The incongruity of suffragists attempting to pose as a peace party is obvious to anyone with a memory and a sense of humor. Before the war broke out, American suffrage leaders were applauding, feasting, and subsidizing the British virago who instigated the setting on fire of 146 public buildings, churches, and houses, the explosion of 43 bombs, the destruction of property valued at nearly two million dollars (not including priceless works of arts), and many cases of personal assault. In 1912 they justified the destruction of the Rokeby Venus; in 1914 they professed horror at the bombardment of the Cathedral of Rheims. Is this insincerity or hypocrisy, or mere aberration of mind? The best time to work for peace is before war breaks out. The suffrage organization was not conspicuous in seizing the many opportunities for furthering the cause of peace before it was too late. In 1911 Mrs. Frederick Nathan, a prominent suffragist, was asked to contribute to the American Society for the Judicial Settlement of Disputes. She sent the following characteristic refusal: "Mrs. Frederick Nathan prefers to give her money to the Woman Suffrage Association.... She has no faith in Courts of Law and Equity which deny justice to women." Was this boycotting of the peace movement condemned by the suffragists? Not at all; Miss Alice Stone Blackwell, President of the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, was glad to print the refusal in the official organ of the National Woman Suffrage Association. Miss Blackwell, in holding up this example to its members, scornfully declared that several of the peace society were "prominent opponents of equal rights for women." In those days, the suffragists were not hitching their wagon to the quiet star of peace; it has been their constant practice to attach themselves, for publicity's sake, to whatever movement is conspicuous on the front pages of the newspapers--eugenics, or sex drama, or red-light abatement, or what not--and to abandon that ephemeral interest whenever it has ceased to serve the purpose of advertisement. And so, when the war broke out, the boycotters of peace societies, and colleagues of militants, made a rapid shift of costumes, and tried to play roles in the Woman's Peace Party. So hurried was their change of mental attitude that their thoughts on the subject were splendid instances of snap judgment.