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220 THE WHITE SLAVE MARKET
absolutely terrified that she felt paralysed,
and she thought that she would never be
able to get the door open ; but fortunately
she did she managed to squeeze herself
through and pull the door to and fly down
the steps. Before she got to the last step she
noticed that the square seemed quite deserted,
and a man ran up the area steps to give
chase ; she simply flew along the pavement,
and luckily before she had gone many
yards towards the post-box a policeman turned
into the square and she called out to him.
Her pursuer immediately fled. The girl told
the policeman everything, and was horrified
to find that the house had already been
suspected and was under police surveillance.
She had only just escaped in time. If stories
like these were put into sensational novels
one would believe of course that they were
quite impossible and were invented simply
for the sake of creating a sensation and
writing a good story.
The fact is that in-
finitely more sensational and terrible things
happen in real everyday life than are ever
written about.
Sir Percy Bunting, editor of the Contemporary
Review, made a speech at the International
Commission on the "White Slave
Traffic which was held in London some years
ago. "We quote a portion of his speech, which
appears in a book on the white slave traffic
which has done much, we hope, to make public
things that are going on in this country. As
the writer of that book says :