whose prestige and wealth were still unshaken, and who all desired to
preserve the balance of power in Europe. Above all might they rely upon
the United States of America, the friendly hints of whose President had
been systematically distorted by the anxious Pan-Germans still in the
saddle; who would cheerfully witness the loss of every drop of the
people's life blood rather than their own power.

A conquered empire that had been hypnotized to the end by the monster
criminals of history, whose word no man would ever take again, would be
a mere collection of enslaved States for generations to come; the
conquerors, having given them their choice, would show no mercy.

Britain could not be starved. The submarine war, whatever its
devastations, and the vast inconveniences it had caused, was a failure.
And the colossal wealth of the United States in money, in food, in men!
Who knew her resources better than Gisela, who had lived in the country
for four years and found it an absorbing study, who had continued to
read American books, newspapers, and reviews up to the outbreak of the
war? Well, they were all at the disposal of democracy; and as the
Entente Allies, 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