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.
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