2020 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 2(1) Image 1: National Association Women Lawyers petitioning US Plenipotentiaries to vote for equality at The Hague. Washington, 1930 (Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division). 46 Conflict at the Peace Palace ‘[T]he unattainable dream’ 47 By opening night of the Hague Conference, 13 March 1930, women had arrived from around the world. As the formal opening ceremonies commenced, a women’s protest procession took place nearby, a ‘public spectacle adapted from the grand suffrage parades of the past’. 48 35 countries were represented by the participants. 49 Women from each nation carried their respective country’s flag and their dress colour symbolised their country’s nationality laws. According to Ellen DuBois, ‘[t]he closer to the [Alliance’s] Committee on Nationality’s proposed standard of independent nationality for wives, the more cheerful the colours’. 50 The black colour of the Dutch dress, and the irony of the location of the protest, was not lost on the Dutch activist, Betsy Bakker-Nort. She observed that the ‘legal situation of 46 47 48 49 50 ‘Prints & Photographs Online Catalog’, Library of Congress (Web Page) <https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2016878749/>. Quoted in newspapers describing women’s proposal for equal nationality rights, Chairman of the Codification Conference and long-time enemy of the Dutch woman suffrage movement, former Prime Minister Theodorus Heemskerk: see DuBois (n 7) 207. ibid 206. Berkovitch and Berqôvîč (n 7) 81. DuBois (n 7) 206. 50