Mrs. Florence Bayard Hilles speaks in her own defense: “For generations the men of my family have given their services to their country. For myself, my training from childhood has been with a father who believed in democracy and who belonged to the Democratic Party. By inheritance and connection I am a Democrat, and to a Democratic President I went with my appeal . . . . What a spectacle it must be to the thinking people of this country to see us urged to go to war for democracy in a foreign land, and to see women thrown into prison who plead for that same cause at home. “I stand here to affirm my innocence of the charge against me. This court has not proven that I obstructed traffic. My presence at the White House gate was under the constitutional right of petitioning the government for freedom or for any other cause. During the months of January, February, March, April and May picketing was legal. In June it suddenly becomes illegal . . . . “My services as an American woman are being conscripted by order of the President of the United States to help win the world war for democracy . . . . ‘for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government.’ I shall continue to plead for the political liberty of American women-and especially do I plead to the President, since he is the one person who . . . can end the struggles of American women to take their proper places in a true democracy.” There is continuous objection from the prosecutor, eager advice from the judge, “you had better keep to the charge of obstructing traffic” But round on round of applause comes from the intent audience, whenever a defiant note is struck by the prisoners, and in spite of the sharp rapping of the gavel confusion reigns. And how utterly puny the “charge” is! If it were true that the prisoners actually obstructed the traffic, how grotesque that would be. The importance of their demand, the purity of their reasoning, the nobility and gentle quality of the prisoners at the bar; all conspire to make the charge against them, and the attorney who makes it, and the judge who hears it, petty and ridiculous. But justice must proceed. Mrs. Gilson Gardner of Washington, D. C., a member of the Executive Committee of the National Woman’s party, and the wife of Gilson Gardner, a well-known Liberal and journalist, speaks: “It is impossible for me to believe that we were arrested because we were obstructing traffic or blocking the public high- way.