The women in the munition factories, who number millions, wear a serviceable kind of uniform overall.

The venom of the German women in regard to the war is quite in contrast to the feeling expressed by English women.  They have read a great deal about British and American women and they cordially detest them.  Their point of view is very difficult to explain.  When I have told German women that in many States in my country women have votes, their reply is, “How vulgar!” Their attitude towards the whole question of women’s franchise is that it is a form of Anglo-Saxon lack of culture and lack of authority.

The freedom accorded to English and American girls is entirely misunderstood.  A Dutch girl who, in the presence of some German ladies, expressed admiration for certain aspects of English feminine life, was fiercely and venomously attacked by that never-failing weapon, the German woman’s tongue.  The poor thing, who mildly expressed the view that hockey was a good game for girls, and the fine complexions and elegant walk of English women were due to outdoor sports, was reduced almost to tears.

The intolerance of German women is almost impossible to express.  I know a case of one young girl, a German-American, whose parents returned to Hamburg, who declined to repeat the ridiculous German formula, “Gott strafe England,” and stuck to her point, with the result that she was not invited to that circle again.

To the cry “Gott strafe England” has been added “Gott strafe Amerika,” the latter being as popular with the German women as the German men.  The pastors, professors, and the Press have told the German women that their husbands and sons and lovers are being killed by American shells.  A man who ought to know better, like Prince Rupert of Bavaria, made a public statement that half of the Allies’ ammunition is American.  After the British and French autumn offensive of 1915 the feeling against America on the part of German women became so intense that the American flag had to be withdrawn from the American hospital at Munich, although that hospital, supported by German-American funds, has done wonderful work for the German wounded.

Arguments with German women about the war are absolutely futile.  They follow the war very closely after their own method, and believe that any defeats, such as on the Somme or Verdun, are tactical rearrangements of positions, dictated by the wisdom of the General Staff, and so long as no Allied troops are upon German soil so long will the German populace believe in the invincibility of its army.  I am speaking always of the middle and upper classes, who are on the whole, but with increasing exceptions, as intensely pro-war as the lower classes are anti-war.

The modern German Bible is the Zeitung (the rough translation of which is “newspaper”) and German women are even more fanatical than the men, if possible, in their worship of it.