When they
discovered--and their spy service was also Teutonic--that they had
confided in some girl or woman whose inherent weakness or venality
threatened betrayal, she disappeared immediately and for ever.
Gisela, obtaining a commission to inspect the leading hospitals "back of
the front," visited each of the states in turn and addressed thousands
of women in groups of two or three hundred, gathered under the eyes of
the police in the name of one of the many war charities in which all
women were engaged. The lieutenants prepared these women, and Gisela
inspired, crystallized, cohered. The timid she shamed with the example
of the Russian women (and German women despise all other women); the
desperate she had little difficulty in convincing that there was but one
egress from their insupportable agony. Victory under her leadership if
they stood firm, was inevitable.
She had the gift of a fiery torrent of speech, a clear steady eye, even
when it flashed and blazed, and a warm and irresistible magnetism that
convinced the individual as well as the mass that she had but one
object, the liberation of the miserable women of her country, their
deliverance from further sorrow; and that she was wholly lacking in
personal ambition.
These women had known the gnawing sensation of unappeased appetite for
two years.
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