And domestic battles were going on inside the homes throughout the country, for women were coming from every state in the Union, to take their place on the line. For the first time good “suffrage-husbands” were made uncomfortable. Had they not always believed in suffrage? Had they not always been uncomplaining when their wife’s time was given to suffrage campaigning? Had they not, in short, been good sports about the whole thing? There was only one answer. They had. But it had been proved that all the things that women had done and all the things in which their menfolk had cooperated, were not enough. Women were called upon for more intensive action. “You cannot go to Washington and risk your health standing in front of the White House. I cannot have it.” “But the time has come when we have to take risks of health or anything else.” “Well, then, if you must know, I don’t believe in it. Now I am a reasonable man and I have stood by you all the way up to now, but I object to this. It isn’t ladylike, and it will do the cause more harm than good. You women lay yourselves open to ridicule.” “That’s just it—that’s a fine beginning. As soon as men get tired laughing at us, they will do something more about it. They won’t find our campaign so amusing before long.” “But I protest. You’ve no right to go without considering me.” “But if your country called you in a fight for democracy, as it is likely to do at any moment, you’d go, wouldn’t you?” “Why, of course.” “Of course you would. You would go to the front and leave me to struggle on as best I could without you. That is the way you would respond to your country’s call, whether it was a righteous cause or not. Well, I am going to the front too. I am going to answer the women’s call to fight for democracy. I would be ashamed of myself if I were not willing to join my comrades. I am sorry that you object, but if you will just put yourself in my place you will see that I cannot do otherwise.” It must be recorded that there were exceptional men of sensitive imaginations who urged women against their own hesitancy. They are the handful who gave women a hope that they would not always have to struggle alone for their liberation. And women passed by the daily picket line as spectators, not as participants. Occasionally a woman came forward to remonstrate, but more often women were either too shy to advance or so enthusiastic that nothing could restrain them. The more kind-hearted of them, inspired by the dauntless pickets in the midst of a now freezing temperature, brought mittens, fur pieces, golashes, wool -lined raincoats: hot bricks to stand on, coffee in thermos bottles and what not.