including the United States, were already many times
stronger than Germany, how could they fail to win in the end, no matter
how many millions of lives on all sides Germany continued to shovel
into Moloch?

All of these three clever German girls had been more or less prepared to
hear Germany proved a liar. They knew from British wounded that London
was neither a fortified city nor reduced to ashes; also that all the
Zeppelin raids on defenseless towns put together had been of less
strategical value to Germany than the taking of one village in the war
zone; she had merely piled up a mountain of hatred and contempt which
must be leveled by the quick repudiation of her people if they would
regain their lost intercourse with a triumphant world. Like all the
other women who had nursed near the front and knew the truth, they
translated into their own cynical vernacular such grandiose collocations
as "Strategic retreats" from that of the Battle of the Marne to those
which had been occurring periodically on the Western front since the
beginning of the Somme offensive of 1916.

3

Gisela's mind was complex and subtle, but it was also honest. When it
yielded a point, it yielded audibly. It was during the preliminary
discussion that she exclaimed:

"It is true--certain things come back to me--Mimi, open the window. The
air is blue and we are all hardy and can stand the night air. It was
after the Agadir incident that I felt a change. I say felt because I was
so absorbed in my work that I had no inclination for world politics and
never discussed them. Up to that time I had never heard a hint of war
for aggression on the part of Germany.... While, as far back as I can
remember, it was taken for granted there would be a great war some day,
I doubt if any but the military party really believed in it. We thought
the time had passed for real wars, that we were far too highly
civilized. Of course I knew that the military party to which my father
belonged would have welcomed a war, for war was their profession, their
game, their excuse for being, and I heard more or less talk among my
brothers of Pan-Germanism; but still I imagined that it was merely a
defensive Teutonic ideal, just as our oppressive standing army was a
necessity owing to our geographical position. My brother Karl said
once--it comes back to me, although I had quite forgotten it--that it
was futile for the military caste to try to work up a war, because every
money