Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 6.djvu/867

THE INTERNATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ALLIANCE 85! Geisswein, a prominent member of Parliament, made a strong address in favor of woman suffrage. These ceremonies were followed by the president's address of Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, a summing up of the world situation in regard to woman suffrage, during which she said : Yhen the organization of the Alliance was completed in 1904, it decided that national woman suffrage associations only should he admitted to membership and a nation was defined as a country which possesses the independent right to enfranchise its women. At that time eight such nations had woman suffrage associations. Xow, nine years later, with the exception of the Spanish American Republics, there are in the entire world only seven without an or- ganized woman suffrage movement. Only three of these are in Europe Greece, Spain, and the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. The remaining four are not well established self-governing nations, and Japan, which is more autocratic than democratic. We shall admit tu membership the Chinese Woman Suffrage Association and the standard of the Alliance will then be set upon five continents. Twenty-five nations will be counted in its membership. Organized suffrage groups also exist on many islands of the seas. Like Alex- ander the Great, we shall soon be looking for other worlds to con- quer! The North Star and the Southern Cross alike cast their benignant rays upon woman suffrage activities. Last winter when ctual darkness shrouded the land of the Midnight Sun, women wrapped in furs, above the Polar Circle, might have been seen gliding over snow-covered roads in sledges drawn by reindeer on their way to suffrage meetings, from whence petitions went to the Parliament at Stockholm. At the same moment other women, in the midsummer of the southern hemisphere, protected by fans and umbrellas and riding in "rickshas," were doing the same thing under the fierce rays of a tropical sun; while petitions poured into the Parliament asking suffrage for the women of the Union of South Africa from < ate and city of that vast country. ,>e our last Congress not one sign has appeared the entire world around to indicate reaction. Not a backward step has been taken. On the contrary a thousand revelations give certain, un- challenged promise that victory for our great cause lies just ahead. . . . During the past winter woman su 11 rage bills have been con- ed by W national Parliaments, four Parliaments of without full national rights and in the legislative bodies of twenty-nn . 'I hi- 1.. Infl u>r the past l been in the Unit .ve followed the example of the four f..rmer equal age States and have enfranchised their women. Now 2,OOO,OOO milled t il all el< ife to all .< luding tli.it ..l i ... if Fiance. ireat Britain, Austria and Hungary could be set down in the middle of