simple. Gisela would have won over women far less despairing than
these. And the fact that she had spent four years in America studying
its institutions and resources, convinced the most susceptible to
official lies that the United States could pour money, men, ammunition,
munitions and food into Europe for countless years; and that the
agitations of her pacifists, syndicalists, German agents, and
bribe-takers were but picturesque ripples on the surface of a nation
covering over three million five hundred thousand square miles and
embracing more than one hundred million people.

And with all the insidious subtlety of her supple mind she changed the
prevailing hatred of President Wilson into a profound and pathetic
confidence. She had long since made them envy and admire the women of
America, and if these fortunate beings had enthusiastically reëlected
him and were now giving his policy as persistent and effective
assistance as the men, it was for the desperate women of Germany to
believe in his promises of deliverance. Above all he had now the
approval of their own Gisela Döring.

It was the mothers of Germany, balked, potential, or veritable, who were
ready to rise and rescue what was left of the youth of Germany. If
victory for the German arms were hopeless they would risk their own
lives to force a peace that would leave them with the rags of their old
honor and prosperity, that would give them revenge upon the men who had,
for their own criminal ambitions--ambitions which belonged to the Middle
Ages--doomed them to lifelong sorrow; and that would save the lives of
their children--save husbands also for a few of these stern and weary
girls. Even in the Rhine Valley, where the greater number of the
munition and ammunition factories were grouped, there were incessant
meetings, among the night and day shifts, of the thousands of women