November twenty- third.

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Chapter 12

Alice Paul in Prison

Great pa.s.sions when they run through a whole population, inevitably find a great spokesman. A people cannot remain dumb which is moved by profound impulses of conviction; and when spokesmen and leaders are found, effective concert of action seems to follow as naturally. Men spring together for common action under a common impulse which has taken hold upon their very natures, and governments presently find that they have those to reckon with who know not only what they want, but also the most effective means of making governments uncomfortable until they get it. Governments find themselves, in short, in the presence of Agitation, of systematic movements of opinion, which do not merely flare up in spasmodic flames and then die down again, but burn with an acc.u.mulating ardor which can be checked and extinguished only by removing the grievances, and abolis.h.i.+ng the unacceptable inst.i.tutions which are its fuel. Casual discontent can be allayed, but agitation fixed upon conviction cannot be. To fight it is merely to augment its force. It burns irrepressibly in every public a.s.sembly; quiet it there, and it gathers head at street corners; drive it thence, and it smolders in private dwellings, in social gatherings, in every covert of talk, only to break forth more violently than ever because denied vent and air. It must be reckoned with . . . .

Governments have been very resourceful in parrying agitation, in diverting it, in seeming to yield to it, and then cheating it of its objects, in tiring it out or evading it . . . . But the end, whether it comes soon or late, is quite certain to be always the same.

”Const.i.tutional Government in the United States.”

Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Princeton University.

The special session of the 65th Congress, known as the ”War Congress,” adjourned in October, 1917, having pa.s.sed every measure recommended as a war measure by the President.

In addition, it found time to protect by law migratory birds, to appropriate forty-seven million dollars for deepening rivers and harbors, and to establish more federal judges.h.i.+ps. No honest person would say that lack of time and pressure of

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war legislation had prevented its consideration of the suffrage measure. If one-hundredth part of the time consumed by its members in spreading the wings of the overworked eagle, and in uttering to bored ears ”home-made” patriotic verse, had been spent in considering the liberty of women, this important legislation could have been dealt with. Week after week Congress met only for three days, and then often merely for prayer and a few hours of purposeless talking.

We had asked for liberty, and had got a suffrage committee appointed in the House to consider the pros and cons of suffrage, and a favorable report in the Senate from the Committee on Woman Suffrage, nothing more.

On the very day and hour of the adjournment of the special session of the War Congress, Alice Paul led eleven women to the White House gates to protest against the Administration's allowing its lawmakers to go home without action on the suffrage amendment.

Two days later Alice Paul and her colleagues were put on trial.

Many times during previous trials I had heard the District Attorney for the government shake his finger at Miss Paul and say, ”We'll get you yet . . . . Just wait; and when we do, we'll give you a year!”

It was reported from very authentic sources that Attorney General Gregory had, earlier in the agitation, seriously considered arresting Miss Paul for the Administration, on the charge of conspiracy to break the law. We were told this plan was abandoned because, as one of the Attorney General's staff put it, ”No jury would convict her.”

However, here she was in their hands, in the courtroom.

Proceedings opened with the customary formality. The eleven prisoners sat silently at the bar, reading their morning papers, or a book, or enjoying a moment of luxurious idleness, oblivious of the comical movements of a perturbed court.

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Nothing in the world so baffles the pompous dignity of a court as non-resistant defendants. The judge cleared his throat and the attendants made meaningless gestures.

”Will the prisoners stand up and be sworn?”

They will not.

”Will they question witnesses?”