There was talk of suppressing this play at first, but Countess Niebuhr brought all her influence to bear, and as the widow of one esteemed junker and the daughter of another far more important, her argument that her daughter merely labored to make the German woman a still more powerful factor in upholding the might of German Kultur—­that being the secret hidden in what was after all but a fantasy—­caused the powers to shrug their shoulders and dismiss the matter.

After all, was not the play by a woman, and were not the German women the best trained in the world?  Besides, the play was amusing, and humor destroyed the serious purpose always.  Humor made the Americans the contemptible race they were—­fortunately for the future plans of Germany.  They took nothing seriously.  In time they would!

Those who have not lived in Germany have not even an inkling of the deep slow secret revolt against the insolent and inconsiderate attitude of the German male that had been growing among its women for some fifteen years before the outbreak of the war.  They ventured no public meetings or militant acts of any sort, for men were far too strong for them yet, and the German woman is by nature retiring, however individualistic her ego.  Their only outward manifestation was the hideous reformkleid, a typical manifestation in even the women of a nation whose art is as ugly as it often is interesting.  But thousands of them were muttering to one another and reading with envy the literature of woman’s revolt in other lands.  When one of their own sex rose, a woman of the highest intelligence and an impeccable style, who, although she signed herself Gisela Doering, was said to be a rebellious member of the Prussian aristocracy, their own vague protests slowly crystallized and they grew to look upon her as a leader, who one day would show them the path out of bondage.  Her correspondence grew to enormous proportions, but she answered every letter, fully determined by this time to accomplish something more than a name in letters while incidentally amusing herself with stirring up the women and annoying the men.  But although clubs were formed to discuss her work and letters, they were still unsuspected of the arrogant men who controlled the destinies of Germany.  And as the German woman is the reverse of frank, as little indication of the slow revolution was found in the home.  The solution was as far off as ever, but German women are patient and they bided their time, exulting in their secret.  It gave them a sense of revenge and power.

Then came the war.

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.