“Failure in such a task would have no fears for them; failure in a noble effort is often a measure to success! The greatest have seemed to fail. Judged by human standards, Christ’s life on earth was a failure. =The effort in any case would leave its mark upon the thought and history of the world. Womanhood will have arisen in vindication of a higher humanity—to avenge desolated motherhood and protect martyred children; it will have asserted its right to shield the weak and young from the fatal results of the organized murder called war.=” [Illustration: MISS JANE ADDAMS. ] The appeal was not made in vain. The day after its receipt a number of prominent American women called a convention in Washington, D. C., on January 10th, 1915. =Miss Jane Addams= of Chicago acted as chairman. The result of this meeting was the organization of the “=Woman’s Peace Party=,” which adopted the following Preamble and Platform. “We women of the United States, assembled in behalf of World Peace, grateful for the security of our own country, but sorrowing for the misery of all involved in the present struggle among warring nations, do hereby band ourselves together to demand that war be abolished. “Equally with men pacifists, we understand that planned-for, legalized, wholesale, human slaughter is to-day the sum of all villainies. “=As women, we feel a peculiar moral passion of revolt against both the cruelty and the waste of war. As women, we are especially the custodians of the life of the ages.= We will not longer consent to its reckless destruction. “=As women, we are particularly charged with the future of childhood and with the care of the helpless and the unfortunate.= We will not longer endure without protest that added burden of maimed and invalid men and poverty-stricken widows and orphans which war places upon us. “=As women, we have builded by the patient drudgery of the past the basic foundation of the home and of peaceful industry.= We will not longer accept without a protest, that must be heard and heeded by men, that hoary evil which in an hour destroys the social structure that centuries of toil have reared. “=As women, we are called upon to start each generation onward toward a better humanity.= We will not longer tolerate without determined opposition that denial of the sovereignty of reason and justice by which war and all that makes war to-day render impotent the idealism of the race. “Therefore, as human beings and the mother half of humanity, we demand that our right to be consulted in the settlement of questions concerning not alone the life of individuals but of nations be recognized and respected. “We demand that women be given a share in deciding between war and peace in all the courts of high debate—within the home, the school, the church, the industrial order, and the state.