But although she heard of him often, for he had covered
himself with glory, she had seen him only once--from a window in Berlin
as he promenaded Unter den Linden; a superb and haughty figure, his
swelling chest covered with medals.
In Lille she met Elsa, who had been in charge of a hospital for a year,
Mimi Brandt and Heloise von Erkel, with whom she had been intimately
associated in Munich. She found all three horrified and appalled at the
atrocious cruelties, the persistent and needless severities, the
arrogant and swaggering attitude, accompanied by countless petty
tyrannies, unworthy of an army in possession; the wholly unmodern and
dishonorable treatment of a prostrate and wretched people. Above all,
the deportations of the young girls of Lille, torn from their families,
driven in herds through the streets, their faces stamped with despair or
abject terror, condemned to God knew what horrible fate, had shaken
these three humane and thinking women to the core.
All three, while serving far behind the lines, had thought their German
army an army of demi-gods, and all three were bitterly ashamed of their
countrymen and disposed to question a sovereign, and a military caste,
that not only encouraged the saddist lust of their fighters and seemed
unable to spare sufficient food for the civilians, in spite of the great
leakage through neutral countries, but which persisted in calling
themselves victorious when they were either perpetually on the defensive
or in the act of being beaten, despite their irresistible rush.
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