hers, earth would
be turned into a heaven. It would be incredible if it were not true
that for mere selfish indulgence thousands of men are willing to
drag women down to what even these men themselves recognize as the
lowest dregs of humanity. Where is their chivalry? Where is their
common humanity? Some would say that such men do not possess
either. For my part, I do not believe this. Let women thankfully
acknowledge that, so far as other matters are concerned, they are
constantly indebted to the chivalrous self-sacrifice of men.
Chivalry is not dead; generous self-sacrifice is not dead; but in
far too many cases, with regard to the all-important question of
personal purity, they are sleeping. Our efforts must be directed to
awakening them. We must try and make men realize the callous
cruelty of all actions which lower the womanhood of even the
poorest and most degraded of women."

And if we refuse, sunk in our own selfish interests and pleasures, and
content that the daughters of the people should perish as long as our
own are safe, then it will not be by an European coalition that the
British Empire will perish, it will be by moral decay from within; in
Blake's rough, strong words:

"The harlot's curse from street to street
Shall be old England's winding sheet."

The British Empire, the great American Republic, the two greatest
civilizing, order-spreading, Christianizing world-powers ever known, can
only be saved by a solemn league and covenant of their women to bring
back simplicity of life, plain living, high thinking, reverence for
marriage laws, chivalrous respect for all womanhood, and a high standard
of purity for men and women alike.

Suffer me to lay before you three considerations, which will prove to
you at once that this great moral question is more vital to our two
nations than to any other, and that we are peculiarly vulnerable to the
action of moral causes.

Firstly, England, and in one sense England alone, is the mighty mother
of nations. Three great nations have already sprung from her loins; a
fourth in Africa is already in process of consolidation. From the narrow
confines of our sea-girt island our people pour into all quarters of the
globe; and if we suffer England to know corruption we send forth
polluted waters into all lands. Your great Republic, on the other hand,
is a mother of nations in another sense, since