frage to be decided, province by province, by the elected Legisla- tures of India herself. The newly created constituencies there- fore have the power, when they choose to use it, of recognizing the full citizenship of women.
UNITED STATES
American women had been the earliest to make a definite organized struggle for political freedom, having started in 1848, but they were among the last to win. This was in part due to the U.S. Constitution, which can only be amended by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress, and even then the amend- ment does not become operative until it has been ratified by three-fourths of the 48 states. American suffragists used to say to friends in Europe, " You have to convert one Parliament: we have to convert at least 37 Parliaments." The suffragists worked state by state until there were some 20 suffrage states. The greatest victory thus gained was that in the state of New York in 191 7, after America had joined in the war. To win in the " Empire " state was a turning point in the whole struggle. After this, ultimate victory was certain, and the suffragists concentrated on carrying suffrage by constitutional amendment. Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 was the first important presidential candidate who supported woman suffrage. In 1916 and 1920 all the presi- dential candidates were suffragists. President Wilson during his second term aided the movement by taking the unprecedented course of himself twice urging the Federal amendment upon the attention of Congress. The necessary two-thirds majority was secured in the House of Representatives in Jan. 1918, but there was not a single vote to spare, and the narrow margin weakened the position, especially as the Senate had yet to be won ; but in May 1919 the amendment was again brought up in the House and was carried by 304 to 48; and victory in the Senate followed almost immediately. Then came the battle for ratification in 36 states. The first stages were easy and rapid, i r states giving a unanimous vote in both Houses, and seven more in one or other of their chambers. After this the victories came more slowly until, in May 1920, 35 states had ratified and only one more was needed. The issue was much obscured by the impending presi- dential election. Both candidates were, as in 1916, suffragists. Both parties probably believed they would gain an advantage if they could plausibly claim that their efforts had given the final victory to women. Tennessee, a Democratic state, voted for the amendment by the necessary majorities in Aug. 1920; legal ob- jections to its validity were, however, raised, but not in time to prevent the proclamation by the Secretary of State in Washington that the igth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been carried. The legal points, however, awaited decision in the High Court. This gave an opportunity for a Republican state, Connec- ticut, to come to the rescue; a special session was called and the igth Amendment was ratified on Sept. 21 1920. This made the Tennessee objections negligible for, valid or invalid, the 36th state had now ratified and the following article was added to the Constitution: " The right of citizens of the United States shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." Thus after a struggle of 70 years the women's victory in America was completed.
OTHER COUNTRIES
Before the World War there were only four countries in the world where women exercised the political franchise; by the end of 1920 there were 28 namely, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, British East Africa, Rhodesia, Jamaica, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Holland, Rumania, Serbia, Luxemburg, Germany, Austria, Hungary, the United States; and, among the states newly formed by the peace treaties of 1919, Poland, Esthonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, the Ukraine and Palestine.
The charter of the League of Nations contains a clause render- ing women eligible for all appointments, including the secretariat. This clause did not remain a dead letter. Besides a large number of women in less responsible positions, Dame Rachel Crowdy was made Director of the Section of National Health, to deal
with the white-slave and opium traffic and with the anti-typhus campaign. At the first assembly of the League (Geneva Nov., Dec. 1920) Sweden appointed Mrs. Wicksell and Norway Dr. Kristine Bonnevie as alternate representatives of their respective countries; while Miss Forchhammer of Denmark brought for- ward in the full assembly the subject of the white-slave traffic and was successful in carrying her proposal to appoint a commission of three persons, one of whom must be a woman, to prosecute a special inquiry on the subject in the Near East. Miss Sophie Sanger was made head of the Legal Section of the International Labour Bureau. In Jan. 1921 Mrs. Wicksell was appointed a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission.
In seeking a cause for so great a development of principles for which comparatively small groups of women, without any direct political power, had worked in some countries for more than half a century, it may probably be found in one cir- cumstance common to them all. In each country a national crisis had arisen on the issue of which the whole fate of the nation depended. National feeling in each had been stirred to its utmost depths. Under its pressure class feeling was minimized; all sorts and conditions of men and women had worked and suffered to- gether for what each felt to be a cause of supreme importance. Men and women acted as friends and comrades when the issue was uncertain, and when the end came the men did not forget the work and the sacrifices of the women. In all countries, whether victors or vanquished, it was universally acknowledged that all through the anguish of the war the women had not been backward either in self-sacrifice, courage or capacity. It was this feeling which broke down the opposition to women's votes in nearly all the warring nations. It was felt also that men by themselves, as a well-known journalist expressed it, had made a mess of the world and needed helpers; men and women together being gener- ally more successful than either men or women by themselves.
AUTHORITIES. M. G. Fawcett, Women's Suffrage (1911); M. G. Fawcett, The Woman's Victory and After (1920); E. Sylvia Pank- hurst, The Suffragette (1910); the files of the Common Cause, now Woman's Leader, and of the International Suffrage News; Official Reports of Parliamentary Debates 191 1-1919. (M. G. F.)
WOMEN (see 28.782). The decade 1910-20 saw not only an advance in the position of women, unparalleled in any similar period, throughout the civilized. world ; it saw also an entire reversal of the public attitude towards their claim to equal citizenship. Yet this is true only of the second half of the period. From 1910-4 there was little or no progress; there was indeed retrogression. By 1910 the " Woman Movement " of the later 19th century
had very largely resolved itself into a movement for obtaining the parliamentary franchise, a concentration upon a single object deplored by some but defended by others, who contended that the denial to women of the full rights of citizenship constituted an effective check upon their advance in any direction. The rise and
progress of " militant " suffragism in England between 1910 and 1914 (see WOMAN SUFFRAGE) did much to alienate public sympathy. It was only the outbreak of the World War which brought about that great and sweeping reform in the position of women which had been accomplished by 1920.
(1) UNITED KINGDOM. After 1914 changes in the United Kingdom were both numerous and rapid. The shortage of manpower during the war opened up a great diversity of fields of employment (see WOMEN'S WAR- WORK), and broke down barriers in the Civil Service and the learned professions, which had hitherto seemed impregnable. Nothing more was heard in the great war departments of those " structural " and other insuperable obstacles to the co-employment of men and women, which figured so largely in the evidence of practically every male civil servant before the Royal Commission on the Reform of the Civil Service, reporting in April 1914. When the institution of the two new orders of honour, the Companions of Honour and the Order of the British Empire, was announced in June 1917, it was declared that the bestowal of these decorations for war services would be irrespective of sex. In Aug. 1917 a resolution to remove the grille in front of the ladies' gallery of the House of Commons was passed by that House without debate. By the
