With Miss Burns and Mrs. Lewis, who were regarded as leaders in the hunger strike protest, removed to the district jail, Mr. Whittaker and his staff at Occoquan began a systematic attempt to break down the morale of the hunger strikers. Each one was called to the mat and interrogated. “Will you work?”—“Will you put on prison clothes?”—“Will you eat?”—“Will you stop picketing?”—“Will you go without paying your fine and promise never to picket again?” How baffled he must have been! The answer was definite and final. Their resistance was superb. “One of the few warning incidents during the gray days of our imprisonment was the unexpected sympathy and understanding of one of the government doctors,” wrote Miss Betty Gram of Portland, Oregon. “’This is the most magnificent sacrifice I have ever seen made for a principle [he said I never believed that American women would care so much about freedom. I have seen women in Russia undergo extreme suffering for their ideals, but unless I had seen this with my own eyes I never would have believed it. My sister hunger struck in Russia, where she was imprisoned for refusing to reveal the whereabouts of two of her friends indicted for a government offense. She was fed after three days. You girls are on your ninth day of hunger strike and your condition is critical. It is a great pity that such women should be subjected to this treatment. I hope that you will carry your point and force the hand of the government soon’.” The mother of Matilda Young, the youngest picket, anxiously appealed to Mr. Tumulty, Secretary to President Wilson, and a family friend, to be allowed to see the President and ask for a special order to visit her daughter. Failing to secure this, she went daily to Mr. Tumulty’s office asking if he himself would not intercede for her. Mr. Tumulty assured her that her daughter was in safe hands, that she need give herself no alarm, the stories of the inhuman treatment at Occoquan were false, and that she must not believe them. Finally Mrs. Young pleaded to be allowed to send additional warm clothing to her daughter, whom she knew to be too lightly clad for the vigorous temperature of November. Mr. Tumulty assured her that the women were properly clothed, and refused to permit the clothing to be sent. The subsequent stories of the women showed what agonies they had endured, because they were inadequately clad, from the dampness of the cells into which they were thrown.