and
they did it. It is as plain as daylight. I'd forgive them, too, if
they'd won in six months, as they were so sure they would. What I don't
forgive them for is that they have proved themselves the most criminal
fools unhung. I'm glad that I am a Bavarian, and that Prussia, whom we
have always so hated and despised that we have never turned the lions
about on the Siegesthor, should be the prime offenders, humiliating as
it may be that we fell for their lies and got into this rotten mess. But
go ahead, Mrs. Prentiss. What's your next? Gee, but you can hand it out.
You must have kept tab since August 1st, 1914."

"I took merely an intelligent American woman's interest," said Mrs.
Prentiss, momentarily haughty. "And I spent the first two years and a
half in Washington, where I often knew more than the newspapers; at all
events where I was constantly in the society of thinking men. Also
honest men, for war was the last thing we wanted, until our honor became
too deeply involved to permit us to hold aloof and fatten on your misery
any longer. Also, to be frank, our interests."

The fact which impressed the Germans and reduced all that had gone
before to a heated academic discussion, was that Germany was beaten, and
that the United States embargo would reduce the Central Empires to
actual starvation, not merely devitalizing subnourishment; combined with
their own certainty that the Teutonic Powers would go on fighting, under
the lash of Prussia, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of loyal German
and Austrian boys, plunge countless more families into hopeless grief,
doom all the children in the land to sheer hunger and tuberculosis.

Starvation! That was the inevitable fate of Germany if she prolonged the
war. And for what? Prostration, physical, financial, economic. To suffer
for a generation, at least, the fate of the outlaw, mangy dogs nosing
among rotten bones, kicked by the victors whenever they stood on their
hind legs and whined for mercy.

And the Americans were prepared to pour into France and Britain billions
of dollars and millions of men and incalculable tons of food and
ammunition.

4

The two Americans had a deeper purpose in forcing this long argument
than hammering the truth into those intelligent but Prussianized brains.
As the hours wore toward the dawn they observed with satisfaction that
Gisela's face grew whiter and grimmer, until finally it set itself in
rigid lines. Her mouth was hard, her eye