An interesting incident occurred during the latter part of Miss Paul’s imprisonment. Having been cut off entirely from outside communication, she was greatly surprised one night at a late hour to find a newspaper man admitted for an interview with her. Mr. David Lawrence, then generally accepted as the Administration journalist, and one who wrote for the various newspapers throughout the country defending the policies of the Wilson Administration, was announced. It was equally well known that this correspondent’s habit was to ascertain the position of the leaders on important questions, keeping intimately in touch with opinion in White House circles at the same time. Mr. Lawrence came, as he said, of his own volition, and not as an emissary from the White House. But in view of his close relation to affairs, his interview is significant as possibly reflecting an Administration attitude at that ,point in the campaign. The conversation with Miss Paul revolved first about our fight for the right of political prisoners, Miss Paul outlining the wisdom and justice of this demand. “The Administration could very easily hire a comfortable house in Washington and detain you all there,” said Mr. Lawrence, “but don’t you see that your demand to be treated as’ political prisoners is infinitely more difficult to grant than to give you the federal suffrage amendment? If we give you these privileges we shall have to extend them to conscientious objectors and to all prisoners now confined for political opinions. This the Administration cannot do.” The political prisoners protest, then, had actually encouraged the Administration to choose the lesser of two evils some action on behalf of the amendment. “Suppose,” continued Mr. Lawrence, “the Administration should pass the amendment through one house of Congress next session and go to the country in the 1918 elections on that record and if sustained in it, pass it through the other house a year from now. Would you then agree to abandon picketing?” “Nothing short of the passage of the amendment through Congress will end our agitation,” Miss Paul quietly answered for the thousandth time. Since Mr. Lawrence disavows any connection with the 4dministration in this interview, I can only remark that events followed exactly in the order he outlined; that is, the Administration attempted to satisfy the women by putting the amendment through the House and not through the Senate. It was during Miss Paul’s imprisonment that the forty-one women went in protest to the picket line and were sent to the workhouse, as narrated in the previous chapter. The terrorism they endured at Occoquan ran simultaneously with the attempted intimidation of Miss Paul and her group in the jail. Chapter 13 Administration—Lawlessness Exposed