Sez Arvilly: "You men represent the force and power of the govermunt that falsely sez it is the voice of the people; we two represent the people. As you are the force and power and will of the law, we are the endurance, the suffering. You decide on a war. When did a woman ever have any voice in saying that there should be a war? They bear the sons in agony that you call out to be butchered; their hearts are torn out of their bosoms when they let their husbands, sons and lovers go into the hell of warfare, and you tax all her property to raise money to help furnish the deadly weapons that kill and cut to pieces the warm, living, loving forms that they would give their lives for. "But you men decide on a war, as you have on this. You say it wuz from motives of philanthropy and justice; you drag us, the people, out of peaceful, happy homes to leave all we love, to face mutilation, agony and death; you say your cause wuz just, I say it is a war of revenge--a war of conquest." Why it fairly made goose pimples run over me when I hearn on't. Sassin' the govermunt, she wuz--nothin' more nor less. But she went on worse than ever. "You say that it wuz to give freedom to the people of Cuba. Look at the millions of your own wimmen enslaved in legal fetters! You say it wuz to protect the wimmen and children of Cuba from the cruelty and brutality of unscrupulous rulers. Look at the wimmen and children of your own country cowering and hiding from crazed drunken husbands, sons and fathers. More misery, murder, suicides, abuse and suffering of every kind is caused by the saloon every day of the year in the United States than ever took place in Cuba in twice the same time, and you not only stand by and see it, but you take pay from the butchers for slaughtering the innocents! You miserable hypocrites, you!" Sez Arvilly, "I would talk about pity and mercy, you that know no pity and no mercy for your own wimmen and children. "You pose before foreign nations as a reformer, a righter of wrongs, when you have cherished and are cherishing now the most gigantic crime and wrong that ever cursed a people; turning a deaf ear to the burdened and dying about you; wives, mothers, daughters--for whose safety and well-being you are responsible--have told you that the saloon killed all the manhood and nobility of their husbands, sons, and fathers; made the pure, good men, who loved and protected them, into cold-hearted brutes and demons who would turn and rend them--still you would not hear. You have seen the dretful procession of one hundred thousand funerals pass before you every year, slain by this foe that you pamper and protect.