In Herr Koettgen’s article occur the following paragraphs:  “At the first glance German women hardly appear likely material for the coming Revolution which will turn Germany into a modern country.  But many incidents point to the fact that German women are growing with their increasing task.  They are beginning to replace their men not only economically but politically.  Most of the public demonstrations in Germany during this war have been led and arranged by women.  The very first demonstration in 1915 consisted of women.  As Mr. Gerard tells us in his book, they had no very definite idea of what they wanted; only they wanted their men back.  But since that time their political education has made rapid progress....  With their men in the field and their former leaders (Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Louise Zietz) in prison, German women are learning to act for themselves.  Their demonstrations point to it, as do also letters written by German women to their men who are now prisoners of war in France and England.  In one of these letters which escaped the watchful eye of the censor, a German hausfrau described how she made the officials of Muenster sit up by her energetic and persistent demands.”

A girl upon one occasion said to Herr Koettgen:  “Only women and children were employed in our factory.  We had more than one strike.  Two women would go round to every woman and girl in the shop and tell them:  ’We have asked for twenty or thirty pfennings more.  To-morrow we are going on strike.  She who does not come out will have the thrashing of her life.’  We were all frightened and stayed away, for they really meant it.”

Herr Koettgen continues:  “Novel circumstances are reawakening in the meek German hausfrau some of that combative spirit which characterized the Teuton women in the time of Tacitus, when they often fought alongside of their men in the wagon camp....  German women will show their men the way to freedom.  Doing more than their share of the nation’s work, they insist upon being heard, and their growing influence is one of the greatest dangers to German autocracy in its present predicament.  As politicians German women have the advantage of not having gone through the soul-destroying, brutalizing school of Prussian militarism, and of not being burdened with the rigmarole of theory which formed the content of German politics before the war.  They can be trusted to make a bee-line for the real obstacle to peace and liberty—­to eradicate the autocratic militaristic regime which enslaved the German people in order to enslave the world.”

Now that the way has been cleared by two men of affairs who have never condescended to write fiction, I will give my own reasons for belief in the German women, and also for the general plan of The White Morning.