II

1

Gisela, like all the good women of Germany, flamed with patriotism and

righteous indignation. Russia and France with no provocation, with no

motive but insensate ambition on the one hand and a festering desire for

revenge on the other, had crossed the sacred frontiers of the great

Teutonic Empire. A French aviator had dropped bombs on Neuremburg, one

of the artistic treasures of Europe, although, mercifully, his bombs had

inadvertently been filled with air. Then followed the even more

indefensible act of Great Britain, whose only motive in joining forces

with paper allies was to aim a blow at the glorious commercial prestige

of Germany, the object of her fear and hate these many years.

Gisela immediately entered the hospital opened by her mother in Berlin

and took a rapid first-aid course, concentrating upon the work all the

fine powers of her mind and strong young body. Literature, fame,

propaganda among women, all were dismissed. Although victory was certain

in a few months there would be many thousands of wounded and she was

filled with a passionate desire to serve those heroes and martyrs of

foreign hatred. She forgot her personal experience of the German male,

forgot herself. Her beloved Fatherland was attacked, and the German male

in his heroic resistance, his triumphal progress, was become a god.

_Dienen! Dienen!_

She had no time to ponder upon the violation of Belgium and knew nothing

of the curious escape of medieval psychology from the formal harness of

modern times. She was engaged in hard menial labor during those first

weeks and it was sufficient to know that Germany had been violated. It

is true that her warrior parent had sometimes boasted of the day when

Germany should rule the world, and that he had referred to the Great

European War as a foregone conclusion, as so many had been doing these

past ten or fifteen years; but he had been careful to say nothing about

throwing the torch into the powder. Gisela, like the vast majority of

civilians in the Central Empires, had grown too accustomed to the

evidences of a great standing army to give them more than a passing

thought. Were they not, then, situate in the very middle of Europe?

Surrounded by envious and powerful enemies? What more natural than that

they should be ever on the alert?

That Germany herself would strike at the peace of Europe, a peace which

had brought her an unexampled prosperity and eminence, never had crossed

Gisela's mind. Nevertheless, knowing the German male as she did, she was

quite sure that the officers reveled in the exchange of peace for war as

much as the men in the ranks detested it. She could see Franz von

Nettelbeck barking out orders for the irresistible advance, his keen

blue eyes flashing with triumph, his Prussian upper lip curling with

impatient scorn, and Georg Zottmyer grinding his teeth in the trenches

and suffering acutely from dyspepsia.

Until the summer of 1916 she was very busy, either in her mother's

hospital or in one in Munich run by a group of Socialist friends under

Marie von Erkel. She glanced at the English papers sometimes, but

assumed that their versions of the war's origin, and of Germanic

methods, were for home effect, and smiled at their occasional claims of

victory.

Poor things! By this time she had seen so much mortal suffering, soothed

so many dying men who raved of unimaginable horrors, written so many

pathetic last letters to mothers and wives and sweethearts, that the

first mood of fury and hatred had long since passed. Her mind, normally

clear, acute, just, regained its poise. Moreover, those five years

preceding the war, during which she had learned to use her gifts for the

benefit of her sex instead of for her own amusement and fame, played

their insidious part.

When she was ordered to take charge of a hospital in Lille in June of

the second year of the war she had forced herself to accept the present

state of Europe with a certain philosophy. After all, war was its

normal, its historic, condition. Following a somewhat unusual interval

of peace, owing to the beneficent reign of the German Emperor, the war

microbes of Europe, cultured in the Balkan swamps, had, through some

miscalculation, after a deplorable assassination, ravaged the entire

continent instead of being localized as heretofore. Men were men and

kings were kings and war was war. Gisela sometimes wondered if the

hideous upheaval were anybody's fault, if the desire to fight had not

been more or less simultaneous in spite of the fact that Germany was

caught napping and permitted Russia and France to sneak over her

frontiers.

The sinking of the _Lusitania_ and other passenger ships, or rather the

results, had filled her with a horror that might have developed into

protest had she not been assured that the U-boats had purposely waited

for a calm sea, not too far from shore, that the passengers might have

every opportunity for escape; and that they had been the victims of

contraband cargoes of ammunition exploding, badly adjusted life-boats,

panic among themselves, and utter inefficiency and selfishness of the

officers and crew.

These excuses sounded plausible to a young woman still too occupied to

ponder; but during her journey through Belgium and the invaded districts

of France her mind grew more and more uneasy. Surely an army so

uniformly victorious, an army which only forebore to press forward in a

battle--like that of the Marne, for instance--for sound strategic

reasons, should have found it unnecessary to destroy whole towns with

their priceless monuments of art, level countless insignificant

villages, and reduce their inhabitants to cowering misery. She had been

a student of history and had inferred that modern warfare was as humane

as war may be; witness the fine magnanimity of the Japanese, an Oriental

race. This passing country, which she had known well in its hey-day,

looked extraordinarily like the historical pictures of the invasions of

Goths and Vandals and Huns.

"Huns!" She had resented the constant use of the word in the English

papers, dismissing it finally as childish spite. Had its usurpation of

the classic and noble word "Germans" been one of those quick, merciless,

simultaneous designations that fly through every army in wartime and are

as apt as they are inevitable?

She felt a sudden desire to "talk it out" with Franz von Nettelbeck,

whose mind, despite his prejudices, was the most stimulating she had

ever known. But although she heard of him often, for he had covered

himself with glory, she had seen him only once--from a window in Berlin

as he promenaded Unter den Linden; a superb and haughty figure, his

swelling chest covered with medals.

In Lille she met Elsa, who had been in charge of a hospital for a year,

Mimi Brandt and Heloise von Erkel, with whom she had been intimately

associated in Munich. She found all three horrified and appalled at the

atrocious cruelties, the persistent and needless severities, the

arrogant and swaggering attitude, accompanied by countless petty

tyrannies, unworthy of an army in possession; the wholly unmodern and

dishonorable treatment of a prostrate and wretched people. Above all,

the deportations of the young girls of Lille, torn from their families,

driven in herds through the streets, their faces stamped with despair or

abject terror, condemned to God knew what horrible fate, had shaken

these three humane and thinking women to the core.

All three, while serving far behind the lines, had thought their German

army an army of demi-gods, and all three were bitterly ashamed of their

countrymen and disposed to question a sovereign, and a military caste,

that not only encouraged the saddist lust of their fighters and seemed

unable to spare sufficient food for the civilians, in spite of the great

leakage through neutral countries, but which persisted in calling

themselves victorious when they were either perpetually on the defensive

or in the act of being beaten, despite their irresistible rush. The

Somme Drive had not begun but there was not a nurse in Lille that did

not know the truth about Verdun.

"And believe me, as the Americans say," remarked Mimi Brandt, "when the

German people know the truth, particularly the German women, there will

be some circus."

Mimi had been far more of an active rebel than the Niebuhr girls,

possibly because her life-stream was closer to the source, patently to

herself because she had a magnificent voice which needed only technique

to assure her a welcome in any of the great opera houses of Germany.

Adroitly persuaded by her parents to marry when she was not quite

seventeen, she had conceived an abhorrence of the rodent-visaged young

burgess who had been her lot; not only was he personally distasteful to

the ardent romantic girl, but he would not permit her to cultivate her

voice, much less study for the stage. Her revenge had been a cruel

disdain, to which he had responded by lying under the bed all night and

howling. Twice she had run away, visiting prosperous and sympathetic

relatives in Milwaukee, and both times returned at the passionate

solicitations of her parents; not only outraged in their dearest

conventions but anxious to be rid of the small rodent born of the union.

Her last return had been but a month before the outbreak of the war, and

Hans Brandt, to his growling disgust, was promptly swept off by the

searching German broom. He was as much in love with his wife as a man so

meagerly equipped in all but national conceit may be, for Mimi was a

handsome girl with a buxom but graceful figure, and a laughing face

whose golden brown eyes sparkled with the pure fun of living when they

were not somber with disgust and rebellion.

Gisela had always looked upon Heloise von Erkel as the most tragic

figure in Munich. In appearance she had distinction rather than beauty,

for although her features were delicate her complexion and hair were

faded and there were faint lines on her charming face. She was a blonde

of the French type, and her light figure, although indifferently carried

and a stranger to gowns, possessed an indefinable elegance.

Under heaven knew what impulse of romantic madness Frau von Erkel, then

Heloise d'Oremont, had married a young German officer, and although both

fancied themselves deeply in love the breach began shortly after they

had settled to the routine life of the frontier town where he was

stationed, and had widened rapidly in spite of the fact that she

produced six children as automatically as the most devoted (and

detested) hausfrau of her acquaintance. Shortly after the birth of

Marie, the breach became a chasm, for the chocolate firm, inherited

through her bourgeoise mother and the source of Frau von Erkel's wealth,

failed, and the haughty Bavarian aristocrat was forced to keep up his

position in the army and maintain his growing family on an income,

accruing from chocolate investments, that should have been reserved for

pleasure alone.

However, there was help for it. He renounced cards and such other costly

diversions as was possible without lowering his standard as a gentleman

and an officer, and of course the real privation was borne by the women

of the family. He even ceased to rage at his wife, for she merely sat in

her favorite chair, her hands folded, and looked at him with her subtle

ironic smile.

When Gisela met them, Frau von Erkel and her three daughters (all in

their late twenties and unmarried) were living in a dingy old house in a

respectable quarter, with one beer-sodden maid to relieve them of the

heavy work and bake the cake for the Sunday "Coffee."

Colonel von Erkel and his three sons lived in bachelor quarters and

called upon the women of the family every Sunday afternoon at precisely

four o'clock. In full uniform, and imposing specimens of the German

officer, they sat stiffly upon the uncomfortable chairs for about thirty

minutes and then simultaneously escaped and were seen no more for a

week.

At first Gisela was intensely amused at the vagaries of the Erkels, but

when she saw the four narrow beds in a row in one small monastic room

(the first floor was let to lodgers to pay the rent), and still more of

their almost hopeless contriving to hold their position in Munich

society, to say nothing of a bare sufficiency of food and raiment, her

sympathies, always more deep than quick, were permanently aroused. But

they were confined to the girls. Charming and graceful as the old lady

was, it was evident that if above the arrogance of her German husband

she was afflicted with the intense conservatism of her own race. It had

taken Aimée, the oldest of the girls, three years of persistent begging,

nagging, arguments, tears, and threats of abrupt demise, to obtain

permission to move her piano--a present from relatives who occasionally

came to the rescue--a bookcase and three chairs up to the garret and

have a room she could call her own. Frau von Erkel was scandalized that

a French girl (she systematically ignored the German infusion in her

daughters) should wish for hours of solitude. But Aimée had the national

genius for pegging away, and her mother, who came in time to feel that

one nerve was being gnawed with maddening reiteration, finally

succumbed; relieving her mind daily.

After that it was comparatively easy, although there were several

notable engagements, for Heloise to become secretary to Gisela Döring.

She never dared admit that she received a generous monthly cheque for

her services, but Gisela was a favorite with the old lady (always

sitting placidly in her chair, with her hands in her lap, a faint ironic

smile on her still pretty face), and as her literary style was extolled

by her exacting daughters (Frau von Erkel never read even a German

newspaper, but subscribed for _Le Figaro_), and as she knew Gisela to

be a member of her own class, the new connection was harmonious; and

Heloise at last experienced something like real liberty in the tiny

garden house of the parterre apartment of Gisela Döring on the

Königinstrasse.

2

There is little time in the war zones to meet and talk, but even nurses

must rest and take the air, and during the month before the frightful

rush of wounded after the British offensive on the Somme began, the four

girls, all in different hospitals, maneuvered to obtain leave of absence

at the same hour, early in the evening. They promenaded the desolate

streets arm in arm, their heads together, relieving their burdened

souls. There was no idea of treason in any one of those rebellious

minds, for they still believed their Fatherland to have been on the

defensive from the first, the victim of a conspiracy, and they knew from

the expression of the officers' faces, to say nothing of their tempers,

that the danger was by no means past.

But being women, and women who had thought for themselves for many

years, they must talk it out, and when too overcharged to trust their

comments to the narrow streets, they retired to a hillock outside the

city which no spy could approach unseen. However, nothing was farther

from the minds of the German men of war than that the women cogs of

their supremely organized land should presume to criticize methods which

had, to their best belief, terrorized the world.

"But we are not the only ones," said Heloise grimly, as they sat on

their refuge one dusky evening. "All but the sheep have a word to say

now and then. Of course there always will be women who will grovel at

the feet of men merely because they are men; but look out for the others

when this accursed war is over. God! How I hate men! To think that once

I dreamed and hoped like the silly romantic girl I was that some day

some man would marry me in spite of my poverty. Now I would not marry

one of the Kaiser's sons. Sick or well, German, English, French, I

loathe them all alike. Obscene beasts every one of them; but I hate the

Germans most, for they are the most disgusting invalids. And I am a

German girl, too. France has never had any call for me. It is Marie who

would be all French if she could. Poor little Marie, with her drab face

and hair, her poverty, her dynamic body, mad to marry, and climbing out

of the window when mother is asleep, to go to Socialists' meetings and

scream off her pent-up passions. What a hideous world!"

She sprang to her feet and flung her arms above her head and glared at

the unresponsive stars.

"O God!" she prayed. "Deliver us! Deliver us from war and deliver us

from men! Deliver us from Kings and deliver us from criminal jealousies

and ambitions and greeds that the innocent millions expiate in blood and

tears! Deliver us from cowards--" She whirled suddenly upon Gisela.

"You--you--why don't you lead us out? You have more mind than any woman

in Germany. You have more influence. I have always placed my hopes on

you. But now--now--you are doing nothing but nurse disgusting men like

the rest of us."

"Hush! You are talking too loud. And you are carrying your revolt too

far. These poor deluded men you nurse are only to be pitied, and if they

merely revolt you, you have no vocation--"

"When did I ever pretend to have a vocation for nursing? Like all the

rest I felt I must do my part, and heaven knows it is better than

sitting at home making bandages and watching my mother slowly starve. If

I had rolled one more bandage I should have gone mad."

"Well, dear Heloise, as far as I am concerned, the time for women to

battle for their rights is when their country is safe, not in mortal

danger. Be sure that when this war is over--"

She fell silent. A little flame had leapt in her brain. She

extinguished it hurriedly, but it burnt the fingers of her will, always

enthroned and always on guard. As she stared at Heloise, lovely in her

Red Cross uniform, a white torch against the dark horizon, her tragic

eyes once more searching the heavens, it struggled for life again and

again. She loved Heloise and she felt a sudden inclusive love of her

sex, an overpowering desire to deliver it from the sadness and horror of

war; a profounder emotion than anything it had inspired in those far off

days of peace. After all, however serious she had believed herself to

be, it had been a game, a career; for in times of peace one must invent

the vital interests of life, and one's success or failure depends upon

one's powers of creating and sustaining the delusion. Only two things in

life were real, love and war.

Gisela, like many women of dominating intellect and personality, had

exhausted her power of sex-love with her first unfortunate but prolonged

passion, and although she had no hatred of men, and indeed liked many

and craved their society, she gave her real sympathies and affections

to her women friends. She had no intimates, and this, perhaps, was one

secret of her power. A certain aloofness is essential in intellectual

leadership. But if she had no talent for intimacy she had much for

friendship, and the friends of her inner circle were all women, partly

because there was no waste of time fending off love-making, partly

because there were more interests in common, consequently a deeper bond.

To-night she was filled with an irresistible pity and a longing to set

them free. But her hands were tied. She dared not even go to Great

Headquarters and protest against the terrible fate of the young girls of

Lille. She would have accomplished no good and become an instant object

of suspicion.

3

For many months she did her duty doggedly, her indignation routed by the

disquieting fact that the Germans were retreating from the Somme; inch

by inch, but still retreating. Once she might have been satisfied with

grandiose phrases and scornful assurances. But the long attack on Verdun

had ended in dark humiliation; a failure that the most resourceful

vocabulary was unable to translate into a German advantage, optically

inverted.

More than half a million young Germans had fallen before Verdun, and for

what? That France, disdained these many years by the mighty Teutonic

Empire, and numerically inferior, might demonstrate to the world that

she was the greater military nation of the two.

What was it all for? What of the ever-receding fields of peace, grown

green and fat again? What of the racing past dotted with the broken

headstones of promises of victory by this means or that?

But to attempt to answer historical enigmas while working day and night

over the mangled victims of the Somme was beyond her powers. It was not

until she broke down, and, with Heloise von Erkel and Mimi Brandt,

obtained leave to spend a month at St. Moritz, that she found her

answer.