many women of her own class who had suffered death and disillusion.

Elsa's transfer to a hospital in Saxony was skilfully managed; and Lili
went on a concert tour for the Red Cross. It was not worth while to
campaign in Austria; the moment Germany was helpless she would collapse
automatically.

In the course of a month the secret propaganda was moving with the
invisible, sinister, irresistible suction of an undertow. The immense
army of women who did Gisela's work proved themselves true Germans,
logical products of generations of discipline, concentration,
secretiveness, and a thoroughness, even in trifling details, as
implacable as it was automatic. They made few mistakes. When they
discovered--and their spy service was also Teutonic--that they had
confided in some girl or woman whose inherent weakness or venality
threatened betrayal, she disappeared immediately and for ever.

Gisela, obtaining a commission to inspect the leading hospitals "back of
the front," visited each of the states in turn and addressed thousands
of women in groups of two or three hundred, gathered under the eyes of
the police in the name of one of the many war charities in which all
women were engaged. The lieutenants prepared these women, and Gisela
inspired, crystallized, cohered. The timid she shamed with the example
of the Russian women (and German women despise all other women); the
desperate she had little difficulty in convincing that there was but one
egress from their insupportable agony. Victory under her leadership if
they stood firm, was inevitable.

She had the gift of a fiery torrent of speech, a clear steady eye, even
when it flashed and blazed, and a warm and irresistible magnetism that