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