She frequently addressed great meetings of the men of Paris and other cities on this subject, making irresistible appeals to the heart and conscience. It was astonishing how she carried the most critical audiences along with her, though now and then an indignant hearer would leap to his feet and dash out of the hall or theatre in which her meeting was held. She steadily refused to believe that nothing could be done for the _morale_ of Frenchmen, and her faith in the innate chivalry of the people was amply justified. The respect with which she was heard was a tribute not only to the personal magnetism of a consecrated life, but to the Christian ideal of chastity. She was often told by journalists that any one else, man or woman, daring to utter half the home truths to which she gave expression would have been hissed out of the town. Explain it as one will, when she pleaded the sacred cause of womanhood, men applauded to their own hurt. "Gentlemen," she would exclaim, "I am not French, but I love your nation. I have made your country mine, and I realise what France might be but for the worm which gnaws at the root of your national life. It makes me shudder to think—it makes me literally sick to see—how many thousands of my sisters, and your sisters, in your beautiful city are ministers of vice. So many, your policemen tell me, under twenty, so many under seventeen, so many under fifteen, and there are even those known to the police who are not in their teens. Gentlemen, they do not sin alone, for we are all _solidaires_. They are like your own girls, your wives, your sweet little daughters. They have hearts, they have brains, they are intelligent, they would make beautiful mothers, our comrades in life’s journey, helping us and sharing our burdens. And, alas, what have you made of them? Any nation which can look at _that_ going on in its cities day by day and night by night, without a word, without a protest—which can see this splendid asset, woman, who should bear its sons and daughters, sacrificed and sold to vice, disease, and early death,—that nation is on the decline. Do not tell me that a man worthy of the name can be silent in face of these stupendous facts. Such a man is not a Frenchman. "I am told that things have always been so, and will always be so. I hear it said on every hand that this vice is a necessity. That some women—that the daughters of the poor—should be sacrificed is regarded as inevitable. Well, then, gentlemen, as you say it is for the public utility, follow your reasoning to its own logical conclusion, be just to these poor creatures; do not despise them, do not call them lost, fallen, prostitutes; be honest and acknowledge them; allow them to stand at least on the same level as our soldiers who sacrifice themselves for their country. Far from being ashamed of them, honour them for their service to our sons and our nation.