Other aeroplanes were darting about the city. The greater number were
driven by women, directing the fire brigades, but now and again a man,
whose monoplane had been in his private shed, flew upward primed for
battle. After a few parleys he retired to await events, one only
shooting a woman, and crashing to earth riddled with avenging bullets.
Such air men as were in Munich were too callous to danger of all sorts,
too accustomed to the horrors of the battlefield, to take this
outpouring of women and mere civilians seriously; even in spite of the
explosions, which, to be sure, denoted an appalling amount of
destruction. Any attempt to sally forth on foot and ascertain the extent
of the damage was met by bayonets and pistols in the hands of brigades
of women whose like they had never seen in Germany. They inferred they
were Russians, who had managed to cross the frontier with the infernal
subtlety of their race. At all events they would be exterminated with no
effort of men lacking authority to act.
3
Several of the women flew out into the country, but except where people
were gathered about smoking ruins the land was at peace; there was no
sign of a rally to the blue and white flag of Bavaria, no sign of an
avenging army. In the course of the morning there were hundreds of these
aviators darting about Bavaria, descending to tell the peasants or
shop-keepers of the small towns that Germany was in revolution, the
armies deprived of all support, and that the Republic had been
proclaimed in Berlin.
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