I am positive they go to sleep every
night murmuring: "Two and two make four. Two and two make four."
The women could hold meetings under their very noses, so long as they
were not in the street, lay their plans to the last fuse, and apply the
match at the preconcerted moment from one end of Germany to the other
unhindered, unless betrayed. The angry and restless male socialists
would not have a chance with the alert members of their own sex--who
regard women with an even and contemptuous tolerance. Useful but
harmless.
I made Gisela a junker by birth, because a rebel from the top, with
qualities of leadership, would make a deeper impression in Germany than
one of the many avowed extremists of humbler origin. On the other hand,
it was necessary to drop the von, and take a middle-class name, or she
would have failed to win confidence, in the beginning, as well as
literary success; from opposite reasons. It is very difficult for an
aristocratic German of artistic talents to obtain a hearing.
Practically all the intellectuals belong to the middle-class, the
aristocrats being absorbed by the army and navy. The arrogance and often
brutal lack of consideration of the ruling caste, to say nothing of
common politeness, have inspired universal jealousy and hatred, the more
poignant as it must be silent.
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