Statement by the President on the 25th Anniversary of the Women's Suffrage Amendment.

AUGUST 26, 1945, will mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ratification by the states of the Amendment to the National Constitution granting suffrage to women.

Less than a century ago women in the United States were denied the right to vote and were classed as inferiors under the law. In 1920 there occurred one of the great events in our history--the Federal Constitution was amended to extend suffrage to the women of our country. Since that time the movement to raise the status of women in all other fields has gone steadily forward.

In the total war through which we have just passed the home front has been no mere phrase, but truly a battlefront where women bore a major part of the struggle.

Women walked into the pages of today's history as good citizens and good soldiers.

To praise women for making intelligent use of the ballot, or for doing their share in winning the war, would be an act of condescension the very opposite of that equal respect symbolized by the suffrage amendment. But on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, it is fitting that we, men and women alike, should give thanks for an America in which women can stand on the level footing of full citizenship in peace and in war.