Suffragists -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Meanwhile Mr. Whittaker, had sped from the premises of the workhouse to
the District, where he kept himself discreetly hidden for several days.
When a deputy was found, six attempts were made to serve the writ. All
failed. Finally by a ruse, Mr. Whittaker was caught at his home late at
night. He was aroused to a state of violent temper and made futile
threats of reprisal when he learned that he must produce the suffrage
prisoners at the Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on the day of November
twenty- third.
Chapter 12
Alice Paul in Prison
Great passions when they run through a whole population, inevitably
find a great spokesman. A people cannot remain dumb which is moved by
profound impulses of conviction; and when spokesmen and leaders are
found, effective concert of action seems to follow as naturally. Men
spring together for common action under a common impulse which has
taken hold upon their very natures, and governments presently find that
they have those to reckon with who know not only what they want, but
also the most effective means of making governments uncomfortable until
they get it. Governments find themselves, in short, in the presence of
Agitation, of systematic movements of opinion, which do not merely
flare up in spasmodic flames and then die down again, but burn with an
accumulating ardor which can be checked and extinguished only by
removing the grievances, and abolishing the unacceptable institutions
which are its fuel. Casual discontent can be allayed, but agitation
fixed upon conviction cannot be. To fight it is merely to augment its
force. It burns irrepressibly in every public assembly; quiet it there,
and it gathers head at street corners; drive it thence, and it smolders
in private dwellings, in social gatherings, in every covert of talk,
only to break forth more violently than ever because denied vent and
air. It must be reckoned with . . . .
Governments have been very resourceful in parrying agitation, in
diverting it, in seeming to yield to it, and then cheating it of its
objects, in tiring it out or evading it . . . . But the end, whether it
comes soon or late, is quite certain to be always the same.
—“Constitutional Government in the United States.”
Woodrow Wilson, Ph.D., LL.D.,
President of Princeton University.
The special session of the 65th Congress, known as the “War Congress,”
adjourned in October, 1917, having passed every measure recommended as
a war measure by the President.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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