“Yes—­but—­” interrupted the practical Ann.  “How shall you go to work?  It is a stupendous idea.  But you never could keep such a propaganda movement a secret.  Some one would be sure to betray you.  German women are perfect fools about men.”

“No longer.  Nor were they for several years before the war as subservient (inwardly) to men as they had been in the past.  Far from it.  And now!  They have suffered too much at the hands of men.  They have no illusions left.  Love and marriage are ghastly caricatures to women who have lived in a time when men are slaughtered like pigs in massed formation; when their little boys are driven to war; when young girls—­and widows!—­are forced to bring more males into the world with the sanction of neither love nor marriage; when those too young for the trench or the casual bed wail incessantly for bread.  Oh, no!  The German man’s day of any but legal dominion is over.  Of course there is always the danger of spies and traitors, but—­”

“The wall for you at sunrise if you get caught,” cried Mimi, with another subsidence of enthusiasm.

“If that happen to be my destiny.  Can any one experience what we have done during these three years and not be as fatalistic as the men in the trenches?  I’d rather die before a firing squad after an attempt to save my wretched country than live to see it set back a hundred years.  But I refuse to believe that I shall be betrayed or that I shall fail. That I believe to be my destiny.  For a long time the idea has been fumbling in the back of my mind, but it lacked the current which would switch it into my consciousness.  You two have supplied the current.”

Kate threw back her head and gave her merry, ringing laugh.  “What delicious irony!  Germany defeated by its women!  When I think of your august papa, dear Gisela!  That kulturistically typical, that naive yet Jovian symbol of all the arrogance and conceit, the simple creed of Kaiserism ueber alles, and will-to-rule, that hurled this colossus on the back of Europe—­”

“Quite so.  You of all present know that I received the proper training for the part I am about to play.  If all goes well we women will erect a tablet to my father’s memory in the cathedral at Berlin.”  She leaned down and patted the rapt face of Heloise, then scowled at Mimi.  “May I not count on you?” she asked sternly.

“May you?  Well, say, what are you taking me for?  I’m more afraid of you than I am of a firing squad, and anyhow I seem to know we’ll win out.  I’m going to carry a club in case I mix up with Hans.  But what’s your plan?”

“This is neither the time nor place to work out a campaign.  The first move will be to train lieutenants in every State in Germany—­women whom we know either personally or through correspondence.  You, Heloise, will return to Munich at once and make out the lists.  We shall have no difficulty obtaining permits to travel all over the Empire, for it will never enter the insanely stupid official head to doubt whatever excuse we may choose to give.  Not only are we German women and therefore sheep, but we are Red Cross nurses....  And remember that nearly all the men who are still in the factories are Socialists—­and that women swarm in all of those factories—­”