What eight million of the most intelligent, the most thoughtful, the most altruistic women in the world believe, what they think the world needs, what they wish and desire for the good of humanity, must be of interest.  It must count.

[Illustration:  Lady Aberdeen President of the International Council of Women.]

The International Council of Women discusses every important question presented, but makes no decision until the opinion of the delegates is practically unanimous.  It commits itself to no opinion, lends itself to no movement, until the movement has passed the controversial stage.

Those who cling to the old notion that women are perpetually at war with one another will learn with astonishment that eight million women of all nationalities, religions, and temperaments are agreed on at least four questions.  In the course of its twenty years of existence the International Council has agreed to support four movements:  Peace and arbitration, social purity, removing legal disabilities of women, woman suffrage.

The American reader will be inclined to cavil at the last-mentioned object.  Woman suffrage, it will be claimed, has not passed the controversial stage, even with women themselves.  That is true in the United States and in England.  It is true, in a sense, in most countries of the world.  But in European countries not woman suffrage, but universal suffrage is being struggled for.

I had this explained to me in Russia, in the course of a conversation with Alexis Aladyn, the brilliant leader of the Social Democratic party.  I said to him that I had been informed that the conservative reformers, as well as the radicals, included woman suffrage in their programs.  Aladyn looked puzzled for a moment, and then he replied:  “All parties desire universal suffrage.  Naturally that includes women.”

Finland at that time, 1906, had recently won its independence from the autocracy and was preparing for its first general election.  Talking with one of the nineteen women returned to Parliament a few months later, I asked:  “How did you Finnish women persuade the makers of the new constitution to give you the franchise?”

“Persuade?” she repeated; “we did not have to persuade them.  There was simply no opposition.  One of the demands made on the Russian Government was for universal suffrage.”

The movement for universal suffrage, that is the movement for free government, with the consent of the governed, is considered by the International Council of Women to have passed the controversial stage.

The whole club movement, as a matter of fact, is a part of the great democratic movement which is sweeping over the whole world.  Individual clubs may be exclusive, even aristocratic in their tendencies, but the large organization is absolutely democratic.  If the President of the International Council is an English peeress, one of the vice-presidents is the wife of a German music teacher, and one of the secretaries is a self-supporting woman.  The General Federation in the United States is made up of women of various stations in life, from millionaires’ wives to factory girls.