It
is true that her warrior parent had sometimes boasted of the day when
Germany should rule the world, and that he had referred to the Great
European War as a foregone conclusion, as so many had been doing these
past ten or fifteen years; but he had been careful to say nothing about
throwing the torch into the powder. Gisela, like the vast majority of
civilians in the Central Empires, had grown too accustomed to the
evidences of a great standing army to give them more than a passing
thought. Were they not, then, situate in the very middle of Europe?
Surrounded by envious and powerful enemies? What more natural than that
they should be ever on the alert?

That Germany herself would strike at the peace of Europe, a peace which
had brought her an unexampled prosperity and eminence, never had crossed
Gisela's mind. Nevertheless, knowing the German male as she did, she was
quite sure that the officers reveled in the exchange of peace for war as
much as the men in the ranks detested it. She could see Franz von
Nettelbeck barking out orders for the irresistible advance, his keen
blue eyes flashing with triumph, his Prussian upper lip curling with
impatient scorn, and Georg Zottmyer grinding his teeth in the trenches
and suffering acutely from dyspepsia.

Until the summer of 1916 she was very busy, either in her mother's
hospital or in one in Munich run by a group of Socialist friends under
Marie von Erkel. She glanced at the English papers sometimes, but
assumed that their versions of the war's origin, and of Germanic
methods, were for home effect, and smiled at their occasional claims of
victory.

Poor things! By this time she had seen so much mortal suffering, soothed
so many dying men who raved of unimaginable horrors, written so many
pathetic last letters to mothers and wives and sweethearts, that the
first mood of fury and hatred had long since passed. Her mind, normally
clear, acute, just, regained its poise. Moreover, those five years
preceding the war, during which she had learned to use her gifts for the
benefit of her sex instead of for her own amusement and fame, played
their insidious part.

When she was ordered to take charge of a hospital in Lille in June of
the second year of the war she had forced herself to accept the present
state of Europe with a certain philosophy. After all, war was its
normal, its historic, condition. Following a somewhat unusual interval
of peace, owing to the beneficent reign of t