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 eyes expanded as if they saw far