But
go ahead, Mrs. Prentiss. What's your next? Gee, but you can hand it out.
You must have kept tab since August 1st, 1914."
"I took merely an intelligent American woman's interest," said Mrs.
Prentiss, momentarily haughty. "And I spent the first two years and a
half in Washington, where I often knew more than the newspapers; at all
events where I was constantly in the society of thinking men. Also
honest men, for war was the last thing we wanted, until our honor became
too deeply involved to permit us to hold aloof and fatten on your misery
any longer. Also, to be frank, our interests."
The fact which impressed the Germans and reduced all that had gone
before to a heated academic discussion, was that Germany was beaten, and
that the United States embargo would reduce the Central Empires to
actual starvation, not merely devitalizing subnourishment; combined with
their own certainty that the Teutonic Powers would go on fighting, under
the lash of Prussia, sacrificing hundreds of thousands of loyal German
and Austrian boys, plunge countless more families into hopeless grief,
doom all the children in the land to sheer hunger and tuberculosis.
Starvation! That was the inevitable fate of Germany if she prolonged the
war. And for what? Prostration, physical, financial, economic.
Pages:
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73