(Original Caption) These two suffragettes carried their banner to a White House gate on June 22, 1917. The message indicts Woodrow Wilson, but he later came out in favor of the Nineteenth Amendment. The words “free Russia” refer to the women’s voting rights introduced by the provisional regime that had overthrown the Czar in March. Wilson’s concern was to keep the Russians in World War I in order to maintain pressure on Germany along the Eastern Front. The new Russian government tried to do so but was defeated and demoralized by the enemy. Seizing power late in 1917, the Bolsheviks forced Premier Alexander Kerensky into exile in the United States. Lenin came to terms with the Germans, thus allowing them to concentrate on the Western Front.