Life — December 21, 1916 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LIEFE A Lamentable Sacrifice EATH Claims Mrs. Boissevain” ran the headline in a Boston pa- per, but it did not tell the truth. Death did not claim her at all. She was a remarkably strong and able young woman, hurried needlessly and out of time to a wholly unnecessary end. Her death, heroic in its was concerned, was a everyone else concerned in it. ‘That is perfectly evident as one reads the story of her last days; how she was summoned from home, al- ready ill, to promote the mdst foolish and futile episode of a campaign by no means lacking in follies. The Trib- une says her husband and both her parents protested against her going, “but it was a call from which Mrs. Boissevain had never turned aside. She went. She was the star player of the Golden Special troupe, the one who best drew a crowd and_ best pleased it. Apparently she made speech after speech, day after day, when she ought to have been abed, and the middle-aged women of the party, who should have seen what was going on, apparently did nothing to stop her, One of the papers quotes Mrs, Blatch as saying: Inez’s itinerary was simply awful 1 told Miss Paul that she was not shown sufficient consideration. She often had to get up at four o'clock in the morning and had to travel al- most constantly day and night be- tween speeches. I was with her at a meeting in Cheyenne, Wyo., early in October and noticed she did not scem well, She told me that a surgeon in Chicago had urged her to go into a hospital there and have her tonsils removed. Mrs. Boissevain was sacrificed to the suffrage cause, and it is such a perfectly patent sacrifice that I think it. must make many decent men realize that it is time to substitute the more decent method of legis- lative action for the state referer dum. I often tell men that they are using up a whole generation of young women in this struggle, and it is dreadful! That Mrs. Boissevain'’s death should operate as an example of “ frightful- ness” in favor of legislative action on suffrage is hardly to be expected, but it may well prompt the more mature suffrage managers to take better care of their young women. They may an- swer that nobody can hold the con- temporary girl, and that nobody could hold Mrs. Boissevain, who did always what she willed to do, regardless of protests and irrespective of conse- quences. To that the reply must be that unmanageable girls who cannot take care of themselves, and will not take advice from more experienced persons, are not so well qualified as they suppose to safe-conduct the world through new experiences, and by no means qualified to be stars in the suf- frage movement. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony worked for suffrage all their lives, and died well advanced in years, but they were experienced women trained to their work and much too wise to try to take the trenches of conservatism by assault. Inez Milholland had beauty, physical energy and energy of will, She had a kind and gallant spirit and a gift of leadership. rybody, pretty much, liked and admired her—the opposed as well as those who fought with her. The lesson of her death is not that women ought to have the vote or not to have it, but that the strongest young Advertisements We Have Never Seen leah | BONFIRE ROUGE. A Red Lead Vornish Bat Torns Parplele eo 1 ere orenseThroy Out ff a Lofion!- | | | TWowtfave ll TheBlotchesT Can Use!” HEEL CLIPS. THEY MAKE EVERY STREET A SLIDE!