convinced the individual as well as the mass that she had but one
object, the liberation of the miserable women of her country, their
deliverance from further sorrow; and that she was wholly lacking in
personal ambition.

These women had known the gnawing sensation of unappeased appetite for
two years. They had seen old men and women, sometimes their own, fall in
the streets dead or dying, because they no longer had the reserves of
men and women in their youth or prime. They had seen men blow out their
brains in front of municipal buildings, cursing the Emperor, the
military autocracy, and even the Government, always at odds with the war
lords. They knew of suicides and child murder by despairing mothers that
they hardly whispered to one another. And all the children were
emaciated and wailed continually for food, sleeping little, playing
less, stunted in their growth and threatened with disease; if the war
went on another year they would join the little Polish victims on their
shadowy playground.... They feared for their daughters at home even as
they feared for their young sons in the trenches.... Barring a
revolution, the war might last for years ... _years_.... "Peace
Proposals" irritated what little humor they had left to ghastly obscene
joking.... "Victories" left them as cold as the mid-winter bed.... The
Hohenzollerns, the other kings and princes, the cast-iron junkers, would
cling fast to their own until the Enemy Allies' day of judgment, for
surrender meant their quicker extermination; now, at least, they were
still in the saddle, able to cheer their haunted egos with the Wine of
Lies.

It was the Hohenzollerns and defeat, or a Republic and easy terms from
the victors who would welcome a sound de-brutalized Germany, jealous of
her lost honor, into the family of nations. The arguments were brief and