One feature of the campaign to force a special session was a demonstration in New York, on the eve of President Wilson’s return to Europe, at the time he addressed a mass meeting in the Metropolitan Opera House on behalf of his proposed League of Nations. The plan of demonstration was to hold outside of the Opera House banners addressed to President Wilson, and to consign his speech to the flames of a torch at a public meeting nearby. It was a clear starry night in March when the picket line of 26 women proceeded with tri-colored banners from New York headquarters in Forty-first street to the Opera House. As we neared the corner of the street opposite the Opera House and before we could cross the street a veritable battalion of policemen in close formation rushed us with unbelievable ferocity. Not a word was spoken by a single officer of the two hundred policemen in the attack to indicate the nature of our offense. Clubs were raised and lowered and the women beaten back with such cruelty as none of us had ever witnessed before. The women clung to their heavy banner poles, trying to keep the banners above the maelstrom. But the police seized them, tore the pennants, broke the poles, some of them over our backs, trampled them underfoot, pounded us, dragged us, and in every way behaved like frantic beasts. It would have been so simple quietly to detain our little handful until after the President’s speech, if that seemed necessary. But to launch this violent attack under the circumstances was madness. Not a pedestrian had paid any except friendly attention to the slender file of women. But the moment this happened an enormous crowd gathered, made up mostly of soldiers and sailors, many of whom had just returned from abroad and were temporarily thronging the streets of New York. They joined forces with the police in the attack. Miss Margaretta Schuyler, a beautiful, fragile young girl, was holding fast a silken American flag which she had carried at the head of the procession when a uniformed soldier jumped upon her, twisted her arms until she cried in pain, cursed, struggled until he had torn her flag from its pole, and then broke the pole across her head, exulting in his triumph over his frailer victim. When I appealed to the policeman, who was at the moment occupied solely with pounding me on the back, to intercept the soldier in his cruel attack, his only reply was: “Oh, he’s helping me.” He thereupon resumed his beating of me and I cried, “Shame, shame! Aren’t you ashamed to beat American women in this brutal way?” I offered no other resistance. “If we are breaking any law, arrest us! Don’t beat us in this cowardly fashion!” “We’ll rush you like bulls,” was his vulgar answer, “we’ve only just begun.”