The most memorable event of this year was a gigantic tidal wave of tremendous height, which swept over the lower coast of Florida. In a few minutes it inundated and destroyed a vast area of the coast, doing incalculable damage to shipping. It was estimated that nearly fifteen thousand persons lost their lives in this cataclysm. 1917 War Between United States and Columbia The stubborn attitude of the Central American Republic, Columbia, towards the United States, by her menacing antagonism to the construction of the interoceanic canal, gradually created a breach of the peace that led ultimately to a forcible demonstration by the United States, and precipitated the invasion by the latter of the Republic of Panama. Peace was re-established after a crushing defeat of the Columbians. The famous waterway, the Republic of Panama, then became United States territory, by annexation. 1918 The Women's Clubs The Women's Clubs which, during their first inception, were the subject of much ridicule, and the proceedings of their meetings a theme for ribald jokes in the secular press, gradually developed into such gigantic proportions that their influence became a powerful factor in every public question of the day, and in fact so continues unabated unto this day. The last Federal statistics show more than two thousand Institutions in the form of sanitariums, refuges, technical schools of practical utility, entirely under the auspices of Club Women. The constitutions of these laudable organizations "invariably stand for something which is ennobling" and their achievements are monumental tributes to the upward trend of womanhood. There was, however, a crucial period in their affairs worth mentioning. Some of these noble but over-zealous women of that period, in their exuberant enthusiasm for woman's rights, forgetting the limitations of their sex,--considered by the greatest thinkers of the past ages to be the sphere of Home,--agitated a propaganda of political equality or suffrage and, from time to time, created a stir among their organizations until at last, in 1918, the National Federation of Women's Clubs decided to hold a conclave in order to decide the following momentous question: "Should Women Enter Politics?" More than four thousand five hundred delegates from all over the Union assembled at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. Sympathizers of the suffragists with their eloquence tried to railroad through a measure in their behalf, but equally able leaders of the opposition--benefitted by the warning of Sages--succeeded in counterbalancing the efforts of their fair antagonists.