3
Gisela's mind was complex and subtle, but it was also honest. When it
yielded a point, it yielded audibly. It was during the preliminary
discussion that she exclaimed:
"It is true--certain things come back to me--Mimi, open the window. The
air is blue and we are all hardy and can stand the night air. It was
after the Agadir incident that I felt a change. I say felt because I was
so absorbed in my work that I had no inclination for world politics and
never discussed them. Up to that time I had never heard a hint of war
for aggression on the part of Germany.... While, as far back as I can
remember, it was taken for granted there would be a great war some day,
I doubt if any but the military party really believed in it. We thought
the time had passed for real wars, that we were far too highly
civilized. Of course I knew that the military party to which my father
belonged would have welcomed a war, for war was their profession, their
game, their excuse for being, and I heard more or less talk among my
brothers of Pan-Germanism; but still I imagined that it was merely a
defensive Teutonic ideal, just as our oppressive standing army was a
necessity owing to our geographical position. My brother Karl said
once--it comes back to me, although I had quite forgotten it--that it
was futile for the military caste to try to work up a war, because every
moneyed man in the Empire--financiers, merchants, manufacturers, all the
rest--never would hear of it.
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