nd women in their youth or prime. They had seen men blow out their
brains in front of municipal buildings, cursing the Emperor, the
military autocracy, and even the Government, always at odds with the war
lords. They knew of suicides and child murder by despairing mothers that
they hardly whispered to one another. And all the children were
emaciated and wailed continually for food, sleeping little, playing
less, stunted in their growth and threatened with disease; if the war
went on another year they would join the little Polish victims on their
shadowy playground.... They feared for their daughters at home even as
they feared for their young sons in the trenches.... Barring a
revolution, the war might last for years ... _years_.... "Peace
Proposals" irritated what little humor they had left to ghastly obscene
joking.... "Victories" left them as cold as the mid-winter bed.... The
Hohenzollerns, the other kings and princes, the cast-iron junkers, would
cling fast to their own until the Enemy Allies' day of judgment, for
surrender meant their quicker extermination; now, at least, they were
still in the saddle, able to cheer their haunted egos with the Wine of
Lies.

It was the Hohenzollerns and defeat, or a Republic and easy terms from
the victors who would welcome a sound de-brutalized Germany, jealous of
her lost honor, into the family of nations. The arguments were brief and
simple. Gisela would have won over women far less despairing than
these. And the fact that she had spent four years in America studying
its institutions and resources, convinced the most susceptible to
official lies that the United States could pour money, men, ammunition,
munitions and food into Europe for countless years; and that the
agitations of her pacifists, syndicalists, German agents, and
bribe-takers were but picturesque ripples on the surface of a nation
covering over three million five hundred thousand square miles and
embracing more than one hundred million people.

And with all the insidious subtlety of her supple mind she changed the
prevailing hatred of President Wilson into a profound and pathetic
confidence. She had long since made them envy and admire the women of
America, and if these fortunate beings had enthusiastically reelected
him and were now giving his policy as persistent and effective
assistance as the men, it was for the desperate women of Germany to
believe in his promises of deliverance. Above all he had now the
ap