It was the mothers of Germany, balked, potential, or veritable, who were
ready to rise and rescue what was left of the youth of Germany. If
victory for the German arms were hopeless they would risk their own
lives to force a peace that would leave them with the rags of their old
honor and prosperity, that would give them revenge upon the men who had,
for their own criminal ambitions--ambitions which belonged to the Middle
Ages--doomed them to lifelong sorrow; and that would save the lives of
their children--save husbands also for a few of these stern and weary
girls. Even in the Rhine Valley, where the greater number of the
munition and ammunition factories were grouped, there were incessant
meetings, among the night and day shifts, of the thousands of women
employed there, and Gisela herself addressed each of them.
V
1
Gisela, who had been staring across the Koeniginstrasse into the heavy
branches that hung over the wall of the park, her mental vision too
actively raking the past to spare a beam for the familiar picture,
suddenly switched her searchlight away from those milestones in her
historic progress and concentrated it upon a suspicious shadow opposite.
Surely it had moved, and there was not a breath of wind. The night was
mild and still.
She did not move a muscle but narrowed her gaze until it detached the
figure of a man from the dark background of wall and trees.
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