New York Times
M'KEE'S 1915 ATTACK ON
SUFFERAGE UPHELD
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Editor Defends Article Which Mrs. Nicoll Assailed --- It Was Part of Debate
The Rev. James M. Gillis, editor of The Catholic World, replied last night over Station WLWL to Mrs. Courtlandt Nicoll's attack on Joseph V. McKee's criticism of certain leaders of the women's suffrage movement in 1915.
Father Gillis, who made it plain that his defense of Mr. McKee's article was not to be interpreted as an indication of his political preference, point out that the same issue in which Mr. McKee's article appeared, that of October 1915, The Catholic World carried an article by Helen Haines in defense of suffrage.
The two articles should be read in succession, as they were placed in The Catholic World," he said. "It is a pity that Mrs. Courtlandt Nicoll in her radio speech last night, since she brought The Catholic World into the question, did not take one moment to say that the article she criticized was only one of two in a debate."
Mrs. Nicoll was not quoting sufficiently, the editor declared. "It is too bad that she called the article 'unwarranted' and then omitted to quote from it the warrant that the writer had provided," he said. "As for that other offensive epithet, "scurrilous," it seems to me that neither the author nor the article was scurrilous. The scurrility was in the writings and speeches of certain leaders of the suffrage movement."
Father Gillis cited quotation attributed to Professor W. I. Thomas of the University of Chicago, on legitimacy, motherhood and the role of sex in society, as support of Mr. McKee's warrant for terming a speech by Professor Thomas, given with public indication of the suffragists' approbation, "pernicious doctrines."
