Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1920-06-09
WORLD WILL GIVE WOMEN FREEDOM,
 MRS. GAIT SAYS
Spread to the Latin Countries to Come, She
 States

the opening here today of the con- gress of the International Women Suffrage association. Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt addressed the congress on the progress of the movement thru out the world. Mrs. Catt said in part:
 "For the suffragists of the world lew facts stand forth with great clarity. The first and greatest is that the political liberation of women was tossed up out of the war chaos like an isolated mountain when the world was in the making. War, the undoubted original cause of the hu- initiating, age-old subiection of wo- men the world around. war, the com bined enemy of their emancipation war has rendered to the women of many lands their political freedom! Strange, bewildering fact!
 "The Latin and Oriental countries still hold out, but that will not be for long. Rumania, the first Latin country to extend the vote to wo- men, has already led the way, the others will follow. l believe no coun- try in Europe except Turkey now is without a woman suffrage associa- ticn. Women will soon vote wherev- CT men do. Yet while all these old barriers are swept aside in many lands and men and women enfranch- ised, the task is not yet completed in the countries where women have la bored hardest and where the princi- pie of democracy has longest been unchallenged.
 "There must be millions of women in Europe who never hoped for po- litical liberty and who are now dazed by it's sudden coming. The women of Norway, Denmark and Iceland have long been enfranchised, but Germany has outstripped all other nations in the recognition of the principle of equality, with 137 wo- men serving on city councils and 37 as members of the national par lament. The president of the Ger man National Suffrage association comes to this congress as member of the city council of Dresden.
 "It is not for me to interpret the sentiments of the women of other lands but with authority I may say that there are millions of suffragists in the United States who have been fairly supplied with astonishment at these almost unaccountable events. As all the world knows the United States of America has been dedicated from the first to the principle of f-government. No other nation has made the same pronouncement.
 Feel Betrayed.
 1 "No other country has repudiated it's constitution, principles and his tory in it's denial of votes to it's wo- men and that is why the extension of suffrage to the women of all Europe has so humiliated the women o1 the United States. Women of the United States are not less glad that women of other lands have won the vote, but they feel that they have been betrayed by their own nation
 "It was in the United States that the first woman suffrage convention was held and the first organized woman suffrage movement in the world begun. That was 72 years ago Had men been reasonable or logical they would at once have responded to the appeal of 1848 with the con sistent answer. Since we are a gov ernment of the people, and womer are people, they must be included 1T all governmental functions Bu men are neither reasonable nor logi cal: men are exceedingly emotion al and sentimental. The race is to' mar it's cave days to be otherwise.
 "So liberal has the United State! I in the matter of man suffrage tha IS of the AS states once allowed mer to vote who were not citizens and sev 2 eral still do; and seem to see nothint inconsistent in permitting an illi terate non-tax-paying alien to vot' while denying that privilege to Amer ican- born, intelligent tax-paying wo 1 men.
 ;. "It has been familiar sight oi election days when a question of wo men suffrage has beth pending t. see refined ladies, college graduate and women of importance, standing 100 feet from the polling place mak ing their appeal to voters. while mel unable to speak Enelish, the language , of the ballot, unable to read in an' langnare, uncouth and untrained marched past them to cast vote against their enfranchisement.
 "Incredible, you saw. It is; as founding andy unbelievable l !. staggers and dumbfounds one. Shoul' ; you ask, why is it. I answer, ther are excuses hut no defense Th' great, bare, bald fact is there. Fo Il 70 years! in land wherein no mal ever made sacrifice for vote, wo men have given their all to gail it. and their country has not yet pro claimed their task completed.
 ''Is it not clear that the time ha passed for women to work for thu enfranchisement of women alone
 Why should not the internatona woman suffrage alliance give way t. an international alliance. sending forth it's propaganda for the enfran chisement of men as we'll as wo , men? And why should not men ant women of democratic vision unite il this common aim? Most countries have had mems leagues to aid wo men suffrage: why not united mem and women's leagues to aid the en franchisement of both men and wo men, or either?"
 Colorado Woman Talks.
 Helen Ring Robinson. formerl' state senator of Colorado, was on' of the sneakers today at the mas meeting held here by the congress O the international woman suffrage al liance and addressed exclusively b, women members or former member |. Ivaf