To the working-women of Norfolk, the wives and mothers and sisters of our brave boys who are now so gallantly fighting for their country in France and Belgium and other parts of the world. I feel constrained to make an appeal to you in the hour of our national danger to consider seriously the gravity of the situation and what it would mean to this country, especially the working classes, should Germany and her confederates win this war. Everything that is dear in our English life will be destroyed; all our hopes for improvements in our national life will be blighted; the working classes will be thrown back into far worse conditions than they were one hundred years ago; all our liberties so hardly won for us by our forefathers will be lost. I ask you to consider for one moment what has taken place in Belgian and French towns and villages. The homes of the poor have been destroyed by fire and sword. Old men and women have been murdered in cold blood, women and children outraged and killed, mothers separated from their children and wives from their husbands, not knowing whether they are dead or alive. What these poor people have suffered is a small thing in comparison to what would happen to us should our enemies ever reach these shores, and they will unless we are able to defeat and destroy the cruel and barbarous military power of Germany. Do you wish your daughters to be outraged, your children slaughtered? Would you like to see our veterans of industry murdered, our homes burnt and our towns made desolate? No, I know you would not. No women are more devoted to their homes and loving to their children than the women of Norfolk. The danger, however, is very great and it can only be prevented by everyone doing all that lies in their power to help the nation in the hour of distress. It is for the protection of our own hearths and homes that we are engaged in this terrible war, hence the great call on the manhood of this country. And now the time has arrived when the womanhood of the nation have to be appealed to, and I am making a patriotic appeal to you, the women of my own country, to come forward and help in the present crisis.