Who could listen, without deep stirrings of emotion, to men and women just released from prison-houses of pain and horror singing those words? I can not imagine how they found voices to sing. Some of them, indeed, could not sing. They could hardly speak. They just stood there dumb and broken, their sad eyes streaming with tears. Even freedom and the sound again of their beloved French language could not wipe out their terrible memories. Some of the repatriates are met at Evian by friends and relatives. Some are cared for by the French government, sent to towns and villages well away from the war zone. Charity and the Red Cross have done splendid work for all refugees, but their problems are often almost unsolvable. Hardly a man among them is fit for industry. As for the women, the plight of many of them is pitiable. The individual stories of some of these women I heard from the lips of a woman known throughout France for her devoted labors in behalf of victims of German soldiers in the invaded districts. This noble French woman bears the beautiful name of Avril de Ste. Croix. I mention it not because she would particularly care to have me do so, but because she is known to a great many women in America. Madame Avril de Ste. Croix is president of the French National Council of Women, and as a prominent suffragist has attended a number of meetings of the International Association for Woman Suffrage of which an American woman, Carrie Chapman Catt, is president. Every one in France and in the United States who knows Madame de Ste. Croix knows that she is incapable of misstatement or misrepresentation. What she told me I am absolutely confident was true in every particular. In Paris there is a house of mercy established and maintained by patriotic and generous French people for the rehabilitation of women and girl victims of German lust, and Madame de Ste. Croix is managing director of the establishment. To this house was brought, about a year ago, a woman who, at the beginning of the war, lived with her husband and five children in one of the French cities taken by the Germans. They did not destroy this city, but occupied it and made it a division headquarters. Madame Doran we will call her, because it is not her name, lost her husband’s protection and a good deal of her income at the mobilization. The husband joined the colors, and the wife and five children made a home in two small rooms of a tenement. The whole town was filled with German soldiers, and Madame Doran had two men billeted on her. She moved her family into one room and gave the other to the soldiers. From the first these soldiers tried to debauch the poor woman. She successfully resisted them. They moved on and two more soldiers were billeted on her. They in turn attempted the degradation of this decent wife and mother. She resisted these men also.