During this long debate Gisela sat at the head of the table, rigid and
watchful, when she was not fiercely arguing; Mimi Brandt sprawled in an
easy chair, satirical and slangy, enveloped in smoke; Heloise, very pale
and the first to be convinced, sat with her little hands clenched
against her cheek bones; Ann Prentiss, unshakenly cool quick and
precise; the more brilliant Mrs. Tolby flashing her beacon light into
recesses darkened these three years by systematic lies, but incapable of
the final stupidity.

That long argument need not be reproduced here. All the world has made
up its mind about Germany, knows her far better than as yet she knows
herself. It was the deliberate effort of the Americans to force these
three intelligent Germans, one of them a leader of the first importance,
to realize that their country stood to the rest of the world for lying,
treachery, cruelty, brutality, degeneracy, bad sportsmanship, ostrich
psychology; above all, that she had forfeited her place among modern and
honest nations.

When these facts had been hammered in, Mrs. Prentiss moved on to the
two cardinal facts for whose elucidation the rest had been a mere
preamble: that the Central Powers were beaten and knew it, but were
determined to go on sacrificing the manhood of the country, reducing the
population to the ultimate miseries of mind and body rather than yield;
and that the only hope of obtaining mercy from the Entente Allies in the
inevitable hour of surrender was to dethrone the Hohenzollerns and
establish a Republic. Otherwise as a nation they would cease to exist
and their last fate would be infinitely worse than their present. A
German Republic would be welcomed into the family of nations and receive
a friendly and helping hand from every one of the great adversaries,