m re 
 
GIFT Of 
 of 1307 
 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 
 
BY MRS. ATHERTON 
 
 HISTORICAL 
 THE CONQUEROR 
 CALIFORNIA: An Intimate History 
 WAR BOOK 
 THE LIVING PRESENT 
 
 FICTION 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 BEFORE THE GRINGO CAME, Containing "Rezdnov" 
 (1806) and "7 he Doomswoman" (1840) 
 
 THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES (1800-46) 
 A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE (The Sixties) 
 
 AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS (The 
 Eighties) 
 
 THE CALIFORNIANS (The Eighties) 
 
 A WHIRL ASUNDER (The Nineties) 
 
 ANCESTORS (Present) 
 
 THE VALIANT RUNAWAYS: A Book for Boys (1840) 
 
 IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD 
 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 MRS. B ALFA ME 
 
 PERCH OF THE DEVIL (Montana) 
 
 TOWER OF IVORY (Munich) 
 
 JULIA FRANCE AND HER TIMES (B. W. 1. and Eng 
 land) 
 
 RULERS OF KINGS (Austria, Hungary and the Adiron- 
 dacks) 
 
 THE TRAVELLING THIRDS (Spain) 
 THE GORGEOUS ISLE (Nevis, B. W. I.) 
 SENATOR NORTH (Washington) 
 
 PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES (Monterey, 
 California, and New York) 
 
 THE ARISTOCRATS (The Adirondack!) 
 
 THE BELL IN THE FOG: Short Stories of Various 
 Climes and Phases 
 
qpJt l>u A mold (xitttit, JV. F. 
 
 GISELA 
 
THE 
 
 WHITE MORNING 
 
 A NOVEL OF THE POWER OF THE 
 GERMAN WOMEN IN WARTIME 
 
 BY 
 GERTRUDE ATHERTON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
a * 
 
 Copyright, 1918, by 
 GERTRUDE ATHERTON 
 
 All rights reserved including that of 
 
 translation into foreign 
 
 languages 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 372172 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 COUNTESS GISELA NIEBUHR sat in 
 the long dusk of Munich staring over at 
 the beautiful park that in happier days had 
 been famous in the world as the Englischer 
 Garten, and deliberately recalled on what 
 might be the last night of her life the succes 
 sive causes that had led to her profound dis 
 satisfaction with her country as a woman. 
 She was so thoroughly disgusted with it as a 
 German that personal grievances were far 
 from necessary to fortify her for the mo 
 mentous role she was to play with the dawn ; 
 but in this rare hour of leisure it amused her 
 naturally introspective mind to rehearse cer 
 tain episodes whose sum had made her what 
 she was. 
 
 i 
 
2 THE WRITE MORNING 
 
 When she was fourteen and her sisters 
 Lili and Elsa sixteen and eighteen they had 
 met in the attic of their home in Berlin one 
 afternoon when their father was automati 
 cally at his club and their mother taking her 
 prescribed hour of rest, and solemnly pledged 
 one another never to marry. The causes of 
 this vital conclave were both cumulative and 
 immediate. Their father, the Herr Graf, a 
 fine looking junker of sixty odd, with a rov 
 ing eye and a martial air despite a corpulence 
 which annoyed him excessively, had trans 
 ferred his lost authority over his regiment 
 to his household. The boys were in their 
 own regiments and rid of parental discipline, 
 but the countess and the girls received the 
 full benefit of his military, and Prussian, rel 
 ish for despotism. 
 
 In his essence a kind man and fond of his 
 women, he balked their every individual wish 
 and allowed them practically no liberty. 
 They never left the house unattended, like the 
 American girls and those fortunate beings of 
 the student class. Lili had a charming voice 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 3 
 
 and was consumed with ambition to be an 
 operatic star. She had summoned her cour 
 age upon one memorable occasion and 
 broached the subject to her father. All the 
 terrified family had expected his instant dis 
 solution from apoplexy, and in spite of his 
 petty tyrannies they loved him. The best in 
 structor in Berlin continued to give her les 
 sons, as nothing gave the Graf more pleasure 
 of an evening than her warblings. 
 
 The household, quite apart from the Frau 
 Grafin s admirable management, ran with 
 military precision, and no one dared to be the 
 fraction of a minute late for meals or social 
 engagements. They attended the theater, 
 the opera, court functions, dinners, balls, on 
 stated nights, and unless the Kaiser took a 
 whim and altered a date, there was no 
 deviation from this routine year in and out. 
 They walked at the same hour, drove in the 
 Tiergarten with the rest of fashionable Ber 
 lin, started for their castle in the Saxon Alps 
 not only upon the same day but on the 
 same train every summer, and the electric 
 
4 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 lights went out at precisely the same moment 
 every night; the count s faithful steward 
 manipulated a central stop. They were en 
 couraged to read and study, but not oh, by 
 no means to have individual opinions. The 
 men of Germany were there to do the thinking 
 and they did it. 
 
 Perhaps the rebellion of the Niebuhr girls 
 would never have crystallized (for, after all, 
 their everyday experience was ntuch like that 
 of other girls of their class, merely intensified 
 by their father s persistence of executive 
 ardors) had it not been for two subtle influ 
 ences, quite unsuspected by the haughty 
 Kammerherr : they had an American friend, 
 Kate Terriss, who was "finishing her voice " 
 in Berlin, and their married sister, Mariette, 
 had recently spent a fortnight in the paternal 
 nest. 
 
 The count despised the entire American 
 race, as all good Prussians did, but he was as 
 wax to feminine blandishments outside of his 
 family, and Miss Terriss was pretty, diplo 
 matic, alluring, and far cleverer than he 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 5 
 
 would have admitted any woman could be. 
 She wound the old martinet round her finger, 
 subdued her rampant Americanism in his so 
 ciety, and amused herself sowing the seeds of 
 rebellion in the minds of " those poor Niebuhr 
 girls." As the countess also liked her, she 
 had been "in and out of the house " for 
 nearly a year. The young Prussians had 
 alternately gasped and wept at the amazing 
 stories of the liberty, the petting, the proces 
 sion of "good times " enjoyed by American 
 girls of their own class, to say nothing of the 
 invariable prerogative of these fortunate 
 girls to choose their own husbands; who, 
 according to the unprincipled Miss Terriss, 
 invariably spoiled their wives, and permitted 
 them to go and come, to spend their large 
 personal allowances, as they listed. Gisela 
 closed her beloved volume of Grimm s fairy 
 tales and never opened it again. 
 
 But it was the visit of Mariette that had 
 marshalled vague dissatisfactions to an or 
 dered climax. She had left her husband in 
 the garrison town she had married with the 
 
6 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 excellent young officer, making a trifling in 
 disposition of her mother a pretext for es 
 cape. On the night before her departure the 
 four girls huddled in her bed after the opera 
 and listened to an incisive account of her 
 brief but distasteful period of matrimony. 
 Not that she suffered from tyranny. Quite 
 the reverse. Of her several suitors she had 
 cannily engineered into her father s favor a 
 young man of pleasing appearance, good title 
 and fortune, but quite without character be 
 hind his fierce upstanding mustache. Inher 
 iting her father s rigid will, she had kept the 
 young officer in a state of abject submission. 
 She stroked his hair in public as if he had 
 been her pet dachshund, and patted his hand 
 at kindly intervals as had he been her dear 
 little son. 
 
 "But Karl has the soul of a sheep," she 
 informed the breathless trio. "You might 
 not be so fortunate. Far, far from it. How 
 can any one more than guess before one is 
 fairly married and done for? Look at papa. 
 Does he not pass in society as quite a charm- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 7 
 
 ing person? The women like him, and if 
 poor mama died he could get another quick 
 as a wink. But at the best, my dear girls, 
 matrimony in Germany, at least is an un 
 mitigated bore. And in a garrison town! 
 Literally, there is no liberty, even with one s 
 husband under the thumb. We live by rote. 
 Every afternoon I have to take coffee at some 
 house or other, when all those tiresome 
 women are not at my own. And what do you 
 suppose they talk about but invariably? 
 Lovel" (With ineffable disdain.) "Noth 
 ing else, barring gossip and scandal; as if 
 they got any good out of love! But they 
 are stupid for the most part and gorged with 
 love novels. They discuss the opera or the 
 play for the love element only, or the sensual 
 quality of the music. Let me tell you that 
 although I married to get rid of papa, if I 
 had it to do over I should accept parental 
 tyranny as the lesser evil. Not that I am 
 not fond of Karl in a way. He is a dear and 
 would be quite harmless if he were not in 
 love with me. But garrison society Gott, 
 
8 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 how German wives would rejoice in a war! 
 Think of the freedom of being a Bed Cross 
 nurse, and all the men at the front. Officers 
 would be your fate, too. Papa would not 
 look at a man who was not in the army. He 
 despises men who live on their estates. So 
 take my advice while you may. Sit tight, as 
 the English say. Even German fathers do 
 not live forever. The lime in our soil sees to 
 that. I notice papa s face gets quite purple 
 after dinner, and when he is angry. His 
 arteries must have been hardening for twenty 
 years. 
 
 Lili and Elsa were quite aghast at this 
 naked ratiocination, but Gisela whispered: 
 "We might elope, you know." 
 
 "With whom? No Englishman or Ameri 
 can ever crosses the threshold, and Kate has 
 no brothers. The students have no money 
 and no morals, and, what is worse, no baths. 
 A burgess or a professional would be quite 
 as intolerable, and no man of our class would 
 consent to an elopement. Germans may be 
 sentimental but they are not romantic when 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 9 
 
 it comes .to settlements. Now take my ad 
 vice." 
 
 They were taking it on this fateful day in 
 the attic. They vowed never to marry even 
 if their formidable papa locked them up on 
 bread and water. 
 
 Which would be rather good for us, ? re 
 marked the practical Elsa. "I am sure we 
 eat too much, and Gisela has a tendency to 
 plumpness. But your turn will not come for 
 four years yet, dear child. It is poor us that 
 will need all our vows. 
 
 After some deliberation they concluded to 
 inform their mother of their grim resolve. 
 Naturally sympathetic, a pregnant upheaval 
 had taken place in that good lady s psychol 
 ogy during the past year. Her marriage, al 
 though arranged by the two families, had 
 been a love match on both sides. The Graf 
 was a handsome dashing and passionate 
 lover and she a beautiful girl, lively and com 
 panionable. Disillusion was slow in coming, 
 for she had been brought up on the soundest 
 German principles and believed in the natu- 
 
10 THE WHITE MORXIXG 
 
 ral superiority of the male as she did in the 
 House of HohenzoHern and the Lutheran re- 
 
 Bat she suspected, daring her thirties, that 
 she was, after all, the daughter of a brilliant 
 father as well as of an obsequious mother, 
 and that she had possibilities of miiif! and 
 spirit that clamored for development and 
 fired the imagination, while utterly without 
 hope. In other words she was, like many 
 another German woman, in her secret heart, 
 an individual Bat she was not a rebel; her 
 social code forbade that She manufactured 
 interests for herself as rapidly, and as vari- 
 ous, as possible, preserved her good looks in 
 spite of her eight children (the two that 
 followed Gisela died in infancy), dressed far 
 better than most German women, cultivated 
 society, gave four notable musicales a season, 
 and was devoted to her sons and daughters, 
 although she never opposed her husband s 
 stern military discipline of those seemingly 
 typical TTMjVliAiMi It was her policy to keep 
 flie martinet in a good humor, and after all 
 
THE WHITE MORXIXG 11 
 
 she had condemned herself not to think 
 what better destiny than to be a German 
 woman of the higher aristocracy? They 
 might have been born into the middle class, 
 where there were quite as many tyrants as 
 in the patrician, and vastly fewer compensa 
 tions. At the age of forty-four she believed 
 herself to be a philosopher. 
 
 > ix months before Marietta s marriage W1 
 shortly after the birth and death of her last 
 child, Fran von Xiebuhr suddenly returned 
 to her bed, prostrate, on the verge of col 
 lapse. The count raged that any wife of his 
 should dare to be ill or absent (when not ful 
 filling patriotic obligations), consult her own 
 selfish whims by having nerves and lying 
 speechless in bed. But he had a very consid 
 erable respect for Herr Doktor Meyers a 
 rank plebeian but the best doctor in Berlin 
 and when that family adviser, as autocratic 
 as himself, ordered the Fran Grafin to go to 
 a sanatorium in the Austrian Dolomites but 
 alone, mind you ! and remain as long as he 
 I, myself, Herr Graf! deemed advisable, 
 
12 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 with, no intercourse, personal or chirographi- 
 cal with her family, the Head of the House 
 of Niebuhr angrily gave his consent and sent 
 for a sister to chaperon his girls. 
 
 The countess remained until the eve of 
 Mariette s wedding, and she passed those six 
 months in one of the superlatively beautiful 
 mountain resorts of Austria. She was soli 
 tary, for the most part, and she did an ex 
 cessive amount of thinking. She returned to 
 her duties with a deep disgust of life as she 
 knew it, a cynical contempt for women, and 
 a profound sense of revolt. Her natural 
 diplomacy she had increased tenfold. 
 
 When the three girls, their eyes very large, 
 and speaking in whispers, although their fa 
 ther was at a yearly talk-fest with his old 
 brothers in arms, confided to their mother 
 their resolution never in any circumstances to 
 adopt a household tyrant of their own, she 
 nodded understandingly. 
 
 " Leave it to me," she said. "Your fa 
 ther can be managed, little as he suspects it. 
 I ll find the weak spot in each of the suitors 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 13 
 
 he brings to the house and set him against all 
 of them. 
 
 < And my voice ? asked Lili timidly. But 
 the Frau Grafin shook her head. "There I 
 cannot help you. He thinks an artistic career 
 would disgrace his family, and that is the end 
 of it. Moreover, he regards women of any 
 class in public life as a disgrace to Germany. 
 My assistance must be passive apparently. 
 It will be enough to have no worse. Take my 
 word and Mariette s for that." 
 
 The Grafin, true to her word, quietly dis 
 posed of the several suitors approved by her 
 husband, and although the autocrat sputtered 
 and raged the Grafin, her youngest daughter 
 shrewdly surmised, rather encouraged these 
 exciting tempers arguing that these three 
 girls bade fair to remain on his hands for 
 ever, he ended always by agreeing that the 
 young officers were unworthy of an alliance 
 with the ancient and honorable House of Nie- 
 buhr. 
 
 The battles ended abruptly when Gisela was 
 eighteen and a fat Lieutenant of Uhlans, suing 
 
14 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 for the hand of the youngest born, and vehe 
 mently supported by the Graf, had just been 
 turned adrift. The Graf dropped dead in his 
 club. He left a surprisingly small estate for 
 one who had presented so pompous a front to 
 the world. But not only had his sons been 
 handsomely portioned when they entered the 
 army, and Mariette when she married, but the 
 excellent count, to relieve the increasing 
 monotony of days no longer enlivened by 
 maneuvers and boudoirs, had amused himself 
 on the stock exchange. His judgment had 
 been singularly bad and he had dropped most 
 of his capital and lived on the rest. 
 
 The town house must be sold and the coun 
 tess and her daughters retire to her castle in 
 the Saxon Alps. As there were no portions 
 for the girls, the haunting terrors of matri 
 mony were laid. 
 
 The four women took their comparative 
 poverty with equanimity. The countess had 
 been as practical and economical as all Ger 
 man housewives, even when relieved by 
 housekeepers and stewards, and she calcu- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 15 
 
 lated that with a meager staff of servants and 
 two years of seclusion she should be able to 
 furnish a flat in Berlin and pay a year s rent 
 in advance. Then by living for half the year 
 on her estate she should save enough for six 
 highly agreeable months in the capital. Per 
 haps she might let her castle to some rich 
 brewer or American; and this she eventually 
 did. 
 
 Lili was given permission to study for the 
 operatic stage and spend the following winter 
 in Dresden, where Mariette s husband was 
 now quartered. It was just before they 
 moved to the country that the Grafin said to 
 her girls as they sat at coffee in the dis 
 mantled house : 
 
 "You shall have all that I never had, fulfil 
 all the secret ambitions of my younger heart. 
 If you are individuals, prove it. You may go 
 on the stage, write, paint, study law, medi 
 cine, what you will. You have been bred aris 
 tocrats and aristocrats you will remain. It 
 is not liberty that vulgarizes. Don t hate 
 men. They have charming phases and 
 
16 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 moods; but avoid entangling alliances until 
 you are thirty. After that you will know 
 them well enough to avoid that fatal initial 
 submergence. The whole point is to begin 
 with your eyes open and your campaign 
 clearly thought out. 
 
 "I, too, purpose to get a great deal out of 
 life now that my fate is in my own hands. By 
 the summer we shall even be able to travel a 
 little. Third-class, yet that will be far more 
 amusing than stuffed into one of those plush 
 
 carriages with the windows closed and for 
 bidden to speak with any one in the corridor. 
 And forced to carry all the hand-luggage off 
 the train (when your father had an economi 
 cal spasm and would not take a footman) 
 while he stalked out first as if we did not 
 exist. I shall never marry again Gott in 
 Himmel, no ! but I shall gather about me all 
 the interesting men I never have been able to 
 have ten minutes conversation with alone; 
 and, so far as is humanly possible, do exactly 
 as I please. My ego has been starved. I 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 17 
 
 shall always be your best friend but think 
 for yourselves." 
 
 Gisela had no gift that she was aware of, 
 but she was intellectual and had longed to 
 finish her education at one of the great uni 
 versities. As she was not strong, however, 
 she was content to spend a year in the moun 
 tains; and then, robust, and on a meager in 
 come, she went to Munich to attend the lec 
 tures on art and literature and to perfect 
 herself in French and English. She took a 
 small room in an old tower near the Frauen- 
 kirche and lived the students life, probably 
 the freest of any city in the world. She 
 dropped her title and name lest she be barred 
 from that socialistic community as well as dis 
 covered by horrified relatives, and called her 
 self Gisela Doring. After she had taken her 
 degree she passed a month in Berlin with 
 her mother, who already had established a 
 salon, but she was determined to support her 
 self and see the world at the same time. 
 Herr Doktor Meyers found her a position as 
 
18 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 governess with a wealthy American patient, 
 and, under her assumed name, she sailed im 
 mediately for New York. 
 
 The Bolands had a house in upper Fifth 
 Avenue and others at Newport, Aiken and 
 Bar Harbor; and when not occupying these 
 stations were in Europe or southern Cali 
 fornia. The two little girls passed the sum 
 mer at Bar Harbor with their governess. 
 
 It took Gisela some time to accustom her 
 self to the position of upper servant in that 
 household of many servants, but she pos 
 sessed humor and she had had governesses 
 herself. Her salary was large, she had one 
 entire day in the week to herself, except at 
 Bar Harbor, and during her last summer in 
 the United States Mrs. Boland had a violent 
 attack of "America first " and took her chil 
 dren and their admirable governess not only 
 to California but to the Yellowstone Park, the 
 Grand Canon and Canada. They traveled in 
 a private car, and Gisela, who could enjoy 
 the comfortless quarters of a student flat in 
 Munich with all that life meant in the free 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 19 
 
 and beautiful city by the Isar, could also revel 
 in luxury; and this wonderful summer, fol 
 lowing as it did the bitter climax of her first 
 serious love affair, seemed to her all the con 
 solation that a mere woman could ask. At 
 all events she felt for it an intense and last 
 ing gratitude. 
 
 It was during her first summer at Bar Har 
 bor that the second determining experience 
 of her life began, and it lasted for three years. 
 She dwelt upon it to-night with humor, sad 
 ness, and, for a moment, thrilling regret, but 
 without bitterness. That had passed long 
 since. 
 
 She was virtual mistress of the house at 
 Bar Harbor, and as the children had a trained 
 nurse and a maid, besides many little friends, 
 she had more leisure than in the city with 
 her one day of complete detachment. She 
 met Freiherr Franz von Nettelbeck when she 
 was walking with her charges and he was 
 strolling with the little girls of the Howland 
 
20 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 family. The introductions were informal, 
 and as they fell naturally into German there 
 was an immediate bond. Nettelbeck was an 
 attache of the German Embassy who pre 
 ferred to spend his summers at Bar Harbor. 
 He was of the fair type of German most famil 
 iar to Americans, with a fine slim military 
 figure, deep fiery blue eyes and a lively mind. 
 His golden hair and mustache stood up 
 aggressively, and his carriage was exceeding 
 haughty, but those were details too familiar 
 to be counted against him by Gisela. Her 
 rich brunette beauty was now as ripe as her 
 tall full figure, and she was one of those 
 women, rare in Germany, who could dress 
 well on nothing at all. She too possessed a 
 lively mind, and after her long New York 
 winter was feeling her isolation. Her first 
 interview (which included a long stroll and a 
 canoe ride) with this young diplomat of her 
 own land, visibly lifted her spirits, and she 
 sang as she braided her heavy mass of hair 
 that night. 
 Franz, like most unattached young Ger- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 21 
 
 mans, was on the lookout for a soul-mate 
 (which he was far too sophisticated to an 
 ticipate in matrimony), and this handsome, 
 brilliant, subtly responsive, and wholly 
 charming young woman of the only country 
 worth mentioning entered his life when he 
 too was lonely and rather bored. It was his 
 third year in the United States of America 
 and he did not like the life nor the people. 
 Nevertheless, he was trying to make up his 
 mind to pay court to Ann Howland, a young 
 lady whose dashing beauty was somewhat 
 overpoised by salient force of character and 
 an uncompromisingly keen and direct mind, 
 but whose fortune eclipsed by several mil 
 lions that of the high-born maiden selected by 
 his family. 
 
 Here was a heaven-sent interval, with in 
 tellectual companionship in addition to the 
 game of the gods. Being a German girl, 
 Gisela Doring would be aware that he could 
 not marry out of his class, unless the plebeian 
 pill were heavily gilded. To do him justice, 
 he would not have married the wealthiest 
 
22 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 plebeian in Germany. An American: that 
 was another matter. If there were such a 
 thing as an aristocracy in this absurd coun 
 try which pretended to be a democracy and 
 whose "society" was erected upon the visi 
 ble and screaming American dollar, no doubt 
 Miss Howland belonged to the highest rank. 
 In Germany she would have been a princess 
 probably of a mediatized house, and, he 
 confessed it amiably enough, she looked the 
 part more unapologetically than several he 
 could mention. 
 
 So did Gisela Doring. He sighed that a 
 woman who would have graced the court of 
 his Kaiser should have been tossed by a 
 bungling fate into the rank and file of the 
 good German people; so laudably content to 
 play their insignificant part in their coun 
 try s magnificent destiny. 
 
 Gisela never told him the truth. Some 
 times, irritated by his subtle arrogance, she 
 was tempted. Also consuming love tempted 
 her. But of what use! She was without 
 fortune and he must add to his. He had a 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 23 
 
 limited income and expensive tastes, and 
 when a young nobleman in the diplomatic 
 service marries he must take a house and live 
 with a certain amount of state. Moreover, 
 he intended to be an ambassador before he 
 was forty-five, and he was justified in his am 
 bitions, for he was exceptionally clever and 
 his rise had been rapid. But now he was 
 care-free and young, and love was his right. 
 
 Gisela understood him perfectly. Not only 
 was she of his class, but her brother Karl had 
 madly loved a girl in a chocolate shop and 
 wept tempestuously beside her bed while their 
 father slept. He married philosophically 
 when his hour struck. 
 
 But if she understood she was also roman 
 tic. She forgot her vow to live alone, her 
 mother s advice, and dreamed of a moment 
 of overwhelming madness which would 
 sweep them both up to the little church on the 
 mountain. There, like a true heroine of old- 
 time fiction, she would announce her own 
 name at the altar. This moment, however, 
 did not arrive. Nettelbeck, too, was roman- 
 
24 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 tic, but his head was as level within as it was 
 flat behind. He never went near the church 
 on the mountain. 
 
 There was no surface lovemaking during 
 the first two summers, or in the winter follow 
 ing the second summer, when he came over 
 from Washington on her Wednesday as often 
 as he could, and they had luncheon and tea 
 in byway restaurants. They were both fasci 
 nated by the game, and they had an infinite 
 number of things to talk about, for their 
 minds were really congenial. They disputed 
 with fire and fury. It was a part of Gisela s 
 dormant genius to grasp instinctively the 
 psychology of foreign nations, and before she 
 had been in the United States a year she un 
 derstood it far better than Nettelbeck ever 
 would. Even if he had despised it less he 
 would have lavished all the resources of his 
 wit upon a country so different from Ger 
 many in every phase that it must necessarily 
 be negligible save as a future colony of Prus 
 sia, if only for the pleasure of seeing Gisela s 
 long eyes open and flash, the dusky red in 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 25 
 
 her cheeks burn crimson and her bosom heave 
 at his " junker narrow-mindedness and stu 
 pid arrogance " ; "a stupidity that will be 
 the ruin of Germany in the end!" she ex 
 claimed one day in a sudden moment of illu 
 mination, for, as a matter of fact, she had 
 given little thought to politics. However, she 
 recalled her typical papa. 
 
 Of course they talked their German souls 
 inside out. At least Nettelbeck did. As time 
 went on, Gisela used her frankness as a mask 
 while her soul dodged in panic. She believed 
 him to be lightly and agreeably in love with 
 her (she had witnessed many summer flirta 
 tions at Bar Harbor, and been laid siege to, 
 by more than one young American, idle, enter 
 prising, charming and quite irresponsible), 
 and she was appalled at her own capacity for 
 love and suffering, the complete rout of her 
 theories, based on harsh experience, before 
 the ancient instinct to unleash her woman 
 hood at any cost. 
 
 She plunged into a serious study of the 
 country, which she had heretofore absorbed 
 
26 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 with her avid mental conduits, and read in 
 numerable newspapers, magazines, elucidat 
 ing literature of all sorts, besides the best his 
 tories of the nation and the illuminating biog 
 raphies of its distinguished men in politics 
 and the arts. She was deeply responsive to 
 the freedom of the individual in this great 
 whirling heterogeneous land, and as her du 
 ties at any time were the reverse of onerous, 
 it was imperative to keep her consciousness 
 as detached from her inner life as possible. 
 But at the back of her mind was always 
 the haunting terror that he never would come 
 again, that he was really more attracted to 
 Ann Rowland than he knew; and of all 
 American women whom Gisela had met she 
 admired Miss Howland preeminently. She 
 was not only beautiful in the grand manner 
 but she possessed intellect as distinguished 
 from the surface "brightness" of so many of 
 her countrywomen, and had made a deep im 
 pression upon even the superlatively educated 
 German girl when they had chanced to meet 
 and talk at children s picnics at Bar liar- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 27 
 
 bor, or when the triumphant young beauty 
 ran up to the nursery in town to bring a mes 
 sage to the little Bolands from her sisters. 
 It was true that hers was not the seductive 
 type of beauty, that her large gray eyes were 
 cool and appraising, her fine skin quite with 
 out color, and her soft abundant hair little 
 darker than Franz s own, but she could be 
 feminine and charming when she chose and 
 she would be a wife in whom even a German 
 would experience a secret and swelling pride. 
 
 What chance had she she Gisela Dor ing? 
 
 There were days and weeks, during that 
 second winter, when she was tormented by a 
 sort of sub-hysteria, a stifled voice in the 
 region of her heart threatening to force its 
 way out and shriek. There were times when 
 she gave way to despair, and thought of her 
 vigorous youth with a shudder, and at other 
 times she was so angry and humiliated at 
 her surrender and secret chaos, that she was 
 on the point more than once of breaking defi 
 nitely with Franz Nettelbeck, or even of going 
 back to Germany. If he missed a Wednes- 
 
28 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 day, or failed to write, she slipped out of the 
 house at night and paced Central Park for 
 hours, fighting her rebellious nerves with her 
 pride and the strong independent will that 
 she had believed would enable her to leap 
 lightly over every pitfall in life. 
 
 Then he would come and her spirits would 
 soar, her whole awakened being possessed by 
 a sort of reckless fury, a desperate resolve to 
 enjoy the meager portion of happiness allot 
 ted to her by an always grudging fate; and 
 for a few days after he left she would give 
 herself up to blissful and extravagant 
 dreams. 
 
 But Nettelbeck was by no means lightly in 
 love with Gisela Doring. During the third 
 summer, partly owing to the increased inde 
 pendence of her growing charges, partly to 
 his own expert management, they met in long 
 solitudes seldom disturbed. Gisela dismissed 
 fears, ignored the inevitable end, plunged 
 headlong and was wildly happy. Nettelbeck 
 was an ardent and absorbed lover, for he 
 knew that his time was short, and he was de- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 29 
 
 termined to have one perfect memory in his 
 secret life that the woman who bore his name 
 should never violate. Miss Howland had 
 meted him the portion his dilatoriness invited 
 and married a fine upstanding young Ameri 
 can whose career was in Washington; and 
 his family had peremptorily commanded him 
 to return in the spring (with the Kaiser s 
 permission, a mandate in itself) and marry 
 the patient Baronin Irma Hammorworth. 
 
 And so for a summer and a winter they 
 were happy. 
 
 Gisela averted her mind tonight from the 
 parting with something of the almost forgot 
 ten panic. She had never dared to dwell 
 upon it, nor on the month that followed. Her 
 powerful will had rebelled finally and she had 
 fought down and out of her consciously func 
 tioning mind the details of her tragic passion, 
 and even reveled arrogantly in the sensation 
 of deliverance from the slavery of love. 
 Simultaneously she was swept off to see the 
 great natural wonders of the American conti 
 nent and they had intoned the requiem. 
 
30 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 The following autumn she returned to 
 Germany and paid her mother another brief 
 visit. 
 
 There all was well. Frau von Niebuhr, 
 who had not developed a white hair and whose 
 Viennese maid was a magician in the matter 
 of gowns and complexion, was enjoying life 
 and had a daring salon ; that is to say gather 
 ings in which all the men did not wear uni 
 forms nor prefix the sacred von. She drew 
 the line at bad manners, but otherwise all 
 (and of any nation) who had distinguished 
 themselves, or possessed the priceless gift of 
 personality, were welcome there; and al 
 though she lived to be amused and make up 
 what she had lost during thirty unspeakable 
 years, she progressed inevitably in keenness 
 of insight and breadth of vision. She had 
 become a student of politics and stared into 
 the future with deepening apprehension, but 
 of this she gave not a hint to Gisela. Mari- 
 ette was her closest friend and only confi 
 dante. Mariette was now living in Berlin, 
 and amusing herself in ways Frau von 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 31 
 
 Niebuhr disapproved, mainly because she 
 thought it wiser to banish men from one 9 s in 
 ner life altogether ; but, true to her code, she 
 forebore remonstrance. 
 
 Lili, having discovered that her voice was 
 not for grand opera, had philosophically de 
 scended to the concert stage and was excitedly 
 happy in her success and independence. Elsa 
 was a Bed Cross nurse. 
 
 Grisela met Franz von Nettelbeck at a court 
 function and had her little revenge. He was 
 furious, and vowed, quite audibly, that he 
 would never forgive her. But Gisela was 
 merely disturbed lest the Obersthofmeisterin 
 who stood but three feet away overhear his 
 caustic remarks. Distinguished professors 
 (without their wives) might go to court as a 
 reward for shedding added luster upon the 
 German Empire, but lesser mortals who had 
 received payment for services rendered 
 might not. Her independent mother, still a 
 favorite, for she was exceeding discreet, 
 would have incurred the imperial displeasure 
 if the truth were known. However, the inci- 
 
32 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 dent passed unnoticed, and Franz, whatever 
 his shortcomings, was a gentleman and kept 
 her secret. 
 
 The scene at the palace had been brilliant 
 and sustaining and she had received much 
 personal homage, for she was looking very 
 beautiful and radiant, and the little adventure 
 had been incense to her pride (moreover the 
 young Freif rau von Nettelbeck, whom she saw 
 on his arm later, was an insignificant little 
 hausfrau) ; but when she was in her room 
 after midnight she realized grimly that if 
 she had not done her work so well during that 
 terrible month in New York and buried her 
 sex heart, she should once more be beating the 
 floor or the wall with her impotent hands. 
 But the knowledge of her immunity made her 
 a little sad. 
 
 The next episode to her grim humor was 
 wholly amusing, although it played its part in 
 her developing sense of revolt against the 
 attitude of the German male to the sex of the 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 33 
 
 mother that bore him. She returned to 
 Munich after a month in Berlin, for by this 
 time she had made up her mind to write, and 
 the city by the Isar was the most beautiful in 
 the world to write and to dream in. More 
 over, she wished to attend the lectures on 
 drama at the University. 
 
 The four years in America, during which 
 she had, in spite of her sentimental pre 
 occupation, studied diligently every phase 
 that passed before her keen critical vision, 
 analyzed every person she had met, and 
 passed many of her evenings in the study of 
 the best contemporary fiction, had, associated 
 with the spur of her own upheaval, developed 
 her imagination, and her head was full of un 
 written stories. They were highly realistic, 
 of course, as became a modern German, but 
 unmistakably dramatic. 
 
 She attended the lectures, practising on 
 short stories meanwhile, devoting most of her 
 effort to becoming a stylist, that she might 
 attain immediate recognition whatever her 
 matter. She lived in a small but comfortable 
 
34 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 hotel, for not only had she saved the greater 
 part of her salary, but the Bolands, however 
 oblivious socially of a paid attendant, had a 
 magnificent way with them at Christmas, and 
 had given her an even larger cheque at 
 parting. 
 
 In Munich she was once more Gisela Dor- 
 ing, once more led the student life. There are 
 liberties even for people of rank in Munich, 
 and many nobles, exasperated with the rigid 
 class lines of Berlin and other German capi 
 tals, move there, and, while careful to attend 
 court functions, make intelligent friends in all 
 sets. They are, or were, the happiest people 
 in Germany. Here Gisela could sit alone in 
 a cafe by the hour reading the illustrated 
 papers and smoking with her coffee, attract 
 ing no attention whatever. She joined par 
 ties of students during the summer and 
 tramped the Bavarian Alps, and she danced 
 all night at student balls. Nevertheless, she 
 managed to hold herself somewhat aloof and 
 it was understood that she did not live the 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 35 
 
 "loose" life of the "artist class. " She was 
 much admired for her stately beauty and her 
 style, and if the young people of that free and 
 easy community were at times inclined to re 
 sent a manifest difference, they succumbed to 
 her magnetism, and respected her obvious 
 devotion to a high literary ideal. 
 
 It was during her second winter that she 
 met Georg Zottmyer. 
 
 He was a tall, narrow, angular young man 
 with a small clipped head and preeminent 
 ears. His narrow face was set with nar 
 rower features, and his eyes were very 
 bright, and the windows of his conceit. Al 
 though his income was minute he boasted a 
 father of note in the University of Leipzig, 
 and his mother had traveled and written a 
 scathing satire on the United States of 
 America. He had not a grain of originality 
 or imagination, but he too was taking the 
 course in dramatic art, and reading for that 
 degree without whose magic letters he could 
 not hope to take his place in the world of art 
 
36 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 to which his parts entitled him. He met 
 Gisela in the lecture room and immediately 
 became her cavalier. 
 
 At first Gisela endeavored to get rid of him 
 by an icy front, but this he took for feminine 
 coquetry and his own front was serene. As 
 he had made up his mind to be a dramatist 
 merely because the career appealed acutely to 
 his itching ambition, so did he in due course 
 make up his mind to marry this handsome 
 brunette (what hair he had was drab) who 
 bore all the earmarks of secret wealth in spite 
 of the fact that she lived in a small hotel. As 
 time went on, Gisela resigned herself and put 
 his little ego under her microscope. 
 
 His wooing was methodical. He not only 
 walked home with her after every lecture, but 
 he gave her a series of teas in his high little 
 flat, and he really did know "people." His 
 parental introductions had given him the 
 entree to the professional circles, and he cul 
 tivated society both semi-fashionable and 
 ultra-literary. He knew no one who had not 
 arrived. y 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 37 
 
 He chose an unpropitious day for a tenta 
 tive declaration of his intentions. It was 
 very cold. White mufflers protected his out 
 standing ears, a gray woolen scarf was wound 
 about his long neck and almost covered his 
 tight little mouth. He wore mitts and wrist 
 lets, and his nose was crimson. Gisela, in a 
 new set of furs, sent her for Christmas by 
 Mariette, and a smart gown of wine-colored 
 cloth, looked radiant. Her dark eyes shone 
 with joy in the cold electric air of that high 
 plateau, her cheeks were red, her warm full- 
 lipped mouth was parted over her even white 
 teeth. They walked from the University down 
 the great Leopoldstrasse, one of the finest 
 streets in Europe, toward the Cafe Luitpold, 
 where he had invited her to drink coffee. 
 
 There was little conversation during that 
 brisk walk. He was frozen, and she was not 
 thinking of him at all. At the cafe he selected 
 an alcove as far from the noisy groups of 
 students as possible. All the " trees" were 
 hung with colored caps and the atmosphere 
 was dense with smoke. 
 
38 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Zottmyer, who, after all, was young, soon 
 thawed out in the warm room, and when he 
 had cheered his interior with a large cup of 
 hot coffee and lit a cigarette, he brought up 
 the subject of matrimony. He had no inten 
 tion of proposing in these surroundings, but 
 it was time to pave the way or set the pat 
 tern of the tiling; he cultivated the divergent 
 phrase. 
 
 "It is time I married/ he announced, and, 
 not to appear too serious, he smiled into her 
 glowing face. She looked happy enough to 
 encourage a man far less fatuous than Georg 
 Zottmyer. 
 
 "Yes?" Gisela s eyes had wandered to 
 the nearest group of students and she was 
 wondering if they might not have made hand 
 some men had they permitted their duel 
 wounds to heal instead of excoriating them 
 with salt and pepper. "Most German men 
 marry young." 
 
 "I am not conventional. I should not 
 dream of marrying unless I found a young 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 39 
 
 lady who possessed everything that I demand 
 in a wife." 
 
 " Ah f What then do you demand ? 
 
 " Every thing. " 
 
 "That is a large order. What do you 
 mean, exactly." 
 
 "I mean, of course, that I should not marry 
 a woman who did not have in the first place 
 beauty, that I might be proud of her in pub 
 lic, besides refreshing myself with the sight 
 of her in private. She must have beauty of 
 figure as well as of face, as I detest our 
 dumpy type of German women. And she 
 must have style, and dress well. It would 
 mortify me to death, particularly after I had 
 made my position, to go about with one of 
 those wives that seem to fall to the lot of 
 most intellectuals. Soft-waisted, bulging 
 women," he added spitefully, "how I hate 
 them!" 
 
 "Your taste is admirable. Our women are 
 much too careless, particularly after mar 
 riage. And the second requirement!" 
 
40 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 "Oh, a small fortune, at least. I could not 
 afford to marry, otherwise, and although I 
 shall no doubt make a large income in due 
 course, I must begin well. I prefer a house, 
 as it gives an artist a more serious and digni 
 fied position. " 
 
 "Indeed, yes. 
 
 "And of course my wife must be of good 
 birth, as good as my own. I should never 
 dream of marrying even a Venus in this Bo 
 hemian class. That sort of thing is all very 
 well " He waved his hand, and arched an 
 eyebrow, and Gisela inferred she was to take 
 quite a number of amours for granted ; much, 
 for instance, as she would those of a hand 
 some officer who sat alone at the next table 
 and who looked infinitely bored with love and 
 longing for war. 
 
 "She must it goes without saying be in 
 tellectual, clever, bright, amusing. I must 
 have companionship. Not an artist, however. 
 I should never permit my wife to write or 
 model or sing for the public. And she must 
 have the social talent, magnetism, the power 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 41 
 
 to charm whom she will. That would help 
 me infinitely in my career. 
 
 6 Is that all 1" 
 
 "Oh, she must be affectionate and a good 
 housekeeper, but most German women have 
 the domestic virtues. Naturally, she must 
 have perfect health. I detest women with 
 nerves and moods. " 
 
 Gisela had been leaning forward, her elbows 
 on the table, her little square chin on her 
 hands, and if there were wondering contempt 
 in her eyes he saw only their brilliance and 
 fixed regard. 
 
 "And what, may I ask, do you purpose to 
 give her in return for all that?" 
 
 He flicked the ashes from his cigarette, and 
 the gesture was quite without affectation. 
 "What has that to do with it?" 
 
 "Well only you think, then, that in re 
 turn for all but all! that a woman has to 
 offer a man any man you should not feel 
 yourself bound to give her an equal measure 
 in return?" 
 
 "I have not given the matter a thought. 
 
42 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Naturally the woman I select will see all in 
 me that I see in her. Shall we get out of 
 this ? I feel I have taken a cold. Fresh air 
 is a drastic but efficient corrective." 
 
 He escorted her to her hotel, although he 
 gazed longingly down his own street as they 
 passed it. His head felt overburdened and 
 it was awkward manipulating a handkerchief 
 with mitts. 
 
 Within half a block of the hotel Gisela, who 
 had been walking rapidly, bending a little 
 against the wind, paused and drew herself up 
 to her stately height. Cold as he was he 
 thrilled slightly as he reflected that she pos 
 sessed real distinction; almost she might be 
 hochwohlgeboren yes, quite. He tingled 
 less agreeably as he recalled a snub admin 
 istered by a great lady with whom he had 
 presumed to attempt conversation at the 
 house of a liberal little Eussian baroness. 
 This woman would snub any hochwohlge 
 boren who presumed to snub him in the fu 
 ture. 
 
 "Herr Zottmyer," said Gisela, and her 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 43 
 
 tones were as crisp as the air blowing down 
 from the Alps, "you must permit me to give 
 you a note of introduction to my mother when 
 you go to Berlin next week. I hope you will 
 find time to call on her. 
 
 Zottmyer s eyes snapped at this covert 
 encouragement, although it was rather for 
 ward in a German girl practically to ask a 
 man his intentions. "I shall be delighted to 
 call on Frau Dormer " 
 
 "Countess Niebuhr. I have practised a 
 little innocent deception here in Munich 
 for obvious reasons. Also, during my four 
 years sojourn in America " 
 
 "In America?" His brain, a fine, concen 
 trated, Teutonic organ, strove to grapple with 
 two ideas at once. "You have been in 
 America ? 
 
 "Bather. I feel half an American. You 
 have no idea how it changed my point of view 
 oh, but in many ways ! The men, you see, 
 are so different from ours. The American 
 woman has a magnificent position " 
 
 "Ridiculous, uppish, spoilt creatures " 
 
44 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 "But how delicious to be spoiled. You 
 will call on my mother 1 9 
 
 Zottmyer almost choked. "I hate the 
 Prussians above all, that arrogant junker 
 class. And the name of Niebuhr! why, it 
 stands for all that junkerdom means in its 
 most virulent form ! 
 
 "I am afraid it does. My brothers are 
 junkers unalloyed. But I can assure you 
 that my mother is as democratic as one may 
 be in Berlin. She has quite a number of 
 friends among the intellectuals " 
 
 "Would she consent to your marriage with 
 a a mere intellectual I 
 
 "What has that to do with it? It would 
 never occur to me to marry out of my own 
 class. That is always a mistake. There are, 
 you see, well subtle differences that for 
 bid harmony " 
 
 l You are a snob. I might have seen it be 
 fore this. You give yourself airs " He 
 was now so torn between fury and disappoint 
 ment, mortification and Teutonic resentment 
 at being obliged to diverge abruptly from pre- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 45 
 
 cisely thought-out tactics, that he forgot his 
 physical discomfort and incidentally to use 
 his handkerchief. 
 
 "A snob? When I am true to the best 
 traditions of my race? Did you not tell me 
 that you would not marry a Venus if she hap 
 pened to be born outside of your own class? 
 But it is rather cold here not ? Shall I send 
 the note of introduction to your flat ? 
 
 1 I would not put my foot in any supercili 
 ous junker palace, and I never wish to see 
 you again!" He whirled about, burying his 
 nose in his handkerchief, and tore down the 
 street. 
 
 Gisela laughed, but with little amusement. 
 Her sympathy for German women took a long 
 stride. But she forgot him a few moments 
 later at her desk. 
 
 During the next five years she wrote many 
 short stories and essays, and four plays. Her 
 work appealed subtly but clearly to the grow 
 ing rebellion of the German women; she was 
 
46 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 too much of an artist to write frank propa 
 ganda and the critics were long waking up to 
 the object of her work. Her first three plays 
 were failures, but the fourth ran for two years 
 and a half and was played all over Germany 
 and Austria. It was a brilliant, dramatic, 
 half-humorous, half-tragic exposition of the 
 German woman s enforced subservience to 
 man as compared with the glorious liberty of 
 the somewhat exaggerated American co- 
 heroine. 
 
 There was talk of suppressing this play at 
 first, but Countess Niebuhr brought all her 
 influence to bear, and as the widow of one 
 esteemed junker and the daughter of another 
 far more important, her argument that her 
 daughter merely labored to make the Ger 
 man woman a still more powerful factor in 
 upholding the might of German Kultur 
 that being the secret hidden in what was 
 after all but a fantasy caused the powers to 
 shrug their shoulders and dismiss the matter. 
 
 After all, was not the play by a woman, 
 and were not the German women the best 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 47 
 
 trained in the world! Besides, the play was 
 amusing, and humor destroyed the serious 
 purpose always. Humor made the Americans 
 the contemptible race they were fortunately 
 for the future plans of Germany. They took 
 nothing seriously. In time they would! 
 
 Those who have not lived in Germany have 
 not even an inkling of the deep slow secret 
 revolt against the insolent and inconsiderate 
 attitude of the German male that had been 
 growing among its women for some fifteen 
 years before the outbreak of the war. They 
 ventured no public meetings or militant acts 
 of any sort, for men were far too strong for 
 them yet, and the German woman is by nature 
 retiring, however individualistic her ego. 
 Their only outward manifestation was the 
 hideous reformldeid, a typical manifestation 
 in even the women of a nation whose art is as 
 ugly as it often is interesting. But thousands 
 of them were muttering to one another and 
 reading with envy the literature of woman s 
 revolt in other lands. When one of their own 
 sex rose, a woman of the highest intelligence 
 
48 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 and an impeccable style, who, although she 
 signed herself Gisela Boring, was said to be 
 a rebellious member of the Prussian aristoc 
 racy, their own vague protests slowly crys 
 tallized and they grew to look upon her as 
 a leader, who one day would show them the 
 path out of bondage. Her correspondence 
 grew to enormous proportions, but she an 
 swered every letter, fully determined by this 
 time to accomplish something more than a 
 name in letters while incidentally amusing 
 herself with stirring up the women and an 
 noying the men. But although clubs were 
 formed to discuss her work and letters, they 
 were still unsuspected of the arrogant men 
 who controlled the destinies of Germany. 
 And as the German woman is the reverse of 
 frank, as little indication of the slow revolu 
 tion was found in the home. The solution 
 was as far off as ever, but German women are 
 patient and they bided their time, exulting in 
 their secret. It gave them a sense of revenge 
 and power. 
 Then came the war. 
 
II 
 
 GISELA, like all the good women of Ger 
 many, flamed with patriotism and 
 righteous indignation. Eussia and France 
 with no provocation, with no motive but in 
 sensate ambition on the one hand and a fest 
 ering desire for revenge on the other, had 
 crossed the sacred frontiers of the great Teu 
 tonic Empire. A French aviator had 
 dropped bombs on Neuremburg, one of the 
 artistic treasures of Europe, although, merci 
 fully, his bombs had inadvertently been filled 
 with air. Then followed the even more in 
 defensible act of Great Britain, whose only 
 motive in joining forces with paper allies was 
 to aim a blow at the glorious commercial pres 
 tige of Germany, the object of her fear and 
 hate these many years. 
 
 49 
 
50 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Gisela immediately entered the hospital 
 opened by her mother in Berlin and took a 
 rapid first-aid course, concentrating upon the 
 work all the fine powers of her mind and 
 strong young body. Literature, fame, prop 
 aganda among women, all were dismissed. 
 Although victory was certain in a few months 
 there would be many thousands of wounded 
 and she was filled with a passionate desire to 
 serve those heroes and martyrs of foreign 
 hatred. She forgot her personal experience 
 of the German male, forgot herself. Her be 
 loved Fatherland was attacked, and the Ger 
 man male in his heroic resistance, his 
 triumphal progress, was become a god. 
 Dienen! Dienen! 
 
 She had no time to ponder upon the viola 
 tion of Belgium and knew nothing of the 
 curious escape of medieval psychology from 
 the formal harness of modern times. She 
 was engaged in hard menial labor during 
 those first weeks and it was sufficient to know 
 that Germany had been violated. It is true 
 that her warrior parent had sometimes 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 51 
 
 boasted of the day when Germany should 
 rule the world, and that he had referred to 
 the Great European War as a foregone con 
 clusion, as so many had been doing these past 
 ten or fifteen years ; but he had been careful 
 to say nothing about throwing the torch into 
 the powder. Gisela, like the vast majority of 
 civilians in the Central Empires, had grown 
 too accustomed to the evidences of a great 
 standing army to give them more than a pass 
 ing thought. Were they not, then, situate 
 in the very middle of Europe ? Surrounded 
 by envious and powerful enemies! What 
 more natural than that they should be ever on 
 the alert? 
 
 That Germany herself would strike at 
 the peace of Europe, a peace which had 
 brought her an unexampled prosperity and 
 eminence, never had crossed Gisela s mind. 
 Nevertheless, knowing the German male as 
 she did, she was quite sure that the officers 
 reveled in the exchange of peace for war as 
 much as the men in the ranks detested it. 
 She could see Franz von Nettelbeck barking 
 
52 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 out orders for the irresistible advance, his 
 keen blue eyes flashing with triumph, his 
 Prussian upper lip curling with impatient 
 scorn, and Georg Zottmyer grinding his teeth 
 in the trenches and suffering acutely from 
 dyspepsia. 
 
 Until the summer of 1916 she was very 
 busy, either in her mother s hospital or in one 
 in Munich run by a group of Socialist friends 
 under Marie von Erkel. She glanced at the 
 English papers sometimes, but assumed that 
 their versions of the war s origin, and of Ger 
 manic methods, were for home effect, and 
 smiled at their occasional claims of victory. 
 
 Poor things ! By this time she had seen so 
 much mortal suffering, soothed so many dying 
 men who raved of unimaginable horrors, writ 
 ten so many pathetic last letters to mothers 
 and wives and sweethearts, that the first 
 mood of fury and hatred had long since 
 passed. Her mind, normally clear, acute, 
 just, regained its poise. Moreover, those five 
 years preceding the war, during which she 
 had learned to use her gifts for the benefit of 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 53 
 
 her sex instead of for her own amusement 
 and fame, played their insidious part. 
 
 When she was ordered to take charge of a 
 hospital in Lille in June of the second year of 
 the war she had forced herself to accept the 
 present state of Europe with a certain phi 
 losophy. After all, war was its normal, its 
 historic, condition. Following a somewhat 
 unusual interval of peace, owing to the benef 
 icent reign of the German Emperor, the war 
 microbes of Europe, cultured in the Balkan 
 swamps, had, through some miscalculation, 
 after a deplorable assassination, ravaged the 
 entire continent instead of being localized as 
 heretofore. Men were men and kings were 
 kings and war was war. Gisela sometimes 
 wondered if the hideous upheaval were any 
 body s fault, if the desire to fight had not been 
 more or less simultaneous in spite of the fact 
 that Germany was caught napping and per 
 mitted Russia and France to sneak over her 
 frontiers. 
 
 The sinking of the Lusitania and other pas 
 senger ships, or rather the results, had filled 
 
54 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 her with a horror that might have developed 
 into protest had she not been assured that the 
 U-boats had purposely waited for a calm sea, 
 not too far from shore, that the passengers 
 might have every opportunity for escape ; and 
 that they had been the victims of contraband 
 cargoes of ammunition exploding, badly ad 
 justed life-boats, panic among themselves, 
 and utter inefficiency and selfishness of the 
 officers and crew. 
 
 These excuses sounded plausible to a young 
 woman still too occupied to ponder ; but dur 
 ing her journey through Belgium and the in 
 vaded districts of France her mind grew more 
 and more uneasy. Surely an army so uni 
 formly victorious, an army which only fore- 
 bore to press forward in a battle like that 
 of the Marne, for instance for sound strate 
 gic reasons, should have found it unnecessary 
 to destroy whole towns with their priceless 
 monuments of art, level countless insignificant 
 villages, and reduce their inhabitants to cow 
 ering misery. She had been a student of 
 history and had inferred that modern war- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 55 
 
 fare was as humane as war may be ; witness 
 the fine magnanimity of the Japanese, an 
 Oriental race. This passing country, which 
 she had known well in its hey-day, looked 
 extraordinarily like the historical pictures 
 of the inva3ions of Goths and Vandals and 
 Huns. 
 
 Huns ! She had resented the constant 
 use of the word in the English papers, dis 
 missing it finally as childish spite. Had its 
 usurpation of the classic and noble word 
 " Germans " been one of those quick, merci 
 less, simultaneous designations that fly 
 through every army in wartime and are as apt 
 as they are inevitable? 
 
 She felt a sudden desire to "talk it out" 
 with Franz von Nettelbeck, whose mind, de 
 spite his prejudices, was the most stimulating 
 she had ever known. But although she heard 
 of him often, for he had covered himself with 
 glory, she had seen him only once from a 
 window in Berlin as he promenaded Unter 
 den Linden ; a superb and haughty figure, his 
 swelling chest covered with medals. 
 
56 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 In Lille she met Elsa, who had been in 
 charge of a hospital for a year, Mimi Brandt 
 and Heloise von Erkel, with whom she had 
 been intimately associated in Munich. She 
 found all three horrified and appalled at the 
 atrocious cruelties, the persistent and need 
 less severities, the arrogant and swaggering 
 attitude, accompanied by countless petty 
 tyrannies, unworthy of an army in posses 
 sion; the wholly unmodern and dishonorable 
 treatment of a prostrate and wretched people. 
 Above all, the deportations of the young girls 
 of Lille, torn from their families, driven in 
 herds through the streets, their faces stamped 
 with despair or abject terror, condemned to 
 God knew what horrible fate, had shaken 
 these three humane and thinking women to 
 the core. 
 
 All three, while serving far behind the lines, 
 had thought their German army an army 
 of demi-gods, and all three were bitterly 
 ashamed of their countrymen and disposed 
 to question a sovereign, and a military caste, 
 that not only encouraged the saddist lust of 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 57 
 
 their fighters and seemed unable to spare suf 
 ficient food for the civilians, in spite of the 
 great leakage through neutral countries, but 
 which persisted in calling themselves victori 
 ous when they were either perpetually on the 
 defensive or in the act of being beaten, de 
 spite their irresistible rush. The Somme 
 Drive had not begun but there was not a 
 nurse in Lille that did not know the truth 
 about Verdun. 
 
 "And believe me, as the Americans say," 
 remarked Mimi Brandt, "when the German 
 people know the truth, particularly the Ger 
 man women, there will be some circus. " 
 
 Mimi had been far more of an active rebel 
 than the Niebuhr girls, possibly because her 
 life-stream was closer to the source, patently 
 to herself because she had a magnificent voice 
 which needed only technique to assure her a 
 welcome in any of the great opera houses of 
 Germany. Adroitly persuaded by her par 
 ents to marry when she was not quite seven 
 teen, she had conceived an abhorrence of the 
 rodent-visaged young burgess who had been 
 
58 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 her lot ; not only was he personally distasteful 
 to the ardent romantic girl, but he would not 
 permit her to cultivate her voice, much less 
 study for the stage. Her revenge had been 
 a cruel disdain, to which he had responded 
 by lying under the bed all night and howling. 
 Twice she had run away, visiting prosperous 
 and sympathetic relatives in Milwaukee, and 
 both times returned at the passionate solici 
 tations of her parents ; not only outraged in 
 their dearest conventions but anxious to be 
 rid of the small rodent born of the union. 
 
 Her last return had been but a month before 
 the outbreak of the war, and Hans Brandt, 
 to his growling disgust, was promptly swept 
 off by the searching German broom. He was 
 as much in love with his wife as a man so 
 meagerly equipped in all but national conceit 
 may be, for Mimi was a handsome girl with a 
 buxom but graceful figure, and a laughing 
 face whose golden brown eyes sparkled with 
 the pure fun of living when they were not 
 somber with disgust and rebellion. 
 
 Gisela had always looked upon Heloise von 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 59 
 
 Erkel as the most tragic figure in Munich. 
 In appearance she had distinction rather than 
 beauty, for although her features were deli 
 cate her complexion and hair were faded and 
 there were faint lines on her charming face. 
 She was a blonde of the French type, and her 
 light figure, although indifferently carried 
 and a stranger to gowns, possessed an inde 
 finable elegance. 
 
 Under heaven knew what impulse of ro 
 mantic madness Frau von Erkel, then Helo- 
 ise d Oremont, had married a young German 
 officer, and although both fancied themselves 
 deeply in love the breach began shortly after 
 they had settled to the routine life of the 
 frontier town where he was stationed, and had 
 widened rapidly in spite of the fact that she 
 produced six children as automatically as the 
 most devoted (and detested) hausfrau of her 
 acquaintance. Shortly after the birth of 
 Marie, the breach became a chasm, for the 
 chocolate firm, inherited through her bour- 
 geoise mother and the source of Frau von 
 ErkePs wealth, failed, and the haughty Ba- 
 
60 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 varian aristocrat was forced to keep up his 
 position in the army and maintain his grow 
 ing family on an income, accruing from choco 
 late investments, that should have been re 
 served for pleasure alone. 
 
 However, there was help for it. He re 
 nounced cards and such other costly diver 
 sions as was possible without lowering his 
 standard as a gentleman and an officer, and of 
 course the real privation was borne by the 
 women of the family. He even ceased to rage 
 at his wife, for she merely sat in her favorite 
 chair, her hands folded, and looked at him 
 with her subtle ironic smile. 
 
 When Gisela met them, Frau von Erkel and 
 her three daughters (all in their late twenties 
 and unmarried) were living in a dingy old 
 house in a respectable quarter, with one beer- 
 sodden maid to relieve them of the heavy 
 work and bake the cake for the Sunday 
 "Coffee." 
 
 Colonel von Erkel and his three sons lived 
 in bachelor quarters and called upon the 
 women of the family every Sunday afternoon 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 61 
 
 at precisely four o clock. In full uniform, 
 and imposing specimens of the German offi 
 cer, they sat stiffly upon the uncomfortable 
 chairs for about thirty minutes and then si 
 multaneously escaped and were seen no more 
 for a week. 
 
 At first Grisela was intensely amused at the 
 vagaries of the Erkels, but when she saw the 
 four narrow beds in a row in one small mon 
 astic room (the first floor was let to lodgers to 
 pay the rent), and still more of their almost 
 hopeless contriving to hold their position in 
 Munich society, to say nothing of a bare suffi 
 ciency of food and raiment, her sympathies, 
 always more deep than quick, were perma 
 nently aroused. But they were confined to 
 the girls. Charming and graceful as the old 
 lady was, it was evident that if above the 
 arrogance of her German husband she was 
 afflicted with the intense conservatism of her 
 own race. It had taken Aimee, the oldest of 
 the girls, three years of persistent begging, 
 nagging, arguments, tears, and threats of 
 abrupt demise, to obtain permission to move 
 
62 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 her piano a present from relatives who oc 
 casionally came to the rescue a bookcase 
 and three chairs up to the garret and have a 
 room she could call her own. Frau von Er- 
 kel was scandalized that a French girl (she 
 systematically ignored the German infusion 
 in her daughters) should wish for hours of 
 solitude. But Aimee had the national gen 
 ius for pegging away, and her mother, who 
 came in time to feel that one nerve was being 
 gnawed with maddening reiteration, finally 
 succumbed ; relieving her mind daily. 
 
 After that it was comparatively easy, al 
 though there were several notable engage 
 ments, for Heloise to become secretary to 
 Gisela Boring. She never dared admit that 
 she received a generous monthly cheque for 
 her services, but Gisela was a favorite with 
 the old lady (always sitting placidly in her 
 chair, with her hands in her lap, a faint ironic 
 smile on her still pretty face), and as her liter 
 ary style was extolled by her exacting daugh 
 ters (Frau von Erkel never read even a Ger 
 man newspaper, but subscribed for Le Fi- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 63 
 
 garo), and as she knew Gisela to be a member 
 of her own class, the new connection was har 
 monious; and Heloise at last experienced 
 something like real liberty in the tiny garden 
 house of the parterre apartment of Gisela 
 Doring on the Koniginstrasse. 
 
 There is little time in the war zones to meet 
 and talk, but even nurses must rest and take 
 the air, and during the month before the 
 frightful rush of wounded after the British 
 offensive on the Somme began, the four girls, 
 all in different hospitals, maneuvered to 
 obtain leave of absence at the same hour, 
 early in the evening. They promenaded the 
 desolate streets arm in arm, their heads 
 together, relieving their burdened souls. 
 There was no idea of treason in any one of 
 those rebellious minds, for they still believed 
 their Fatherland to have been on the defen 
 sive from the first, the victim of a conspiracy, 
 and they knew from the expression of the 
 officers faces, to say nothing of their tern- 
 
64 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 pers, that the danger was by no means 
 past. 
 
 But being women, and women who had 
 thought for themselves for many years, they 
 must talk it out, and when too overcharged 
 to trust their comments to the narrow streets, 
 they retired to a hillock outside the city which 
 no spy could approach unseen. However, 
 nothing was farther from the minds of the 
 German men of war than that the women cogs 
 of their supremely organized land should pre 
 sume to criticize methods which had, to their 
 best belief, terrorized the world. 
 
 "But we are not the only ones," said He- 
 loise grimly, as they sat on their refuge one 
 dusky evening. "All but the sheep have a 
 word to say now and then. Of course there 
 always will be women who will grovel at the 
 feet of men merely because they are men ; but 
 look out for the others when this accursed 
 war is over. God! How I hate men! To 
 think that once I dreamed and hoped like the 
 silly romantic girl I was that some day some 
 man would marry me in spite of my poverty. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 65 
 
 Now I would not marry one of the Kaiser s 
 sons. Sick or well, German, English, French, 
 I loathe them all alike. Obscene beasts every 
 one of them; but I hate the Germans most, 
 for they are the most disgusting invalids. 
 And I am a German girl, too. France has 
 never had any call for me. It is Marie who 
 would be all French if she could. Poor little 
 Marie, with her drab face and hair, her pov 
 erty, her dynamic body, mad to marry, and 
 climbing out of the window when mother is 
 asleep, to go to Socialists meetings and 
 scream off her pent-up passions. What a 
 hideous world!" 
 
 She sprang to her feet and flung her arms 
 above her head and glared at the unrespon 
 sive stars. 
 
 God ! " she prayed. Deliver us ! De 
 liver us from war and deliver us from men ! 
 Deliver us from Kings and deliver us from 
 criminal jealousies and ambitions and greeds 
 that the innocent millions expiate in blood and 
 tears! Deliver us from cowards " She 
 whirled suddenly upon Gisela. You you 
 
66 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 why don t you lead us out? You have more 
 mind than any woman in Germany. You 
 have more influence. I have always placed 
 my hopes on you. But now now you are 
 doing nothing but nurse disgusting men like 
 the rest of us." 
 
 "Hush! You are talking too loud. And 
 you are carrying your revolt too far. These 
 poor deluded men you nurse are only to be 
 pitied, and if they merely revolt you, you 
 have no vocation " 
 
 "When did I ever pretend to have a voca 
 tion for nursing? Like all the rest I felt I 
 must do my part, and heaven knows it is bet 
 ter than sitting at home making bandages and 
 watching my mother slowly starve. If I had 
 rolled one more bandage I should have gone 
 mad." 
 
 "Well, dear Heloise, as far as I am con 
 cerned, the time for women to battle for their 
 rights is when their country is safe, not in 
 mortal danger. Be sure that when this war 
 is over " 
 
 She fell silent. A little flame had leapt in 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 67 
 
 her brain. She extinguished it hurriedly, 
 but it burnt the fingers of her will, always 
 enthroned and always on guard. As she 
 stared at Heloise, lovely in her Bed Cross 
 uniform, a white torch against the dark hori 
 zon, her tragic eyes once more searching the 
 heavens, it struggled for life again and again. 
 She loved Heloise and she felt a sudden in 
 clusive love of her sex, an overpowering de 
 sire to deliver it from the sadness and horror 
 of war ; a prof ounder emotion than anything 
 it had inspired in those far off days of peace. 
 After all, however serious she had believed 
 herself to be, it had been a game, a career ; for 
 in times of peace one must invent the vital 
 interests of life, and one s success or failure 
 depends upon one s powers of creating and 
 sustaining the delusion. Only two things in 
 life were real, love and war. 
 
 Gisela, like many women of dominating in 
 tellect and personality, had exhausted her 
 power of sex-love with her first unfortunate 
 but prolonged passion, and although she had 
 no hatred of men, and indeed liked many 
 
68 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 and craved their society, she gave her 
 real sympathies and affections to her women 
 friends. She had no intimates, and this, per 
 haps, was one secret of her power. A certain 
 aloofness is essential in intellectual leader 
 ship. But if she had no talent for intimacy 
 she had much for friendship, and the friends 
 of her inner circle were all women, partly 
 because there was no waste of time fending 
 off love-making, partly because there were 
 more interests in common, consequently a 
 deeper bond. To-night she was filled with 
 an irresistible pity and a longing to set them 
 free. But her hands were tied. She dared 
 not even go to Great Headquarters and pro 
 test against the terrible fate of the young 
 girls of Lille. She would have accomplished 
 no good and become an instant object of sus 
 picion. 
 
 3 
 
 For many months she did her duty 
 doggedly, her indignation routed by the dis- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 69 
 
 quieting fact that the Germans were re 
 treating from the Somme; inch by inch, but 
 still retreating. Once she might have been 
 satisfied with grandiose phrases and scornful 
 assurances. But the long attack on Verdun 
 had ended in dark humiliation ; a failure that 
 the most resourceful vocabulary was unable 
 to translate into a German advantage, opti 
 cally inverted. 
 
 More than half a million young Germans 
 had fallen before Verdun, and for what? 
 That France, disdained these many years by 
 the mighty Teutonic Empire, and numerically 
 inferior, might demonstrate to the world that 
 she was the greater military nation of the 
 two. 
 
 What was it all for? What of the ever- 
 receding fields of peace, grown green and fat 
 again? What of the racing past dotted with 
 the broken headstones of promises of victory 
 by this means or that? 
 
 But to attempt to answer historical enigmas 
 while working day and night over the mangled 
 
70 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 victims of the Somme was beyond her powers. 
 It was not until she broke down, and, with 
 Heloise von Erkel and Mimi Brandt, obtained 
 leave to spend a month at St. Moritz, that she 
 found her answer. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE three girls went to a little hotel that 
 had been a favorite resort of Gisela s in 
 times of peace when she had felt an impera 
 tive need of the high solitudes and eternal 
 snows. They planned a week s rest, and a 
 fortnight or more of mountain climbing, dis 
 missing the world war from their minds as 
 far as possible. But their gentle plans were 
 upset on the eighth day after their arrival, 
 when at the end of an hour s hard skating, 
 clad in the bright sweaters and caps of old, 
 Gisela suddenly stopped short and returned 
 the hard stare of two young women who had 
 drawn apart and were evidently discussing 
 her. That they were Americans Gisela rec 
 ognized at a glance, but for a moment she saw 
 them through a curtain of fire and smoke and 
 
 71 
 
72 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 shrieking shells and dying groans, so deep in 
 the background of her memory were the peo 
 ple and events of her merely personal life. 
 One of the young women was very tall, with 
 a slim dashing figure, fine fair hair, keen 
 cold gray eyes, a haughty nostril and upper 
 lip : a beauty of the patrician American type. 
 The other was shorter but also excessively 
 thin, with dark dancing eyes, a warm color, 
 a coquettish nose and pouting lips which 
 somehow invoked the complacent visage of 
 the late Herr Graf Niebuhr and a brilliant 
 smile. In a moment Gisela recognized Ann 
 Howland Prentiss and Kate Terriss, now 
 Mrs. Tolby. This American friend of her 
 childhood had married an American whose 
 business kept him in London, and her path 
 and Gisela 7 s had never crossed since her fin 
 ishing days in Berlin; although she had cor 
 responded with Lili for two or three years 
 and knew the family history in vague outline. 
 Gisela skated directly over to them and held 
 out her hand to Kate. "It is a long while, " 
 she said, "but perhaps you remember me " 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 73 
 
 Do I ? Ann will not believe me that you 
 are Gisela von Niebuhr not Doring. What a 
 lark that was to run off to America and fool 
 everybody! I wish I had come across you. 
 It would have been quite dramatic to tear off 
 the mask of the governess and reveal the 
 junker. I think it was too stupid of you, 
 Ann, that you didn t guess." 
 
 "I noticed many inconsistencies," said 
 Mrs. Prentiss dryly. She added, holding out 
 her hand with a charming smile : But later, 
 I was so proud to have known Gisela Doring, 
 that personal curiosity seemed impertinent. 
 How we have missed your writings these last 
 dreadful years ! 
 
 Then all three began to talk at once and 
 Gisela gathered that Mrs. Tolby had nursed 
 behind the British lines in France since the 
 early days of the war, and that her old friend, 
 Mrs. Prentiss, had joined her a few months 
 since. Kate asked innumerable questions 
 about the other girls, particularly Mariette, 
 whom she remembered as a Germanic blonde 
 of warm coloring, the coldest eyes, the most 
 
74 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 subtly rigid and ruthless mouth she had ever 
 seen. She had found some difficulty pictur 
 ing her as a Eed Cross nurse and was not sur 
 prised to hear that she was in charge of an 
 enormous organization for the supply of can- 
 tines. Of her executive ability and quick de 
 termination there could be no doubt as she 
 told Ann Prentiss later. 
 
 In the excitement and exhilaration of this 
 purely feminine conversation which soon 
 included Heloise and Mimi the two parties 
 forgot the gory chasm that divided them. 
 When they dropped suddenly at a chance 
 word to the present that gripped even these 
 glittering snow fields with its red insatiable 
 fingers, Kate, as ever, was equal to the for 
 midable moment and cried out, snapping her 
 fingers at the blue ether so tranquilly aloof 
 from warring hosts : 
 
 "Forget it! For to-day, at least. What 
 are you thinking about so hard, Ann?" 
 
 "I ll tell you later. Let us go in and 
 have tea and then skate again. I noticed how 
 well my step suited Countess Gisela s." 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 75 
 
 Ann Rowland, as the wife of an eminent 
 politician, had long since cultivated the art 
 of mental suppleness and had learned to fas 
 cinate the most diverse intelligences and egos. 
 Gisela, who was always warmly responsive to 
 personal charm when not too obviously in 
 sincere, enjoyed the hour on the ice so ex 
 clusively devoted to her by the distinguished 
 American and went to bed that night well 
 content to bury the war during this period of 
 necessary rest, grateful for this fresh cur 
 rent that swept her for the moment into one 
 of those old backwaters of mere femininity. 
 Mrs. Prentiss had not related a single anec 
 dote of the front, nor alluded to the fact 
 that she was a Bed Cross nurse. 
 
 But she and Kate Terriss sat up until mid 
 night. They were both women capable of 
 seizing those rare opportunities for service 
 that flit past so many intelligent women lack 
 ing initiative, and here was one that the most 
 clear-thinking man would have envied. It 
 was a piece of unbelievable luck ; Gisela Dor- 
 ing was not only here to their hand in a re- 
 
76 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 laxed and friendly mood, but she possessed 
 charm combined with a great intelligence and 
 an iron will: she was far more the obvious 
 leader than they had inferred from her work, 
 and they guessed something of the powerful 
 influence she must quietly have obtained over 
 the women of Germany. Mrs. Prentiss had 
 by no means approved of her at an earlier 
 period, for she had shrewdly suspected that 
 it was the handsome German governess, not 
 the high-born Irm,a, who thwarted her de 
 signs upon the most attractive "foreigner" 
 she had ever met. But even if she had cher 
 ished a grudge, and her life had been far too 
 happy and successful for that, she would 
 have been so profoundly grateful to Gisela 
 for saving her from the anomalous and 
 wretched position of other modern American 
 women married to medieval Germans, that 
 she felt almost as great a desire to serve her 
 as civilization in general. 
 
 When the two Americans parted for the 
 night a methodical program had been worked 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 77 
 
 out, with every date at command and every 
 fact in damning sequence. The result of this 
 momentous conference was that none of the 
 five went to bed on the following night, but 
 sat about a large oval table in the common 
 sitting-room of Mrs. Prentiss and Mrs. 
 Tolby, and wrangled until dawn. 
 
 The challenge was given by the Americans 
 and accepted by the Germans, whose curiosity 
 had been carefully pricked, and all had agreed 
 that no matter how intensely distasteful any 
 argument might be they would not separate 
 for at least eight hours, and that there should 
 be as little "hot stuff " (quoting Mimi 
 Brandt) as possible. 
 
 The avowed object of the Americans was 
 to prove conclusively that Germany, carry 
 ing out a deliberate program, had precipi 
 tated the war in 1914, believing Eussia to be 
 deliquescent, France riddled with syndical 
 ism, and Britain on the verge of civil war; 
 
78 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 consequently that the exact moment had come 
 for the swift execution of her scientifically 
 wrought plan for world dominion. 
 
 The three German girls, deep and many as 
 were their causes for resentment and dis 
 gust, had clung fast to the belief in their 
 country s defensive attitude in the face of a 
 gigantic conspiracy, and were not pried apart 
 from it without hours of argument, hot and 
 resentful on the one side, cool, precise, and 
 logical on the other. But those acute Ger 
 man brains responded to the high intelligence 
 of their opponents and to their manifest hon 
 esty. Moreover, it was indisputable that 
 from the beginning the Americans had been 
 in a position to know every side and detail 
 of the ghastly story, while the Germans, con 
 fined within their own narrow borders and 
 taught that the foreign newspapers were a 
 tissue of "strategic lies," had been wholly 
 dependent upon their government for 
 "facts. 11 
 
 During this long debate Gisela sat at the 
 head of the table, rigid and watchful, when 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 79 
 
 she was not fiercely arguing; Mimi Brandt 
 sprawled in an easy chair, satirical and 
 slangy, enveloped in smoke; Heloise, very 
 pale and the first to be convinced, sat with 
 her little hands clenched against her cheek 
 bones; Ann Prentiss, unshakenly cool quick 
 and precise; the more brilliant Mrs. Tolby 
 flashing her beacon light into recesses dark 
 ened these three years by systematic lies, but 
 incapable of the final stupidity. 
 
 That long argument need not be reproduced 
 here. All the world has made up its mind 
 about Germany, knows her far better than 
 as yet she knows herself. It was the deliber 
 ate effort of the Americans to force these 
 three intelligent Germans, one of them a 
 leader of the first importance, to realize that 
 their country stood to the rest of the world 
 for lying, treachery, cruelty, brutality, de 
 generacy, bad sportsmanship, ostrich psy 
 chology; above all, that she had forfeited 
 her place among modern and honest na 
 tions. 
 
 When these facts had been hammered in, 
 
80 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Mrs. Prentiss moved on to the two cardinal 
 facts for whose elucidation the rest had been 
 a mere preamble: that the Central Powers 
 were beaten and knew it, but were determined 
 to go on sacrificing the manhood of the coun 
 try, reducing the population to the ultimate 
 miseries of mind and body rather than yield; 
 and that the only hope of obtaining mercy 
 from the Entente Allies in the inevitable hour 
 of surrender was to dethrone the Hohenzol- 
 lerns and establish a Eepublic. Otherwise as 
 a nation they would cease to exist and their 
 last fate would be infinitely worse than their 
 present. A German Eepublic would be wel 
 comed into the family of nations and receive 
 a friendly and helping hand from every one 
 of the great adversaries, whose prestige and 
 wealth were still unshaken, and who all 
 desired to preserve the balance of power in 
 Europe. Above all might they rely upon the 
 United States of America, the friendly hints 
 of whose President had been systematically 
 distorted by the anxious Pan-Germans still 
 in the saddle; who would cheerfully witness 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 81 
 
 the loss of every drop of the people s life 
 blood rather than their own power. 
 
 A conquered empire that had been hypno 
 tized to the end by the monster criminals of 
 history, whose word no man would ever take 
 again, would be a mere collection of enslaved 
 States for generations to come; the conquer 
 ors, having given them their choice, would 
 show no mercy. 
 
 Britain could not be starved. The sub 
 marine war, whatever its devastations, and 
 the vast inconveniences it had caused, was a 
 failure. And the colossal wealth of the 
 United States in money, in food, in men! 
 Who knew her resources better than Gisela, 
 who had lived in the country for four years 
 and found it an absorbing study, who had 
 continued to read American books, news 
 papers, and reviews up to the outbreak of the 
 war? Well, they were all at the disposal of 
 democracy ; and as the Entente Allies, includ 
 ing the United States, were already many 
 times stronger than Germany, how could they 
 fail to win in the end, no matter how many 
 
82 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 millions of lives on all sides Germany con 
 tinued to shovel into Moloch? 
 
 All of these three clever German girls had 
 been more or less prepared to hear Germany 
 proved a liar. They knew from British 
 wounded that London was neither a fortified 
 city nor reduced to ashes; also that all the 
 Zeppelin raids on defenseless towns put to 
 gether had been of less strategical value to 
 Germany than the taking of one village in 
 the war zone; she had merely piled up a 
 mountain of hatred and contempt which must 
 be leveled by the quick repudiation of her 
 people if they would regain their lost inter 
 course with a triumphant world. Like all 
 the other women who had nursed near the 
 front and knew the truth, they translated into 
 their own cynical vernacular such grandi 
 ose collocations as " Strategic retreats 7 from 
 that of the Battle of the Marne to those which 
 had been occurring periodically on the West 
 ern front since the beginning of the Somme 
 offensive of 1916. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 83 
 
 Glsela s mind was complex and subtle, but 
 it was also honest. When it yielded a point, 
 it yielded audibly. It was during the pre 
 liminary discussion that she exclaimed : 
 
 "It is true certain things come back to 
 me Mimi, open the window. The air is blue 
 and we are all hardy and can stand the night 
 air. It was after the Agadir incident that I 
 felt a change. I say felt because I was so 
 absorbed in my work that I had no inclina 
 tion for world politics and never discussed 
 them. Up to that time I had never heard a 
 hint of war for aggression on the part of Ger 
 many. . . . While, as far back as I can re 
 member, it was taken for granted there would 
 be a great war some day, I doubt if any but 
 the military party really believed in it. We 
 thought the time had passed for real wars, 
 that we were far too highly civilized. Of 
 course I knew that the military party to which 
 my father belonged would have welcomed a 
 war, for war was their profession, their game, 
 
84 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 their excuse for being, and I heard more or 
 less talk among my brothers of Pan-Ger 
 manism; but still I imagined that it was 
 merely a defensive Teutonic ideal, just as our 
 oppressive standing army was a necessity 
 owing to our geographical position. My 
 brother Karl said once it comes back to me, 
 although I had quite forgotten it that it was 
 futile for the military caste to try to work 
 up a war, because every moneyed man in the 
 Empire financiers, merchants, manufactur 
 ers, all the rest never would hear of it. 
 The country was too prosperous. Our wealth 
 was growing at a pace which even the United 
 States could not rival, and poverty was prac 
 tically eliminated. That is the reason no 
 hint made any impression on me. It seemed 
 to me that we were the most fortunate and 
 advanced nation in Europe and had only to 
 wait for our kultur to pervade the earth. 
 
 "But after Agadir I seem to look back 
 upon a slowly rising tide, muttering, sullen, 
 determined even in Bavaria the old seren 
 ity, the settled feeling, was gone war was 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 85 
 
 discussed as a possibility less casually than 
 of old " 
 
 "I recall a good deal more than that/ 
 interrupted Mimi. "Bemember that I was 
 the daughter of a manufacturer, and the wife, 
 so-called, of a merchant. They were always 
 grinding their teeth and from about the time 
 you speak of over the wrongs of Germany. 
 What the wrongs were I never could make 
 out, and I am bound to say I did not listen 
 very attentively, being absorbed in my own 
 but it would seem that Germany being the 
 greatest country in the world was somehow 
 not being permitted to lot the rest of the 
 world find it out " 
 
 "It is all simple enough, now that I have 
 the key. Germany tried to bully France, and 
 not only was France anxious to avoid war but 
 Britain showed her teeth. Germany was not 
 then prepared to fight the world and was 
 forced to compromise. France gave her a 
 slice of the Kongo in exchange for Germany s 
 consent to a French Protectorate in Morocco. 
 Of course after that it must have been evi- 
 
86 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 dent to all the business brains of Germany 
 that however great and prosperous the 
 Empire might be she was not strong enough 
 to dictate to Europe ; nor presume to demand 
 any more of the great prizes than she had 
 already. 
 
 "In other words, she was shown her place. 
 It was also more than possible that her 
 aggressive prosperity might one of these days 
 excite the apprehension of Great Britain, who 
 would then show more than her teeth. Grad 
 ually the idea must have permeated, taken 
 possession of the minds of men who had vast 
 fortunes to increase or lose, that sooner or 
 later they must fight for what they had and 
 that it were better perhaps to strike first, at 
 a moment they might choose themselves 
 however little they might sympathize with 
 the ambitions of the Pan-German Party for 
 supreme power in Europe " 
 
 "Perhaps nothing, " said Mimi. "They 
 made up their minds to do it and they did 
 it. It is as plain as daylight. I d forgive 
 them, too, if they d won in six months, as 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 87 
 
 they were so sure they would. What I don t 
 forgive them for is that they have proved 
 themselves the most criminal fools unhung. 
 I m glad that I am a Bavarian, and that Prus 
 sia, whom we have always so hated and de 
 spised that we have never turned the lions 
 about on the Siegesthor, should be the prime 
 offenders, humiliating as it may be that we 
 fell for their lies and got into this rotten 
 mess. 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, mo 
 mentarily 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 soci 
 ety 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. 
 
88 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 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 subnour- 
 ishment; combined with their own certainty 
 that the Teutonic Powers would go on fight 
 ing, under the lash of Prussia, sacrificing 
 hundreds of thousands of loyal German and 
 Austrian boys, plunge countless more fam 
 ilies into hopeless grief, doom all the children 
 in the land to sheer hunger and tuberculo 
 sis. 
 
 Starvation! That was the inevitable fate 
 of Germany if she prolonged the war. And 
 for what? Prostration, physical, financial, 
 economic. To suffer for a generation, at 
 least, the fate of the outlaw, mangy dogs 
 nosing among rotten bones, kicked by the 
 victors whenever they stood on their hind legs 
 and whined for mercy. 
 
 And the Americans were prepared to pour 
 into France and Britain billions of dollars 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 89 
 
 and millions of men and incalculable tons of 
 food and ammunition. 
 
 The two Americans had a deeper purpose 
 in forcing this long argument than hammer 
 ing the truth into those intelligent but Prus 
 sianized brains. As the hours wore toward 
 the dawn they observed with satisfaction that 
 Gisela s face grew whiter and grimmer, until 
 finally it set itself in rigid lines. Her mouth 
 was hard, her eyes expanded as if they saw 
 far beyond the crystal mountains glittering 
 before the open windows. Her mass of dark 
 hair had fallen, and Mrs. Tolby whispered to 
 Mrs. Prentiss that she looked like the Medusa 
 in the Glyptothek in Munich, lovely but re 
 lentless. 
 
 Gisela was no longer the radiant and 
 voluptuous beauty who had incurred the 
 secret wrath of Ann Howland at Bar Harbor. 
 These years of war, during which she had 
 known hard physical labor and often insuffi 
 cient nourishment, more rarely still a full 
 
90 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 night s sleep, had taken her lovely curves of 
 cheek and form, her brilliant color. She was 
 thin, almost gaunt; but the dissolving of the 
 flesh had given her intellect, her force of 
 character, her aspiring spirit, their first real 
 opportunity to stamp her features. She 
 would always be handsome, with her long 
 dark eyes and masses of soft dark hair, her 
 noble outlines ; and her womanly sympathies 
 had preserved their balance between a de 
 vitalizing horror on the one hand and callous 
 ness on the other; but it was a spiritualized 
 beauty, devoid of that appeal to sex of which 
 she had been, even after she had buried the 
 memory of Franz von Nettelbeck and all 
 desire for love, femininely tenacious, how 
 ever disdainful. 
 
 Mimi was the first to speak after a long in 
 terval of silence. 
 
 "You ve got me, all right. IVe been dig 
 ging up a few more things. We re up 
 against it for keeps, and it s get out or starve 
 out. I ve a notion to sneak off to my re- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 91 
 
 lations in Milwaukee. Mrs. Prentiss, I ll go 
 as your maid " 
 
 You 11 do nothing of the sort ! Gisela s 
 voice cut through the ripples of laughter 
 which always greeted Mimi s redundant 
 slang. "You ll go back to Germany with me 
 and do your part in putting an end to this 
 war!" All but Heloise half arose, but she 
 sat staring at that hard drawn face as if in 
 telepathic communication. 
 
 "Can you do anything really?" gasped 
 Kate. "We have been hoping for a revo 
 lution, but had given up the idea until after 
 the war. Your Socialists either eat out of 
 the Kaiser s hand or sputter and fizzle out. 
 And all your able-bodied men are at the 
 front" 
 
 "But not the women." 
 
 "The what?" 
 
 "You have both lived in Germany. You 
 know that German women are big strong 
 creatures what you call husky. They are 
 stronger than many of the men because they 
 
92 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 have led more decent lives. The men at the 
 front are hopeless as revolutionary material 
 at present. They are hypnotized. They 
 have been taught not to think. They are sick 
 of the war, they suffer when they come home 
 and see their women reduced to shadows, or 
 go to the cemeteries to visit the graves of 
 their little brothers and sisters ; but the teach 
 ing of a lifetime: the omnipotence of their 
 sovereigns, whom they innocently believe to 
 rule by divine right, sends them back submis 
 sive, patient, sad. I know what you had in 
 mind when you brought us here to convince 
 us that our country was not only responsi 
 ble for the war, but beaten. You hoped we 
 would somehow bring about the assassination 
 of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince Euprecht 
 of Bavaria all the great generals. Is it not 
 so? That would, assuredly, break down the 
 morale of the army, give it a more smashing 
 blow than any it has received even on the 
 Western front. Well, it cannot be done. 
 Even I could not obtain a pass into Great 
 Headquarters. You might as well expect a 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 93 
 
 British soldier to be permitted to saunter 
 over from his lines and make sketches of the 
 German trenches. Those men guard them 
 selves day and night, at every point as if 
 haunted with the fear of assassination. Per 
 haps they are. And remember that the down 
 fall of CaBsarism means the downfall not only 
 of junkerism but of all the other kings and 
 Grand Dukes who are powerful and wealthy 
 in their own domains. They have no doubt 
 cursed Prussia daily since September, 1914, 
 but now they all sink or swim together. 
 They will force Germany to die a thousand 
 deaths in the hope of a miracle that will save 
 a class to which the rest of poor Germany is 
 a breeding-ground for their mighty armies. 
 I belong to that class. One of my brothers is 
 on the staff of the Crown Prince of Prussia. 
 Take my word for it: the solution of Ger 
 many s deliverance is not to be found in the 
 simple antidote of political assassination, for 
 only men bound up in the success of the Ger 
 man arms, or their terrorized creatures of our 
 own sex, are near enough to throw the bomb." 
 
94 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 "It was rather a commonplace idea," said 
 Kate, gracefully, "but what can you do?" 
 
 "Quite aside from the women of the indus 
 trial and lower classes generally, who have 
 given the municipalities serious trouble with 
 their food riots far more than you know 
 about the. German women altogether are 
 restless and dissatisfied. They were prom 
 ised a short and triumphant war. They are 
 daily more skeptical of promises. They have 
 suffered death in life. All that early exal 
 tation exhilaration has gone long since. 
 They shut their teeth and endure because they 
 still believe the cunning official lies that 
 Britain must be starved by the submersi- 
 bles, that France s man power is nearly ex 
 hausted, that the United States cannot pre 
 pare an army in less than two years and 
 needs all her trained men at home to quell 
 the riots of the masses who disapprove of the 
 war. They are taught to believe that ulti 
 mate victory for Germany is inevitable that 
 it is merely a question of months. 
 
 * But convince them that Germany cannot 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 95 
 
 win, that their own conquest is inevitable 
 after three or four more years of horror and 
 torment and personal despair, turn their 
 blind hatred of England and America upon 
 their own conscienceless rulers " 
 
 "Jimminy!" cried Mimi. "That s the 
 dope. Pound it into them that the Enemy 
 Allies will give them a square deal as a Ee- 
 public and put them under the steam-roller 
 with the Hohenzollerns if they stand pat, and 
 you ll get them. No more hungry and tuber 
 cular babies, no more babies born with a 
 cuticle short in theirs. They d rise as one 
 man I mean damn the men! as one 
 woman." 
 
 Heloise left her seat like a whirlwind and 
 flung herself at Gisela s feet. Her face was 
 flaming white. She looked like a sibyl. "I 
 knew it would be you !" she cried in her sweet 
 bell-like tones. "I have had visions of you 
 leading us out of this awful war. You have 
 only to talk to the women your word was 
 gospel to them before the war they too will 
 have the vision and they will make it fact/ 
 
96 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 "Yes but " interrupted the practical 
 Ann. "How shall you go to work? It is a 
 stupendous idea. But you never could keep 
 such a propaganda movement a secret. Some 
 one would be sure to betray you. German 
 women are perfect fools about men." 
 
 "No longer. Nor were they for several 
 years before the war as subservient (in 
 wardly) to men as they had been in the past. 
 Far from it. And now ! They have suffered 
 too much at the hands of men. They have no 
 illusions left. Love and marriage are ghastly 
 caricatures to women who have lived in a 
 time when men are slaughtered like pigs in 
 massed formation ; when their little boys are 
 driven to war; when young girls and wid 
 ows! are forced to bring more males into 
 the world with the sanction of neither love 
 nor marriage; when those too young for the 
 trench or the casual bed wail incessantly for 
 bread. Oh, no! The German man s day of 
 any but legal dominion is over. Of course 
 there is always the danger of spies and trai 
 tors, but " 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 97 
 
 "The wall for you at sunrise if you get 
 caught, cried Mimi, with another subsidence 
 of enthusiasm. 
 
 "If that happen to be my destiny. Can 
 any one experience what we have done during 
 these three years and not be as fatalistic as 
 the men in the trenches! I d rather die be 
 fore a firing squad after an attempt to save 
 my wretched country than live to see it set 
 back a hundred years. But I refuse to be 
 lieve that I shall be betrayed or that I shall 
 fail. That I believe to be my destiny. For a 
 long time the idea has been fumbling in 
 the back of my mind, but it lacked the cur 
 rent which would switch it into my con 
 sciousness. You two have supplied the cur 
 rent. " 
 
 Kate threw back her head and gave her 
 merry, ringing laugh. "What delicious 
 irony! Germany defeated by its women! 
 When I think of your august papa, dear Gis- 
 ela! That kulturistically typical, that naive 
 yet Jovian symbol of all the arrogance and 
 conceit, the simple creed of Kaiserism iiber 
 
98 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 alles, and will-to-rule, that hurled this colos 
 sus on the back of Europe " 
 
 " Quite so. You of all present know that 
 I received the proper training for the part I 
 am about to play. If all goes well we women 
 will erect a tablet to my father s memory 
 in the cathedral at Berlin. " She leaned 
 down and patted the rapt face of Heloise, 
 then scowled at Mimi. May I not count on 
 you ? * she asked sternly. 
 
 "May you? Well, say, what are you tak 
 ing me for? I m more afraid of you than I 
 am of a firing squad, and anyhow I seem to 
 know we ll win out. I m going to carry a 
 club in case I mix up with Hans. But what s 
 your plan?" 
 
 "This is neither the time nor place to work 
 out a campaign. The first move will be to 
 train lieutenants in every State in Ger 
 many women whom we know either per 
 sonally or through correspondence. You, 
 Heloise, will return to Municli at once and 
 make out the lists. We shall have no diffi 
 culty obtaining permits to travel all over the 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 99 
 
 Empire, for it will never enter the insanely 
 stupid official head to doubt whatever excuse 
 we may choose to give. Not only are we Ger 
 man women and therefore sheep, but we are 
 Eed Cross nurses. . . . And remember that 
 nearly all the men who are still in the fac 
 tories are Socialists and that women swarm 
 in all of those factories " 
 
 " Marie!" cried Heloise. "How she will 
 work ! She has the confidence of the Socialist 
 party both wings wherever she is known; 
 and she can talk like a torrent of liquid 
 fire," 
 
 "And the next chapter ?" asked Mrs. Pren- 
 tiss curiously. "You led the German women 
 in thought for five years. Shall you have a 
 "Woman s Eepublic, with you as President?" 
 
 "Certainly not. It is not in the German 
 women not yet to crave the grinding cares 
 of public life. We shall make the men do the 
 work, and we will live for the first time. De 
 livered from Csesarism and junkerism and 
 with the advanced men of Germany at the 
 head of a Eepublic, I should feel too secure 
 
100 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 of Germany s future to demand any of the 
 ugly duties of government although the 
 women will speak through the men. Their 
 day of silence and submission is forever 
 passed " 
 
 "Same here," remarked Mimi, stretching 
 and yawning. " Let s go to bed. I have 
 smoked fifty-three cigarettes and my voice 
 is ruined. Nevertheless I shall be a great 
 prima donna, and you, Gisela, can chuck 
 propaganda, and write romance. The world 
 will devour it after these years of undiluted 
 realism written in red ink on a black page. 
 Look at the sun trying to climb out of that 
 mist and give us his blessing." 
 
 "I shall go for a walk," said Gisela, "and 
 I shall go alone. 
 
IV 
 
 MES. PEENTISS and Mrs. Tolby placed 
 a large sum of money to Gisela s 
 account in a Swiss bank, and this she trans 
 ferred to the Bayerischer Vereinsbank in 
 Munich. As she had collected large sums for 
 war relief, and was on the board of nine war 
 charities, no suspicion was excited. She had 
 given to these organizations the greater part 
 of the small fortune she had made from her 
 play and other writings, not absorbed by taxa 
 tion and bond subscriptions, but there were 
 many wealthy women, hungry, sad, appre 
 hensive that peace would find them paupers, 
 upon whom she could depend to give liberally. 
 There was to be no printed matter nor 
 correspondence, but an army of lieutenants, 
 
 who, starting from certain centers, would 
 101 
 
J02 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 augment their numbers from Gisela s long 
 list of correspondents, until it would be pos 
 sible to sound personally all the women of a 
 district whom it was thought wise to trust. 
 
 Gisela returned to Germany as soon as she 
 had worked out the details of her campaign 
 and received the enthusiastic donation of her 
 American friends. Mimi Brandt, Marie von 
 Erkel (who looked like an ecstatic fury of the 
 French Revolution when she realized that at 
 last she had a role to play in life that would 
 not only vent her consuming energies and 
 ambition, but enable her to assist in the down 
 fall of a race of men whom she hated, both for 
 their tyranny and indifference to brains with 
 out beauty, with all the diverted passion of 
 her nature), Aimee von Erkel, who was per 
 sistent, incisive, and so alarmed at the pros 
 pect of all the men in the world being killed, 
 that she would have hastened peace on any 
 terms; Princess Starnwb rth, a Socialist and 
 idealist, a brilliant and persuasive speaker, 
 to whom war was the ultimate horror; Jo 
 hanna Stuck, whose revolt had been deep and 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 103 
 
 bitter long before the war and who was one of 
 Gisela s fervent disciples and aides these 
 and six others were sent on one pretense or 
 another into the various States of Germany 
 the kingdoms, principalities, grand duchies, 
 duchies, and "free towns " to bear Gisela s 
 personal message and select the proper lead 
 ers. 
 
 Gisela went at once to Berlin and had a 
 long interview with Mariette, who was ripe 
 for revolution : her lover had been killed and 
 her husband had not. Mariette was not of 
 the type that sorrow and loss ennoble. She 
 was still a handsome woman, particularly in 
 her uniform, but the pink and white cheeks 
 that once had covered her harsh bones were 
 sunken and sallow. Her mouth was like a 
 narrow bar of iron. Her eyes were half 
 closed as if to hide the cold and deadly flame 
 that never flickered; even her nostrils were 
 rigid. All her hard and sensual nature, 
 devoid of tenderness, but dissolved with senti 
 mentality while the man who had conquered 
 her had lived, she had centered on her lover, 
 
104 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 and with his death she was a tool to Gisela s 
 hand to wreak vengeance upon the powers 
 that had sent him out of the world. 
 
 " Leave it to me/ she said grimly. 
 * There are not only the women in the towns 
 where I have been stationed these many 
 years, but, here in Berlin, the wives of men 
 whose money is financing this war : men who 
 permitted the war because they hoped for 
 infinite riches but are now terrified that they 
 will not have a pfennig if the war goes on 
 much longer. They dare not rebel, for they 
 would be shot, and their fortunes be confis 
 cated : their banks, industries, shops, run by 
 cowed minor officials. But the women I can 
 count on many of them. Even if their hus 
 bands suspected, they would wink at it, will 
 ing that the women should take the risk and 
 they reap the benefit. God ! How they hate 
 the war every woman I know. Leave this 
 part of Germany to me, and be prepared for 
 Schrecklichkeit. There will be no mercy, no 
 politics, in this revolution merely one end in 
 view. The Eussians are babies but we are 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 105 
 
 not. * Huns shall cease to be a term of 
 opprobrium, for female Huns will end the 
 war. 
 
 Countess Niebuhr, whose love of intrigue 
 had not diminished with the years, and who 
 had known more of the Pan-Germanic mind 
 than her naive husband had guessed who, 
 moreover, had had a long and enlightening in 
 terview with one of her sons but a month 
 before undertook to win over many women 
 of her own class who had suffered death and 
 disillusion. 
 
 Elsa s transfer to a hospital in Saxony was 
 skilfully managed ; and Lili went on a concert 
 tour for the Bed Cross. It was not worth 
 while to campaign in Austria; the moment 
 Germany was helpless she would collapse au 
 tomatically. 
 
 In the course of a month the secret prop 
 aganda was moving with the invisible, sin 
 ister, irresistible suction of an undertow. 
 The immense army of women who did Gis- 
 ela s work proved themselves true Germans, 
 logical products of generations of discipline, 
 
106 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 concentration, secretiveness, and a thorough 
 ness, even in trifling details, as implacable as 
 it was automatic. They made few mistakes. 
 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 dis 
 appeared 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 ad 
 dressed 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. Vic 
 tory under her leadership if they stood firm, 
 was inevitable. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 107 
 
 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 magnet 
 ism that convinced the individual as well as 
 the mass that she had but one object, the lib 
 eration of the miserable women of her coun 
 try, their deliverance from further sorrow; 
 and that she was wholly lacking in personal 
 ambition. 
 
 These women had known the gnawing sen 
 sation of unappeased appetite for two years. 
 They had seen old men and women, sometimes 
 their own, fall in the streets dead or dying, 
 because they no longer had the reserves of 
 men and women in their youth or prime. 
 They had seen men blow out their brains in 
 front of municipal buildings, cursing the 
 Emperor, the military autocracy, and even 
 the Government, always at odds with the war 
 lords. They knew of suicides and child mur 
 der by despairing mothers that they hardly 
 whispered to one another. And all the chil 
 dren were emaciated and wailed continually 
 for food, sleeping little, playing less, stunted 
 
108 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 in their growth and threatened with disease ; 
 if the war went on another year they would 
 join the little Polish victims on their shadowy 
 playground. . . . They feared for their daugh 
 ters at home even as they feared for their 
 young sons in the trenches. . . . Barring a 
 revolution, the war might last for years . . . 
 years. . . . " Peace Proposals" irritated what 
 little humor they had left to ghastly obscene 
 joking. . . . "Victories" left them as cold as 
 the mid-winter bed. . . . The Hohenzollerns, 
 the other kings and princes, the cast-iron 
 junkers, would cling fast to their own until 
 the Enemy Allies day of judgment, for sur 
 render meant their quicker extermination; 
 now, at least, they were still in the saddle, 
 able to cheer their haunted egos with the 
 Wine of Lies. 
 
 It was the Hohenzollerns and defeat, or a 
 Eepublic and easy terms from the victors who 
 would welcome a sound de-brutalized Ger 
 many, jealous of her lost honor, into the fam 
 ily of nations. The arguments were brief and 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 109 
 
 simple. Gisela would have won over women 
 far less despairing than these. And the fact 
 that she had spent four years in America 
 studying its institutions and resources, con 
 vinced the most susceptible to official lies that 
 the United States could pour money, men, 
 ammunition, munitions and food into Europe 
 for countless years ; and that the agitations of 
 her pacifists, syndicalists, German agents, 
 and bribe-takers were but picturesque ripples 
 on the surface of a nation covering over three 
 million five hundred thousand square miles 
 and embracing more than one hundred million 
 people. 
 
 And with all the insidious subtlety of her 
 supple mind she changed the prevailing 
 hatred of President Wilson into a profound 
 and pathetic confidence. She had long since 
 made them envy and admire the women of 
 America, and if these fortunate beings had 
 enthusiastically reflected him and were now 
 giving his policy as persistent and effective 
 assistance as the men, it was for the desperate 
 
110 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 women of Germany to believe in his promises 
 of deliverance. Above all lie had now the 
 approval of their own Gisela Doring. 
 
 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 Ehine 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. 
 
GISELA, who had been staring across the 
 Koniginstrasse into the heavy branches 
 that hung over the wall of the park, her men 
 tal vision too actively raking the past to 
 spare a beam for the familiar picture, sud 
 denly 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. 
 Always apprehensive of spies, although the 
 Gott commandeered by the Kaiser seemed to 
 
 have adjusted blinders to eyes strained west, 
 111 
 
112 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 east, and south, she leapt to the conclusion 
 that she was under surveillance at last, and 
 her heart beat thickly. She who had be 
 lieved that the long strain, the constant dan 
 ger, the incessant demand for resource and 
 ever more resource, had transformed her 
 nerves to pure steel, realized angrily that on 
 this last night when she had permitted her 
 self an hour s idle retrospect before com 
 manding sleep, her nerves more nearly re 
 sembled the strings of a violin. 
 
 Her apartment was on the ground floor. 
 She stood up, revealing herself disdainfully 
 in the moonlight that now lay full on her win 
 dow, then went out quickly into the vestibule 
 and unlocked the house door. Her only fear 
 was that the man would have gone, but if he 
 were still there she was determined to walk 
 boldly over to his skulking-place and pretend 
 she believed him to be a burglar or a foreign 
 spy. In these days she carried a small pistol 
 and a dagger. 
 
 When she had stepped out on the pavement 
 she glanced quickly up and down the street. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 113 
 
 Not even a polizeidiener was in sight, for this 
 aristocratic quarter was, in peace and war, 
 the quietest part of an always orderly town. 
 It was evident that the man spied alone. 
 
 Holding her head very high, she started 
 across the street; but she had not taken three 
 steps when the shadow detached itself and 
 walked rapidly out into the moonlight. She 
 gave a sharp cry and shrank back. It was 
 Franz von Nettelbeck. 
 
 "You " she stammered. "They sent 
 you " 
 
 "They? And why should I alarm you? 
 Am I so formidable ? He uttered his short 
 harsh laugh and lifted his cap. His head was 
 bandaged; there was a deep scar along the 
 outer line of his right cheek. His face was 
 gaunt and lined; and his shoulders sagged 
 until he suddenly bethought himself and flung 
 them back with a deathless instinct. 
 
 Gisela smiled and gave him her hand with a 
 graceful spontaneity. "The sense of being 
 watched always shakes the nerves a bit, and 
 I have felt up to nothing myself for a long 
 
114 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 time. Why did not you come up to the win 
 dow when you recognized me?" 
 
 "I was so sure of welcome! And yet as 
 soon as I was fit to travel I came here to see 
 you. I intended to send in my card to-mor 
 row. But I could not help haunting your 
 window to-night, and when I had the good 
 fortune to see you sitting there with the 
 moon shining on your beautiful face " 
 
 "My face is no longer beautiful, dear 
 Franz " 
 
 "You are a thousand +imes more beautiful 
 than ever " 
 
 Something else vibrated along those steel 
 nerves, but she said briskly: "Standing so 
 long must have tired you. Come in and rest. 
 It is late ; but if there are still conventions in 
 this crashing world I have forgotten them." 
 
 Her rooms were always prepared for a sud 
 den visit of the police. If a firing squad were 
 her fate it would not have been invited 
 through the usual channels. Even the arms 
 to be worn on the morrow were in the cellars 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 115 
 
 and attics of citizens so respectable as almost 
 to be nameless. 
 
 He followed her through the common en 
 trance of the apartment house into her Saal. 
 It was a large comfortable room with many 
 deep chairs, and on the gray walls were a few 
 portraits of her scowling ancestors, con 
 tributed long since by her mother. A tall 
 porcelain stove glowed softly. Gisela drew 
 the curtains and lit several candles. She dis 
 liked the hard glare of electricity at any 
 time, and she admitted with a curious thrill 
 of satisfaction that those manifestly sincere 
 words of her old lover had given her vanity 
 a momentary resurrection. Her suspicions 
 were by no means allayed, even when she met 
 his eyes blazing with passionate admiration, 
 but why not play the old game of the gods for 
 a n hour? What better preparation for the 
 morrow than to relax and forget? 
 
 "Poor Franz !" Her voice was the same 
 rich contralto whose promise had routed the 
 Howland millions years ago. Our poor gal- 
 
116 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 lant men! When will this terrible war 
 finish ?" 
 
 "Ask your United States of America !" 
 And he cursed that superfluous nation 
 roundly. We had some chance before. Not 
 so much, but still some. Now we shall be 
 beaten to our knees, stamped into the dust, 
 straight down to hell." He threw himself 
 into a chair and pressed his hands against 
 his face. 
 
 "But when?" Gisela watched him war 
 ily. If these were tactics they were admir 
 able; but who more full of theatric devices 
 than the Kaiser he adored? 
 
 "Years hence, no doubt if we continue to 
 hold the Social-Democrats in hand and drug 
 the people. We ll fight on until our enemies 
 might proves that they are right and we were 
 fools. That is all there is to war." 
 
 Gisela sat down and let her hands fall into 
 her lap with a little pathetic motion of weak 
 ness. l Sometimes I wish the Socialists were 
 strong enough to win and end it all," she said 
 plaintively. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 117 
 
 "Oh, no, you don t. You are a junker, for 
 all your independent notions, and trying to 
 put some of your own nerve into the women. 
 I read you with great amusement before the 
 war. But no one knows better than your 
 self that the triumph of democracy in Ger 
 many would mean the end of us. 
 
 "I cannot see that we are enjoying many 
 privileges at present unless it be the privi 
 lege to lie rather than be lied to. And when 
 our enemies do win we shall be pried out, root 
 and branch. So, why not save our skins at 
 all events ? I do not mean mine, of course 
 nor, for that matter, am I thinking of our 
 class; but of the hundreds of thousands of 
 our dear young men who might be spared " 
 
 "Better die and have done with it. And 
 there is always hope " 
 
 "Hope?" 
 
 "Oh in the separate peace, the ultimate 
 submersible, some new invention the mira 
 cle that has come to the rescue more than 
 once in history. There are times when my 
 faith in the destiny of Germany to dominate 
 
118 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 the world is so great that I cannot believe 
 it possible for her to fail in spite of 
 everything, everything! And everything is 
 against us! I never realized it until I lay 
 there in the hospital. I was too busy before, 
 and that was my first serious wound. Oh, 
 God! what fools we were. What rotten 
 diplomacy. Even I despised the United 
 States; but as I lay there in Berlin their 
 irresistible almighty power seemed to pass 
 before me in a procession that nearly de 
 stroyed my reason. I knew the country well 
 enough, but I would not see." 
 
 "They are a very soft-hearted people and 
 would let us down agreeably if the Social- 
 Democrats overturned the House of Hohen- 
 zollern and stretched out the imploring hand 
 of a young Eepublic " 
 
 "No! No! A thousand times rather die 
 to the last man than be beaten within. That 
 would be the one insupportable humiliation. 
 Canaille!" He spat out the word. "I re 
 fuse to recognize their existence " 
 
 He sprang to his feet and before her mind 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 119 
 
 could flash to attention he had caught her 
 from her chair and was straining her to him, 
 his arms, his entire body, betraying no evi 
 dence whatever of depleted vitality. "Let 
 us forget it all ! he muttered. l We are still 
 young and I am free. I was a fool once and 
 you will believe me when I tell you that I 
 would beg you on my knees to marry me even 
 if you were Gisela Doring. ... I have leave 
 of absence for a month ... let us be happy 
 once more . . . " 
 
 "It was a long while ago ... all that . . . 
 do you realize how long?" 
 
 Gisela stood rigid, her eyes expanded. To 
 her terror and dismay she was thrilling and 
 flaming from head to foot. This lover of her 
 life might have released her from one of their 
 immortal hours but yesterday. But although 
 she had to brace her body from yielding, her 
 mind (and it is the curse of intellectual 
 women of individual powers that the mind 
 never, in any circumstances, ceases to func 
 tion) realized that while the human will may 
 be strong enough to banish memories, and 
 
120 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 readjust the lonely soul, its most triumphant 
 acts may be annihilated by the physical 
 contact of its mate. Unless replaced. Fool 
 that she had been merely to have buried the 
 memory of this man by an act of will. She 
 should have taken a commonplace lover, or 
 husband, put out that flaming midnight torch 
 with the standardizing light of day. 
 
 Her mind seemed to be darting from peak 
 to peak in a swift and dazzling flight as he 
 talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her 
 cheek, her neck, straining her so close to him 
 that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it 
 poised above the memory of an old book of 
 Kenan s, "The Abbess Juarre," in which the 
 eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily at 
 tempted to demonstrate that if the world un 
 mistakably announced its finish within three 
 days the inhabitants would give themselves 
 up to an orgy of love. 
 
 Well, her world might end to-morrow. 
 Why should she not live to-night? 
 
 Her arrogant will demanded the happiness 
 that this man, whom she had never ceased to 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 121 
 
 love for a moment, to whom she had been un 
 consciously faithful, alone could give her. 
 Moreover, her reason working side by side 
 with her imperious desires, assured her that 
 if he really were spying, and, whatever his 
 passion, meant to remold her will to his and 
 snatch the keystone from the arch, it were 
 wise to keep him here. It was evident that 
 he had no suspicion of the imminence of the 
 revolution. 
 
 And it was years since she had felt all 
 woman, not a mere intellect ignoring the tides 
 in the depths of her being. The revelation 
 that she was still young and that her will and 
 all the proud achievements of her mind could 
 dissolve at this man s touch in the crucible of 
 her passion filled her with exultation. 
 
 She melted into his arms and lifted hers 
 heavily to his neck. 
 
 " Franz! Franz !" she whispered. 
 
 Gisela moved softly about the room looking 
 for fresh candles. Those that had replaced 
 
122 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 the moonlight hours ago had burned out and 
 she did not dare draw the curtains apart : it 
 was too near the dawn. She had no idea what 
 time it was. But she must have light, for to 
 think was imperative, and her mental proc 
 esses were always clogged in the dark. 
 
 She found the old box of candles and 
 placed four in the brackets and lit them. 
 Then she went over to the couch and looked 
 down upon Franz von Nettelbeck. He slept 
 heavily, on his side, his arms relaxed but 
 slightly curved. In a few moments she 
 went down the hall to her bedroom and 
 took a cold bath and made a cup of strong 
 coffee ; then dressed herself in a suit of gray 
 cloth, straight and loose, that her swiftest 
 movements might not be impeded. In the 
 belt under the jacket she adjusted her pistol 
 and dagger. 
 
 She returned to the Saal and once more 
 looked down upon the unconscious man. 
 How long he had been falling asleep! She 
 had offered him wine, meaning to drug it, 
 but he had refused lest it inflame his wounds. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 123 
 
 She had offered to make him coffee, but he 
 would not let her go. 
 
 It was in the complete admission of her 
 reluctance to leave him, even after he slept, 
 and while disturbed by the fear that the 
 dawn was nearer than in fact it was, that she 
 stared down upon the man who was more to 
 her than Germany and all its enslaved women 
 and men. He knew nothing of her plans, 
 had not a suspicion of the revolution, but he 
 had vowed they never should be parted 
 again. He had great influence and could set 
 wheels in motion that would return him to 
 the diplomatic service and procure him an 
 appointment to Spain ; where good diplomat 
 ists were badly needed. 
 
 It was an enchanting picture that he drew 
 in spite of the horror that must ever mutter 
 at their threshold; but to the awfulness of 
 war they were both by this time more or less 
 callous, although he was mortally sick of the 
 war itself; and Gisela, who doled half-meas 
 ures neither to herself nor others, had dis 
 missed the morrow and yielded herself to the 
 
124 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 joy of the future as of the present. What 
 she had felt for this man in her early twen 
 ties seemed a mere partnership of romance 
 and sentiment fused by young nerves, com 
 pared with the mature passion he had 
 shocked from its long recuperative sleep. 
 He was her mate, her .other part. Her long 
 fidelity, unshaken by time, her own tempera 
 ment and many opportunities, all were proof 
 of that. 
 
 The caste of great lovers in this unfinished 
 world is small and almost inaccessible, but 
 they had taken their place by immemorial 
 right. Were it not for this history of her 
 own making they would find every phase of 
 happiness in each other as long as they both 
 lived. Women, at least, know instinctively 
 the difference between the transient -passion, 
 no matter how powerful, and the deathless 
 bond. 
 
 Gisela glanced at her wrist watch. It was 
 within seventy minutes of the dawn. If she 
 could only be sure that he would sleep until 
 Munich herself awoke him. But he had told 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 125 
 
 her that he never slept these days more than 
 two or three hours at a time, no matter how 
 weary. 
 
 If he awoke before it was time for her to 
 leave the house and renewed his love-making, 
 her response would be as automatic as the 
 progress of life itself. 
 
 If she attempted to leave the house before 
 sunrise, on no matter what pretext, his sus 
 picions would be aroused, for she had told 
 him that she had been given a week for rest. 
 For the same reason she dared not awaken 
 him and ask him to go. He would refuse, 
 for it was no time to slip out of a woman s 
 apartment; far better wait until ten o clock, 
 when there were always visitors of both 
 sexes in her office. Moreover, he would no 
 more wish to go than he would permit her to 
 leave him. 
 
 She was utterly in his power if he awakened 
 and chose to exert it. He had mastered her, 
 conquered her, routed her career and her 
 peace, and she had gloried in her submission ; 
 gloried in it still. A commonplace woman 
 
126 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 would have been satisfied, satiated, felt free 
 for the moment, turned with relief to the dry 
 convention of the daily adventure, rather re 
 senting, if she had a pretty will, the supreme 
 surrender to the race in an unguarded 
 hour. 
 
 Gisela was cast in the heroic mold. She 
 came down from the old race of goddesses 
 of her own Nibelungenlied, whose passions 
 might consume them but had nothing in com 
 mon with the ebb and flow of mortals. But 
 great brains are fed by stormy souls, and in 
 the souls of women there is an element of 
 weakness, unknown, save in a few notable in 
 stances, to great men in the crises of their 
 destiny; for women are the slaves of the race, 
 and nature when permitting them the ab 
 normality of genius takes her revenge. 
 
 If he awakened. . . . There was little time 
 for thought. She must plan quickly. If she 
 left the house at once he might awaken im 
 mediately and after searching the apartment, 
 follow her; there was the dire possibility 
 that he would learn too much before the ter- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 127 
 
 rific drama of the revolution opened, and 
 manage to thwart their plans. He was a 
 man of quick brain and ruthless will; no 
 consideration for her would stop him, al 
 though he would save her from the conse 
 quences of her act, no doubt of that. Save 
 her for himself. 
 
 Mimi Brandt, and Heloise and Marie von 
 Erkel were asleep in rooms at the end of the 
 hall. . . . She had a mad idea of binding 
 him hand and foot and locking him in her 
 bedroom. . . . Either he would hate her for 
 the humiliation he Franz von Nettelbeck, 
 glorious on the field of honor, a bound pris 
 oner in a woman s bedroom while his class 
 was blown to atoms, and his caste was roar 
 ing its impotent fury to a napping Gott ! . . . 
 Oh, an insufferable affront to a man of his 
 order who held even the dearest woman as 
 the favored pensioner on his bounty ... or 
 she would be consumed with remorse, melt 
 ... it was positive that she must visit him 
 not leave him to starve . . . nor could she 
 keep him bound . . . and once more she 
 
128 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 would be his slave . . . could she hold out 
 even for a day? 
 
 The first blow of a revolution is, after all, 
 only its first. There is always the danger of 
 a swift reaction. 
 
 Unremitting vigilance, work, encourage 
 ment are the part of its leaders for months, 
 possibly years, to come. All revolutions are 
 dependent for ultimate success upon one pre 
 eminent figure. 
 
 Franz stirred under the unconscious fixity 
 of her gaze and changed his position, lying 
 on his back. She hastily averted her eyes. 
 Her hands clenched and spread. Even to 
 morrow if this man found her . . . one soft 
 moment . . . when she needed all her energy, 
 her fire, her powers of concentration, of de- 
 personalization, for the millions of tortured 
 women who would follow her straight out to 
 meet any division the Emperor might de 
 tach in the vain hope of subduing an army 
 far outnumbering all that he had left of men. 
 
 Nothing but a miracle could halt the initial 
 stage of the revolution; the wireless plants 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 129 
 
 were all operated by women in her service, 
 and no telephone message had advised her 
 of danger. No matter what her defection at 
 this moment the revolution would begin at 
 dawn ; but although Germany happily lacked 
 the disintegrating forces of Russia, comfort 
 able as she had been for two generations, and 
 proud in her discipline, that very discipline 
 would dissolve its new backbone without the 
 stimulating force of her own inexorable will. 
 And if she deserted them ! . . . 
 
 It was a woman s revolution. A necessary 
 number of men Socialists had been admitted 
 to the secret and were to strike the second 
 blow. But the women must strike the first, 
 and according to program. Not only were 
 the men under surveillance, but where women 
 would be pardoned in case of a failure, they 
 would be shot. And most of them had more 
 brain than brawn, were past the fighting age ; 
 the girls, and women of middle years, were a 
 magnificent army which would make the 
 graybeards appear absurd in the open. 
 
 These women worshiped her, believed her 
 
130 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 to be a super-being created to save them and 
 their children; but if she betrayed them, 
 proved herself the merest woman of them 
 all a childless woman at that the very 
 bones would melt out of them, they would 
 prostrate themselves in the ashes of their 
 final despair. 
 
 Spain ! Franz ! For a moment her imag 
 ination rioted. 
 
 She smiled ironically. Happiness? Four- 
 walled happiness! Hardly for her, even 
 without the blood of murdered thousands 
 soaking her doorstep. Love, for women like 
 her . . . even eternal love . . . must be epi 
 sodical. Life forces the duties of leadership 
 on such women whether they resent them or 
 not. They must take their love where they 
 find it as great men do, subordinated to their 
 chosen careers and the tremendous duties 
 and responsibilities that are the fruit of all 
 achieved ambition. 
 
 It was true that she had no political am 
 bition, but for an unpredictive period she 
 must be the beacon-light of the new Bepub- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 131 
 
 lie, no matter how successful the coup of the 
 Socialists; until some one man (she knew of 
 none) or some group of men became strong 
 enough to control its destinies. The women 
 must stand firm, a solid critical body led by 
 herself, until the tragically disciplined sol 
 diers who had survived these years of war 
 fare had ceased to be sheep, or run bleating 
 to the new fold. 
 
 Even if she won Franz over, her power 
 would be sapped; not for a moment would he 
 be out of her consciousness ; her imagination 
 would drift incessantly from the vital work 
 in hand to the hour of their reunion. The 
 hurtling power of her eloquence would be 
 diminished, her magnetism weakened. 
 
 Her memory flashed backward to those 
 three years when he was an ever-rising ob 
 session personifying love and completion 
 as he did before which her proud will fell 
 back again and again, powerless and humili 
 ated. 
 
 Why, in God s name could not he have come 
 back into her life six months hence ? 
 
132 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 No woman should risk a sex cataclysm 
 when she has great work to do. Nature is 
 too subtle for any woman s will as long as 
 the man be accessible. And the strongest 
 and the proudest woman that ever lived may 
 have her life disorganized by a man if she 
 possess the power to charm him. 
 
 She moved softly from the couch and 
 walked up and down the room, striving to 
 visualize her manifest destiny and erect the 
 grim ideal of duty. Her mind, working at 
 lightning speed, recalled moments, days, in 
 the past, when she had let her will relax, ig 
 nored her duties, floated idly with the tide; 
 the sensation of panic with which she had 
 recaptured at a bound the ideals that gov 
 erned her life. Mortal happiness was not 
 for her. Duty done, with or without exalta 
 tion of spirit, would at least keep her in tune 
 with life, preserve her from that disinte 
 grating horror of soul that could end only 
 with self-annihilation. 
 
 And end her usefulness. It was a vicious 
 circle. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 133 
 
 Suddenly a wave of humiliation, of insup 
 portable shame, swept her from sole to 
 crown, and she returned swiftly to her post 
 above the sleeping man. One moment had 
 undone the work of all those proud years 
 during which she had made herself over from 
 the quintessential lover into one of the in 
 tellectual leaders of the world, a woman who 
 had accomplished what no man had dared to 
 attempt, and who, if the revolution were the 
 finality which before this man came had 
 seemed to be written in the Book of Ger 
 many, would be immortal in history. Wild 
 fevers of the blood, passionate longing for 
 completion in man, oneness, the "organic 
 unit 7 were not for her. 
 
 All feeling ebbed slowly out of her, leaving 
 her cold, collected, alert. She was, over all, 
 a woman of genius, the custodian of peculiar 
 gifts, sleeping throughout the ages, perhaps, 
 like Brunhilde on her rock, to awaken not at 
 the kiss of man, but at the summons of Ger 
 many in her darkest hour. 
 
 She bent over the man who belonged to the 
 
134 THE WHITE MORXIXG 
 
 woman alone in her and whose power over 
 her would be exerted as ruthlessly as her 
 own should be over herself. He looked a 
 very gallant gentleman as he lay there, and 
 he had been a very brave soldier. His own 
 place was secure in the annals of the war, 
 but at this moment, following upon his tri 
 umphant swoop after happiness, he was the 
 one deadly menace to the future of his 
 country. 
 
 Gisela opened his shirt gently and bared 
 his breast. She held her breath, but he slept 
 on and she took the dagger from her belt and 
 with a swift hard propulsion drove it into 
 his heart to the guard. He gave a long ex 
 piring sigh and lay still. A gallant gentle 
 man, a brave soldier, and a great lover had 
 the honor to be the first man to pay the price 
 of his country s crime, on the altar of the 
 Woman s Kevolutioru 
 
 Gisela went swiftly down the hall and 
 awakened Heloise, Mimi, and Marie and told 
 
THE WHITE MORXIXG 135 
 
 them what she had done. No novelty in hor 
 ror could startle European women in those 
 days. They dressed themselves hastily in 
 their gray uniforms and followed her to the 
 SaaL With Mimi .- ance she put on his 
 
 coat, the hilt of the dagger thrusting forward 
 the row of medals on his breast. Marie went 
 out into the street and flitted up and down 
 like a big gray moth, her gray little face 
 tense with rapture. Her devotion to Gisela 
 had been fanatical from the first but now she 
 begged what invisible power her wild little 
 mind still recognized to be permitted to die 
 for her. 
 
 In a moment she signaled that the street 
 was deserted. Gisela and Mimi carried the 
 body over to the park and dropped it into 
 the swiftly flowing Isar. The clear jade 
 green of the lovely river reflected the points 
 of the stars, and Franz von Xettelbeck as he 
 drifted down the tide looked as if attended 
 by innumerable candles dropped graciously 
 from on high to watch at his bier. But it was 
 to Heloise this fancy came, and she lifted her 
 
136 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 face and thanked the stars for their silent 
 funeral march. Not for her would the su 
 preme sacrifice have been possible, and for 
 the moment she did not envy Gisela Doring. 
 
 The four girls walked rapidly over to the 
 Maximilianstrasse and crossed the bridge to 
 the Maximilianeum. The long symmetrical 
 brown building with its open galleries filled 
 with the cold starlight was distorted by a 
 wireless station on its highest point and by 
 a biplane on the extreme left of the roof. It 
 stood on a lofty terrace and commanded a 
 view of all Munich and of the tumbled peaks 
 of the Alps. 
 
 They ran up the stairs and called to the 
 operator from the higher gallery. She an 
 swered in a hard and weary voice: "Noth 
 ing." Then they walked down the gallery 
 to the open tower facing the Alps. For half 
 an hour longer they stood in silence, alter 
 nately glancing from their wrist watches to 
 the faintly glittering peaks whose first re 
 flection of dawn, if all went well, would 
 change the face of the world. 
 
VI 
 
 THE eyes of the four women traveled to 
 the lofty towers of the Frauenkirche. 
 Its bells rang out a wild authoritative sum 
 mons. Coincidentally the streets filled with 
 women dressed uniformly in gray big pow 
 erfully built women, sturdy products of the 
 strong soil of Germany. They did not 
 march, nor form in ranks, but stood silent, 
 alert, shouldering rifles with fixed bayonets. 
 Involuntarily Gisela and her three lieuten 
 ants braced themselves against the pillars of 
 the tower. An instant later the walls of the 
 Maximilianeum rocked under the terrific im 
 pact of what sounded like a thousand explo 
 sions. The roar of parting walls, the shriek 
 of shells and bombs bursting high in the air, 
 the sharp short cry of shattered metal, the 
 
 137 
 
138 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 deep approaching voice of dynamite prolong 
 ing itself in echoes that seemed to reverberate, 
 among the distant Alps, shook the souls of 
 even those inured to the murderous uproar 
 of the battlefield. 
 
 Grotesquely combined with this terrific but 
 majestic confusion of sound were the screams 
 of innocent citizens hanging out of the win 
 dows, waving their arms, staring distraught 
 at the sky, convinced, in so far as they could 
 think at all, that a great enemy air fleet was 
 bombarding Germany at last. 
 
 Masses of flame and smoke shot upward. 
 The pale morning sky turned black, rent with 
 darting crimson tongues and lit with pris 
 matic stars. Other explosions followed in 
 rapid succession, some coming down the light 
 morning wind from a long distance. Blasts 
 of heat swept audibly through the long gal 
 leries of the Maximilianeum. 
 
 "It is an inferno!" Marie von Erkel for 
 the moment was almost hysterical. "Will 
 Munich be destroyed? Oh, not that!" 
 
 "The fire brigades know their business." 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 139 
 
 Gisela glanced up at the Marconi station. 
 Even through the din she could hear the faint 
 crackling of the wireless. "If all Ger 
 many " 
 
 But her eyes were wild. ... If the revo 
 lutionists in the rest of the empire had 
 been as prompt and fearless as those of 
 Bavaria, every munition and ammunition 
 factory, every aerodrome and public hangar, 
 save those taken possession of by power 
 fully armed squads of women, every arse 
 nal, every warehouse for what gasoline 
 and lubricating oils were left, every tele 
 graph and telephone wire, every railway sta 
 tion near either frontier, with thousands of 
 cars and miles of track had been destroyed 
 simultaneously. The armies would be iso 
 lated, without arms or ammunition but what 
 they had on hand or could manufacture in 
 the invaded countries ; no food but what they 
 had in storage. They could not fight the 
 enemy seven days longer; if the Enemy Al 
 lies heard immediately of the revolution 
 through neutral channels and believed in it 
 
140 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 after so many false alarms, the finish of the 
 German forces would come in two days. 
 
 But had the women of the other states been 
 as prompt and ruthless as the women of Ba 
 varia? Spandau, Essen, all the centers in 
 the Ehine Valley for the manufacture of 
 munitions on a grand scale . . . the great 
 Krupp factories . . . unless they were in 
 ruins the revolution was a failure. . . . 
 
 She could not be everywhere at once. 
 War and misery and starving children, the 
 loss of the men and boys they loved, and a 
 profound distrust of their rulers, had filled 
 them with a cold and bitter hatred of an au 
 tocracy convicted of lying and aggressive 
 purpose out of its own mouth ; but would the 
 iron in their souls carry them triumphantly 
 past the final test! Women were women and 
 Germans were not Russians. They had little 
 fatalism in their make-up, and their brain 
 cells were packed with the tradition of centu 
 ries of submission to man. True, their quiet 
 revolt had begun long before the war, and 
 this last year had wrought extraordinary 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 141 
 
 changes, quickening their mental processes, 
 forcing them to think and act for themselves ; 
 but their hearts might have turned to water 
 during those last dispiriting hours before the 
 dawn. 
 
 And how could it be possible that all 
 traitors had been detected, exterminated, 
 with millions in the secret? Troops might 
 even now be in Prussia. Great Headquar 
 ters (Grosse Hauptquartier) were in Pless, 
 and although the women of that city were not 
 in the confidence of the revolutionaries, and 
 it was to remain in ignorance as long as pos 
 sible, the abrupt cessation of telephone and 
 telegraph communication would advise that 
 group of alert brains that something was 
 wrong. Moreover, even with interrupted 
 communications they would soon learn of the 
 blowing up of factories in other Silesian 
 towns ; no doubt hear them. It was true the 
 railways and bridges between Pless and Ber 
 lin were if they were! destroyed, but 
 there were always automobiles; enough for 
 a small force. . . . And the police, the police 
 
142 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 of Berlin! They were still formidable in 
 spite of the drain on men for the front. 
 Mariette had written her grimly that she 
 would "take care of the rats in the gran 
 ary, " meaning the police; but although 
 Mariette was the most thorough and merci 
 less person she knew, she doubted even her 
 in this awful moment. 
 
 How could she have dreamed of accom 
 plishing a universal revolution in a country 
 possessing the most perfect secret service 
 system in the world I ... a country with 
 eyes in the back of its head? True, the So 
 cialists in her confidence had been noisy and 
 bumptious of late in order to concentrate at 
 tention upon their sex, and at the same time 
 careful to refrain from definite statements 
 or overt acts. ... It would never enter the 
 stupid official head that German women 
 could conceive, much less precipitate, a revo 
 lution; but there must be traitors, women 
 who fundamentally were the slaves of men, 
 weak spirits, spirits rotten with imperi 
 alism, militarism, but cunning in the art of 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 143 
 
 dissimulation. . . . What an accursed fool 
 and criminal she had been . . . egotistical 
 dreamer! . . . led on by the extraordinary 
 power she had acquired over the women of 
 her race. . . . 
 
 For a moment she clung to the embrasure, 
 so overwhelming was her impulse to hurl 
 herself down into oblivion. In that dark and 
 shrieking uproar she had the illusion that she 
 was in hell, in hell with her miserable vic 
 tims. 
 
 But although Gisela s long slumbering 
 nerves had had their revenge last night, they 
 had given up the fight when she had de 
 stroyed their only ally, and these last pro 
 testing vibrations were very brief. Her 
 eyes fell on the ranks of women standing in 
 the wide Maximilianstrasse, a street a mile 
 long and seventy-five feet across undis 
 turbed by the turmoil they had anticipated, 
 calmly awaiting her orders. The obsession 
 passed, and after a brief tribute of hatred to 
 her imagination, which was, after all, one 
 root of her power, she turned and glanced 
 
144 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 critically at her three companions. Marie, 
 looking like a little gray gnome, was dancing 
 about and waving her arms in ecstasy. 
 Heloise, her long blonde hair hanging about 
 her fine French face, was gazing out with 
 rapt eyes and lips apart, as if every sense 
 were drinking in the vision of a Germany 
 delivered. Mimi was standing with her arms 
 akimbo, nodding her head emphatically. 
 
 " Great work," she said as she met Gisela s 
 stern eyes. "Better go up to the wireless." 
 
 They ran rapidly up to the roof and looked 
 into the little room. The girl who sat there 
 nodded but did not speak. Her face was 
 gray and tense, but there was no evidence of 
 despair. Gisela and Mimi stood motionless 
 for what seemed to them a stifling hour, but 
 at last the operator laid down the receiver. 
 
 < All, > she said. Every one. 
 
 "The Rhine Valley?" 
 
 The girl nodded, then rolled her jacket into 
 a pillow, lay down before the door and im 
 mediately fell asleep. It had been a night 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 145 
 
 of ghastly suspense. Another operator was 
 already running up the stair to her relief. 
 
 "Fate!" cried Mimi. "The same fate 
 that sank the Armada and drove Napoleon to 
 Moscow. You had the vision " 
 
 "I was the chosen instrument " Gisela 
 walked rapidly over to the biplane. A girl 
 sat at the joy-stick looking as if carved out 
 of wood. There was no more expression on 
 her face than if she were sitting in the gal 
 lery at a rather dull play. Her lover and 
 six brothers were dead in France. She had 
 watched her little brother and her old grand 
 mother die of malnutrition. Her sister was 
 "officially pregnant" and under surveillance 
 lest she kill herself. No more perfect ma 
 chine was at the disposal of Gisela Doring. 
 Whether Germany were delivered or razed to 
 the earth was all one to her, but she was more 
 than willing, as a Bavarian with a traditional 
 hatred of Prussia, to play her part in the 
 downfall of a race that presumed to call it 
 self German. 
 
146 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Gisela stepped into the machine and it 
 glided downward and skimmed lightly over 
 the great length of the Maximilianstrasse. 
 
 The compact ranks, which had listened un 
 moved to the roar of dynamite and the de 
 tonations of bursting shells, raised their 
 faces at the humming of the machine and 
 broke into harsh abrupt cheering. Then 
 they leaned their rifles against their power 
 ful bodies and unfurled their flags and waved 
 them in the faces of the half paralyzed peo 
 ple in the windows. It was a white flag with 
 a curious device sketched in crimson: a hen 
 in successive stages of evolution. The final 
 phase was an eagle. The body was modeled 
 after the Prussian emblem of might, but the 
 face, grim, leering, vengeful, pitiless, was 
 unmistakably that of a woman. However 
 humor may be lacking in the rest of that 
 grandiose Empire it was grafted into the 
 Bavarians by Satan himself. 
 
 Gisela nodded. "The hens are eagles all 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 147 
 
 over Germany, " she announced in her full 
 carrying voice. "Word has come through 
 from every quarter." 
 
 She flew down the Leopoldstrasse. It was 
 packed with women from the Feldherrnhalle 
 to the Siegesthor, cheering women, waving 
 their flags, armed to the teeth. So was the 
 great Park of the Eesidenz, the Hofgarten, 
 where the guards were either bound or dead. 
 It took her but a few moments to fly all over 
 Munich. The narrow streets were deserted, 
 save for the prostrate policemen bound sud 
 denly from ambush; but in all the beautiful 
 squares, with their pompous statues, and in 
 all the wider streets, and out in the wide 
 Theresien Field before the colossal figure of 
 Bavaria, the women were gathered; relaps 
 ing into phlegmatic calm as soon as she had 
 given her message and passed. 
 
 But it was by no means a scene of un 
 broken dignity and silence. Here and there 
 groups of men in uniform lay dead, sword or 
 pistol in hand. Once Gisela flew low and dis 
 charged her revolver into the shoulder of a 
 
148 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 big officer, half dressed and barely recov 
 ered from his wounds, who was keeping off 
 half a dozen women with magnificent sword 
 play. The women gave one another first 
 aid, then lifted and pitched him into his 
 house. 
 
 There was sniping, of course, from the 
 windows, but the women made a concerted 
 rush and disposed of the terrified offender 
 as remorselessly as their own men had pun- 
 ished the desperate civilians of the lands 
 they had invaded. They had heard their 
 men brag for too many years about their ad 
 mirable policy of Schrecklichkeit to forget 
 the lesson in this fateful hour. 
 
 The most exciting scenes and the only ones 
 in which any of the women were killed were 
 in the vicinity of the garrison. These in 
 terior garrisons of the country had been one 
 of the long debated problems. As no women 
 entered them and as it was not safe to at 
 tempt the corruption of any of the men, there 
 were but two alternatives : blow them up and 
 sacrifice the men wholesale or meet them 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 149 
 
 with a superior force as they rushed out to 
 ascertain the nature of the explosions, and 
 fight them in open battle. Gisela had finally 
 decided to give them a chance for their lives, 
 as she had no mind to shed any more blood 
 than was unavoidable ; and these men, being 
 no longer in their prime, must be overcome 
 eventually, no matter what their fury. 
 
 When she hovered over the Marztplatz in 
 front of the garrison a few moments after 
 the last of the explosions, and while fire was 
 still raging in this military quarter of maga 
 zines, arsenals and laboratories, men and 
 women were mixed in a hideous confusion, 
 shooting and slashing indiscriminately. But 
 there were thousands of women and only a 
 few hundred men, all of whom at one time or 
 another had been wounded. Finally the cap 
 tain of this regiment of women ordered a 
 swift retreat, and simultaneously three ma 
 chine guns opened fire from innocent looking 
 windows, but on the garrison building, not on 
 the square. They ceased after one round, 
 and the captain of the women gave such men 
 
150 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 as were alive and unwounded their choice be 
 tween death and surrender. They chose the 
 sensible alternative, were driven within, and 
 placed under a heavy guard. 
 
 It was not safe to venture too close to the 
 still exploding and blazing structures, but it 
 was quite apparent that the work had been 
 done thoroughly. The fire brigades were 
 busy, and there was little danger of Munich, 
 one of the most beautiful and romantic cities 
 in the world, falling a victim to the revolu 
 tion. Many lives had been sacrificed, no 
 doubt. The women night-workers in the fac 
 tories, fifteen minutes before the signal from 
 the Frauenkirche, had pretended to strike, 
 seized all the hand arms available and shot 
 down the men who attempted to control 
 them. The men in the secret had gone with, 
 them and were already about their busi 
 ness. 
 
 The officers in charge of the Class of 1920 
 were too few in number to make any resist 
 ance, too dazed to grasp a situation for 
 which there was no precedent ; they had sur- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 151 
 
 rendered to the Amazons grimly awaiting 
 their decision. The poor boys in the Kadet- 
 tenkorps had run home to their mothers, and, 
 finding them in the streets, had either taken 
 refuge in the cellars, or joined those formid 
 able warriors in gray, promising obedience 
 and yielding their arms. 
 
 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 seri 
 ously; 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 
 
152 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 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 ex 
 terminated with no effort of men lacking 
 authority to act. 
 
 Several of the women flew out into the 
 country, but except where people were gath 
 ered 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 avia 
 tors 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. 
 The Social Democrats had possession of the 
 Reichstaggebaude, and every official head still 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 153 
 
 affixed to its shoulders was as helpless a 
 fuming prisoner in its own house as if 
 those arrogant brains had turned to por 
 ridge. Every royal and official residence 
 throughout the Empire was surrounded by 
 an army of women with fixed bayonets, and 
 before noon every unsubmissive member of 
 the old regime would be in either a fortress 
 or the common prison. 
 
 This news Grisela heard at ten o clock when 
 she returned to the wireless station on the 
 Maximilianeum. The Berlin news came 
 from, Mariette. 
 
 In Munich the old King had been returned 
 to the Red Palace which he had occupied 
 during the long years of his father s regency, 
 and it too was surrounded by an alert but 
 silent army. The other royal palaces were 
 guarded in a similar manner, but the women 
 had no intention of killing these kindly Wit- 
 telsbachs if it could be avoided. All they 
 asked of them was to keep quiet, and keep 
 quiet they did. After all, they had reigned 
 a thousand years. Perhaps they were tired. 
 
154 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Certainly they always looked bored to the 
 verge of dissolution. 
 
 The Munich Socialists had taken posses 
 sion of the Eesidenz in which to proclaim 
 their victory and the new Eepublic, and by 
 this time were crowding the Hofgarten and 
 adjoining streets. They were unarmed and 
 many of the women moved constantly among 
 them, ready at a second s notice to dispose 
 summarily of any man who even scowled his 
 antagonism to the downfall of monarchy. 
 
 Six hundred women, according to the pre 
 arranged program, and under Gisela s di 
 rect supervision, were turning such outlying 
 buildings as commanded the highways lead 
 ing toward the frontiers into fortifications. 
 They had little apprehension that their sons 
 and fathers, their husbands and lovers, 
 would fire on the women to whom they had 
 brought home food from their rations these 
 two years past, or that the General Staff 
 would risk the demolition of the cities of 
 Germany. But they took no chances, know 
 ing that an attempt might be made to rush 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 155 
 
 them. In that case they were determined to 
 remember only that their husbands and sons, 
 fathers and lovers, were bent upon their final 
 subjection. Moreover, the term " brain 
 storm" had long since found its way from 
 the United States to Germany, and the 
 women thought it singularly applicable to 
 their former masters when in a state of baf 
 fled rage. 
 
VII 
 
 MABIETTE S communications by wire 
 less were very brief, and on the 
 second day of the revolution Gisela went by 
 special train to Berlin. It was the King s 
 own train, and always ready to start. The 
 engineer and fireman avowed themselves 
 " friends of the revolution," but they per 
 formed their duties with two armed women 
 in the cab and fifty more in the car behind 
 the engine. 
 
 The cities through which Gisela passed, 
 as well as the small towns and wayside vil 
 lages, presented a uniform appearance: 
 smoking ruins in the outlying sections which 
 had been devoted to the war factories, and 
 streets deserted save for women sentries. 
 One or two of the smaller towns had burned, 
 owing to lack of fire brigades. The food 
 
 156 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 157 
 
 trains destined for the front, which had been 
 moved out of danger before the general de 
 struction, were being systematically un 
 loaded, and a portion of the contents doled 
 out to thousands of emaciated men, women, 
 and children. The rest would be as method 
 ically returned to the warehouses. 
 
 Gisela arrived in Berlin half an hour be 
 fore the Kaiser. 
 
 The city was as dark as interstellar space 
 and she would have been forced to spend the 
 night in the Anhalt Bahnhof if Mariette had 
 not met her. They walked from the station, 
 keeping close to the walls of the silent houses 
 and entering Unter den Linden from the 
 Friedrichstrasse. There was not a sound 
 but the high whirr of airplanes keeping 
 guard over a city that seemed stifled in the 
 embrace of death, its life current switched 
 off by the proudest achievement of its pesti 
 lent laboratories. 
 
 Mariette did not take the trouble to lower 
 her hard incisive voice as she told her sister 
 the brief story of the revolution in Berlin. 
 
158 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 "I left not a loophole for failure. Two 
 minutes before the bells rang every police 
 man on duty was shot dead from a doorway 
 or window. The police offices and stations 
 were blown up. There is not a policeman 
 alive in Berlin. I also ordered the garrisons 
 blown up. Both the police and the garrisons 
 here were too strong. I dared not risk an 
 encounter. Criticize me if you will. It is 
 done. * 
 
 "But the Emperor, the General Staff?" 
 Gisela was in no mood to waste a thought 
 upon means, nor even upon accomplished 
 ends. If they left Pless at once tliey should 
 have been here before this." 
 
 They did not leave Pless at once. When 
 they began to send out questions by wireless 
 after they found their telephone and tele 
 graph wires cut, they were kept quiet for 
 several hours by soothing message^ sent by 
 our women in Breslau and nearer towns. An 
 abortive uprising of a handful of starving 
 Socialists ! Even when their fliers went out 
 they could learn nothing because they dared 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 159 
 
 not land even at Breslau; high-firing guns 
 threatened them everywhere. All they could 
 report was that the streets were full of 
 armed women, which, of course, the General 
 Staff took as an unseemly joke. But toward 
 night a soldier who had managed to escape 
 from Breslau came staggering into Great 
 Headquarters with information that pene 
 trated even that composite Prussian skull: 
 the women of Germany had risen en masse 
 and effected a revolution. Of course they 
 refused to believe the worst that every 
 ounce and inch of war material had been de 
 stroyed ;^md the entire Staff, escorted by a 
 thousand trooj^-all they had on hand 
 started for Berlin. They did not omit to 
 wireless in both directions for troops to 
 march on Berlin at once ; but, needless to say, 
 these messages were deflected. As the tracks 
 were torn up they were obliged to travel by 
 automobile, and as the bridges over the 
 Kloonitz Canal and the Oder tributaries had 
 been blown up, they were unable to ameli 
 orate what must have been an apoplectic im- 
 
160 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 patience. No doubt a few of them are dead. 
 Of course their progress has been watched 
 and reported every hour, but they have not 
 been molested. We want them here. Only 
 their small air squadron has been shot 
 down." 
 
 They felt their way along Unter den Lin 
 den by the trees and entered the Opernplatz. 
 Two biplanes awaited them before the ar 
 senal. There were lights in the great pile of 
 the Hohenzollerns across the bridge. TTn- 
 easy spirits prowled there, no doubt, but 
 none of the women of the Imperial family 
 had made any attempt to escape, accepting 
 the assurances of the revolutionists that no 
 harm should come to them, and, knowing 
 nothing of the thorough methods taken to re 
 duce the army to impotence, awaited with 
 what patience they could muster and royal 
 women are the most patient in the world 
 the invincible troops that must come within 
 a day or two to their rescue. 
 
 The two biplanes flew over to the streets 
 east of the Emperor s palace and hovered 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 161 
 
 just above the house tops until the eyes of 
 Gisela and Mariette, now accustomed to a 
 darkness unpierced by moon or stars, made 
 out a long line of moving blackness in the 
 narrow gloom of the Koniginstrasse. The 
 forward cars entered the palace from the 
 Schlossplatz, and as lights immediately ap 
 peared in the courtyards Gisela saw eight or 
 ten men alight stiffly and hurriedly enter 
 the inner portals. The other automobiles 
 ranged themselves in an apparently un 
 broken line on all sides of the palace. Gisela 
 had amused herself imagining the nervous 
 speculations of those war-hardened poten 
 tates and warriors as they crawled through 
 the sinister darkness of the capital proud 
 witness of a thousand triumphal marches; 
 of the sharp and darting gaze above the guns 
 of the armored cars, expecting an ambush at 
 every corner. How they must hate a situa 
 tion so utterly without precedent. 
 
 Gisela almost laughed aloud as she saw the 
 purple flag, denoting that the Emperor was 
 in residence, run up on the north side of 
 
162 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 the palace. However, automatic discipline 
 worked both ways. 
 
 Once more Berlin was as silent as if at rest 
 for ever under the pall of darkness that 
 seemed to have descended from the dark and 
 threatening sky. 
 
 But only for a moment. 
 
 Berlin suddenly burst into a blinding glare 
 of light. Unter den Linden from end to end 
 excepting only the royal palaces with its 
 long line of imposing public buildings, ho 
 tels, and shops, the Kaiser-Franz-Joseph- 
 Platz, the Zeugplatz, the Lustgarten the 
 Schlossplatz all the magnificent expanse 
 from the Brandenburg gate to a quarter of 
 a mile beyond the river Spree had been 
 strung and looped with electric lights, and 
 the scene looked as if touched with a royal 
 fairy s wand. The side streets from the 
 Koyal Library and the old Kaiser Wilhelm 
 palace as far as the Schlossbriicke, were also 
 brilliantly illuminated. 
 
 And in all these streets and squares women 
 stood in close ranks, silent, phlegmatic 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 163 
 
 women, with pistols in their belts and rifles 
 with fixed bayonets on their shoulders, the 
 steel reflecting the terrific downpour of light 
 with a steady and menacing glitter. These 
 women wore gray uniforms and there were 
 shining Prussian helmets on their heads. 
 
 In every window was a double row of 
 women, armed; and the housetops were 
 crowded with them. There were also ma 
 chine guns on the roofs, pointing downward 
 or toward the roof of the palace. 
 
 Mariette laughed. "Theatric enough to 
 please even his taste ? Our last tribute. Let 
 us hope he will enjoy it." 
 
 A moment later the expected happened. 
 A window of the palace overlooking the 
 great Schlossplatz opened and the Emperor 
 stepped out into the narrow balcony. His 
 uniform was caked with dust and mud and 
 his face was drawn with a mortal fatigue; 
 but as he stood there scowling haughtily down 
 upon that upturned sea of woman s faces, 
 the most singular vision that ever had 
 greeted imperial eyes, he was an imposing 
 
164 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 figure enough to those who knew that he was 
 the Kaiser Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and 
 Alsace-Lorraine, and Emperor in Germany. 
 
 It was evident that he had no intention of 
 speaking, but expected this grotesque mob to 
 be overwhelmed by the imperial presence and 
 dissolve. 
 
 Frau Kathie Meyers, with the figure of an 
 Amazon and the voice of a megaphone, 
 stepped forth from the ranks and lifted her 
 placid red face to the balcony. 
 
 "You will abdicate, William Hohenzol- 
 lern," she announced in tones that rolled 
 down toward the Brandenburg gate like the 
 overtones of a Death Symphony at the Front. 
 "Germany is a Eepublic. And the palace is 
 mined. If your soldiers fire one shot from 
 the windows the palace goes up to meet the 
 ghosts of every arsenal and every ammuni 
 tion factory in what two days ago was the 
 Empire of Germany. Your armies are help 
 less. You will remain a prisoner within 
 your palace until we have decided whether 
 to deliver you to Great Britain, incarcerate 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 165 
 
 you in a fortress, or permit you to live in ex 
 ile. It will depend upon the behavior of the 
 army when it returns. If you attempt to 
 leave the palace you will be shot." 
 
 The Emperor stared down upon that mass 
 of calm implacable faces, so unmistakably 
 German ; not brilliant nor beautiful, but per 
 sistent as death, and stamped with the water 
 mark of kultur ; stared for a long moment, his 
 gray face twitching, the familiar gray blaze 
 in his eyes. But he turned without a word 
 or even a disdainful gesture and reentered 
 the palace, the window closing immediately 
 behind him. 
 
 The Amazon addressed the men in the 
 armored automobiles that surrounded the 
 palace. 
 
 "Fire upon us if you like. Our ranks are 
 close and you will kill many. But not one 
 of you will live to eat rat sausage tomorrow 
 morning. Now disarm and march to the 
 guard house. " 
 
 The contemptible little army of the Kaiser, 
 hypnotized as much by the glare as by this 
 
166 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 solid mass of vindictive females singly so 
 negligible shrugged their shoulders, sur 
 rendered their arms, and marched off under 
 guard. After all, they would have a blessed 
 rest, however brief, before the great generals 
 sent back a few brigades to execute sum 
 mary vengeance upon these presumptuous 
 women, who had used their incidental supe 
 riority in numbers so basely. 
 
 But nothing came from the front but fran 
 tic orders by wireless to the staunch but im 
 potent pillars of the old regime. The Brit 
 ish, French, and American forces, convinced 
 at last that German women actually had ef 
 fected a revolution God knew how! at 
 tacked every point of the line from Flanders 
 to Belfort, and their aviators dropped news 
 papers containing the extraordinary but 
 verified story, into the German trenches and 
 back of the lines. 
 
 The destruction of the railways leading to 
 the Austria-Hungarian Empire, as well as 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 167 
 
 all the rolling stock within three miles of the 
 frontier, balked any attempt to rush supplies 
 in from the east, and in two days Austria 
 was in the throes of a revolution far more 
 devastating internally than Germany s, for 
 that excitable and harassed people, long on 
 the verge of despair, merely caught the revo 
 lution-microbe and went mad. 
 
 To supply either the army opposing Italy 
 or that in Eoumania and Gfallicia, to say 
 nothing of that in the Northeast, was no 
 longer even considered. The young Em 
 peror sought only to come to an understand 
 ing with his people. 
 
 It was a matter of days before both am 
 munition and food would be exhausted on the 
 two fronts, and neither had a superfluous 
 man to send to Berlin, or even to repair the 
 tracks. 
 
 By Friday there was no longer any doubt 
 of the complete success of the Eevolution. 
 Britain, France, Eussia, Italy, the United 
 
168 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 States, with a prompt and canny statesman 
 ship, remarkable in Governments, had form 
 ally acknowledged the German Eepublic, and 
 offered terms of peace possible for an ambi 
 tious and self-respecting but beaten people 
 to accept. At all events there would be no 
 commercial boycott, and the young Eepub 
 lic would be given every assistance in restor 
 ing the shattered finances of Germany, and 
 its economic relations with the rest of the 
 world. 
 
 The good German people were flattered in 
 phrases that they rolled on their tongues. 
 Even those too schooled in lies to believe the 
 statesmen of their own or any land reflected 
 that, after all, the Enemy Allies had dem 
 onstrated they were sportsmen, that Ger 
 man prisoners had been well treated, and 
 that before the war there had been no re 
 strictions upon German commerce save in 
 insidious reiterated words of men deter 
 mined upon war at any cost. As a matter of 
 fact, Germany had been absorbing the com- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 169 
 
 merce of the world, and Britain had been 
 reprehensibly supine. 
 
 As the Socialists now did all the talking, 
 and unhindered, it was not difficult to per 
 suade even the reluctant minority that the 
 military party had precipitated the war in a 
 sudden panic at the rapidly developing power 
 of the proletariat. 
 
 Night fliers dropped millions of leaflets in 
 the vicinity of the armies on the Eastern and 
 Western fronts, signed (at the pistol point) 
 by the most powerful names in the former 
 Government, as well as by the well-known 
 Social-Democrat leaders, containing the de 
 tails of the Revolution and proofs of its suc 
 cess. The Empire had fallen. A Eepublic, 
 acknowledged by the great powers of the 
 world, was established. Would the soldiers 
 stack their arms and return to their homes? 
 If the generals or under officers attempted to 
 restrain them it was to be remembered that 
 the soldiers were as a hundred thousand to 
 one. 
 
170 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 The women felt no real apprehension of 
 an avenging army. They knew the average 
 German male. His innate subserviency to 
 power would turn him automatically about 
 to the party whose power was supreme. 
 And the soldiers hated their officers. 
 
VIII 
 
 ON Friday night Gisela left her apart 
 ment in the Koniginstrasse, where she 
 had slept for a few hours after a visit to the 
 principal cities of the Empire, and walked 
 out to Schwabing, that picturesque "village" 
 that looked like a bit of the Alps transferred 
 to the edge of Munich. She had not forgot 
 ten the man she had sacrificed, and at the 
 end of the first day of the Revolution she 
 had learned that his body had been caught 
 under the Schwabing bridge, rescued, and 
 placed temporarily in the vault of the little 
 church. 
 
 It was a bright starlight night, and the 
 old white church with its bulbous tower, last 
 outpost of Turkey in her heyday, looked 
 like a lone mourner for the dream of Mittel- 
 Europa. Gisela climbed the mound and en 
 tered the quiet enclosure. She had met no 
 171 
 
172 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 one in the peaceful suburb, although she had 
 heard the deep guttural voices of elderly men 
 still lingering at the tables in the beer gar 
 dens. 
 
 She had sent orders to leave the door of 
 the church unlocked, and she entered the 
 barren room, guiding herself with her electric 
 torch to the stair that led down to the vault. 
 Fear of any sort had long since been crowded 
 out of her, but it was a lonely pilgrimage she 
 hardly would have undertaken ten days ago. 
 
 She descended the short flight of steps and 
 flashed her light about the vault. It was a 
 small room, oppressively musty and humid. 
 All Schwabing is damp but the Isar itself 
 might have washed the walls of this dripping 
 sepulcher. The coffin stood on a rough 
 trestle in the center of the chamber, and it 
 was covered with the military cloak that, 
 with his sword and helmet, she had ordered 
 sent from his hotel. 
 
 She stood beside the coffin, trying to visu 
 alize the man who lay within, wondering if 
 the orders still bulged above the hilt of the 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 173 
 
 dagger she had driven in with so firm a hand 
 ... or if they had taken the time to remove 
 it ... or if that symbol of Germany s free 
 dom would be found ages hence in a handful 
 of dust when the man who had taught her all 
 she would ever know of love or living was 
 long forgotten. . . . 
 
 But in a moment these vagrant fancies, 
 drifting from a tired brain, took flight, her 
 reluctant mind focused itself, and she knelt 
 beside the bier, pressing the folds of the 
 cloak about her face and weeping heavily. 
 
 It was her final tribute to her womanhood. 
 That she had rescued her country and inci 
 dentally the world, making democracy and 
 liberty safe for the first time in its history, 
 mattered nothing to her then. Nor her im 
 mortal fame. 
 
 To regret was impossible. Strong souls 
 are inaccessible to regret. But she hated life 
 and her bitter destiny, for she had sacri 
 ficed the life that gave meaning to her own, 
 and she wished that the implacable Powers 
 that rule the destinies of individuals and na- 
 
174 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 tions had foreborne their accustomed irony 
 and presented her gifts to some woman mer 
 cifully lacking her own terrible power to love 
 and suffer and the imagination which 
 would keep for ever vivid in her mind the 
 poignant happiness that had been hers and 
 that she had immolated on the cold altar of 
 duty. She was still young, and her sole 
 hope, glimmering at the end of an intermin 
 able perspective, was that it would be her 
 privilege to lie at last in the grave with this 
 man ; who had been her other part and whose 
 heart and hers she had slain. 
 
THE WOMEN OF GERMANY 
 
 An Argument for my "The White Morning" 
 
 From The Bookman, February, 1918, 
 by courtesy of Dodd, Mead & Co. 
 
THE WOMEN OF GERMANY 
 An Argument for my "The White Morning 
 
 I HAVE been asked by the Editor of The Book 
 man to state my authority for writing The White 
 Morning; in other words for daring to believe that 
 a revolution conceived and engineered by women is 
 possible in Germany. 
 
 Before giving my own reasons, stripped of what 
 glamor of fiction I have been able to surround the 
 story with, I should like to say that when I began 
 to put the idea into form I thought it was entirely 
 my own. But while it is always pleasant to offer 
 this sort of incense to one s vanity, I should have 
 been more than glad to quote to my editor and 
 publisher some reliable male authority; a man s 
 opinion, on all momentous subjects, by force of 
 tradition, far outweighing any theory or guess 
 that a woman, no matter what her intimate per 
 sonal experience, may advance. 
 
 Imagine then my delight, when the story was half 
 finished, to read an article by A. Curtis Roth, in the 
 Saturday Evening Post, in which he stated unequiv 
 ocally that it was among the possibilities that the 
 177 
 
178 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 women of Germany, driven to desperation by 
 suffering and privation, and disillusion, would arise 
 suddenly and overturn the dynasty. Mr. Roth, 
 who was American vice-consul at Plauen, Saxony, 
 until we entered the war, has written some of the 
 most enlightening and brilliant articles that have 
 appeared on the internal conditions of any of the 
 belligerent countries since August, 1914. He re 
 mained at his post until the last moment and then 
 left Germany a physical wreck from malnutrition. 
 In spite of the fact that he was an officer in the 
 consular service of a neutral country, with ample 
 means at his command, and standing in close per 
 sonal relations with the authorities, he could not 
 get enough to eat ; and what he was forced to swal 
 low lest he starve completely broke down his di 
 gestion. 
 
 On the other hand, he never ceased to observe; 
 and having made friends of all classes of Germans, 
 and been given facilities for observation and study 
 of conditions enjoyed by few Americans in the 
 Teutonic Empire at the time, he noted every phase 
 and change, both subtle and manifest, through 
 which these afflicted people passed during the first 
 three years of the war. They are in far worse 
 case now. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 179 
 
 Later (in November) I read an article by a Ger 
 man, J. Koettgen, in the New York Chronicle, which 
 was even more explicit. 
 
 Herr Koettgen is one of the agents in this coun 
 try of Hermann Fernau, an eminent intellectual 
 of Germany, who escaped into Switzerland, and 
 wages relentless war upon the dynasty and the mili 
 tary caste of Prussia ; which he holds categorically 
 responsible for the world war. There is a price on 
 Fernau s head. He dares not walk abroad without 
 a bodyguard, and cannon are concealed among the 
 oleanders that surround his house. Not only has he 
 written two books, Because I am a German, and 
 The Coming Democracy, which if circulated in Ger 
 many would prick thousands of dazed despairing 
 brains into immediate rebellion, but he is the head 
 of those German Radical Democrats which have 
 united in an organization called " Friends of Ger 
 man Democracy. " 
 
 Their avowed object, through the medium of a 
 bi-weekly journal, Die Freie Zeitung, and other 
 propaganda, is to plant sound democratic ideas and 
 ideals in the minds of German prisoners in the 
 Entente countries, and to recruit the saner exiles 
 everywhere. These publications reach men and 
 women of German blood whose grandfathers fled 
 
180 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 from military tyranny after their abortive revolu 
 tion in 1848, and, with their descendants, have en 
 joyed freedom and independence in the United 
 States ever since. The best of them are expected 
 to exert pressure upon their friends and relatives 
 in Germany. There are already branches of this 
 epochal organization in the larger American 
 cities. 
 
 Herr Koettgen (who has written a book called 
 The Hausfrau and Democracy, by the way) walked 
 into the office of the Chronicle some time in Novem 
 ber and presented a letter to the editor, Mr. 
 Fletcher. In the course of the heated conversation 
 that ensued, Herr Koettgen exclaimed with bitter 
 scorn : "Oh, so you think yourself as fiercely anti- 
 German as a man may be? Well, let me tell you 
 that you are not capable of one-tenth the passionate 
 hatred I feel for a dynasty and a caste that has 
 made me so ashamed of being a German that I 
 could eat the dust. 
 
 In Herr Koettgen s article occur the following 
 paragraphs: "At the first glance German women 
 hardly appear likely material for the coming Revo 
 lution which will turn Germany into a modern 
 country. But many incidents point to the fact that 
 German women are growing with their increasing 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 181 
 
 task. They are beginning to replace their men not 
 only economically but politically. Most of the 
 public demonstrations in Germany during this war 
 have been led and arranged by women. The very 
 first demonstration in 1915 consisted of women. 
 As Mr. Gerard tells us in his book, they had no 
 very definite idea of what they wanted ; only they 
 wanted their men back. But since that time their 
 political education has made rapid progress. . . . 
 With their men in the field and their former leaders 
 (Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, Louise Zietz) in 
 prison, German women are learning to act for 
 themselves. Their demonstrations point to it, as do 
 also letters written by German women to their men 
 who are now prisoners of war in France and Eng 
 land. In one of these letters which escaped the 
 watchful eye of the censor, a German hausfrau de 
 scribed how she made the officials of Muenster sit 
 up by her energetic and persistent demands." 
 
 A girl upon one occasion said to Herr Koettgen : 
 "Only women and children were employed in our 
 factory. We had more than one strike. Two 
 women would go round to every woman and girl in 
 the shop and tell them : We have asked for twenty 
 or thirty pfennings more. To-morrow we are go 
 ing on strike. She who does not come out will have 
 
182 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 the thrashing of her life. We were all frightened 
 and stayed away, for they really meant it." 
 
 Herr Koettgen continues: "Novel circum 
 stances are reawakening in the meek German haus- 
 f rau some of that combative spirit which character 
 ized the Teuton women in the time of Tacitus, when 
 they often fought alongside of their men in the 
 wagon camp. . . . German women will show their 
 men the way to freedom. Doing more than their 
 share of the nation s work, they insist upon being 
 heard, and their growing influence is one of the 
 greatest dangers to German autocracy in its present 
 predicament. As politicians German women have 
 the advantage of not having gone through the soul- 
 destroying, brutalizing school of Prussian militar 
 ism, and of not being burdened with the rigmarole of 
 theory which formed the content of German poli 
 tics before the war. They can be trusted to make a 
 bee-line for the real obstacle to peace and liberty 
 to eradicate the autocratic militaristic regime which 
 enslaved the German people in order to enslave the 
 world." 
 
 Now that the way has been cleared by two men of 
 affairs who have never condescended to write fic 
 tion, I will give my own reasons for belief in the 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 183 
 
 German women, and also for the general plan of 
 The White Morning. 
 
 I had an apartment for seven years in Munich 
 and spent six or eight months alternately in that de 
 lightful city and traveling in Europe, passing a 
 month or two in England, or returning for an equal 
 length of time to my own country. During that 
 long residence in Germany I naturally met many of 
 its inhabitants, and of as many classes as possible. 
 German women do not tell you the history of their 
 lives the first time you meet them, not by any 
 means ; they are naturally secretive and the reverse 
 of frank. But they are human, and when you have 
 won their confidence they will tell you surprising 
 things. The confidences I received were for the 
 most part from girls, and one and all assured me 
 they never should marry. Having grown up under 
 one House Tyrant, for whom they were not respon 
 sible, why in heaven s name should they deliber 
 ately annex another ? Far, far better bear with the 
 one whose worst at least they knew (and who could 
 not live forever) , than marry some man who might 
 be loathsome as well as tyrannical, and who, unless 
 there happened to be a war, might outlive them ? 
 
 The idea in my novel of the four Niebuhr girls 
 
184 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 and their initial rebellion was suggested to me by 
 a family of Prussian junkerdom that I met at a 
 watering place in Denmark. The baroness was a 
 charming woman who used a moderate invalidism 
 in a smiling imperturbable fashion to insure herself 
 a certain immunity from the demands of her auto 
 cratic lord. The girls were lively, intelligent, 
 splendidly educated. They were in love with soci 
 ety and court functions, but deeply rebellious at 
 the attitude of the German male, and determined 
 never to many. That is to say the three younger 
 girls; the oldest had married a tame puppy, and 
 anything less like a tyrant I never beheld. No 
 American husband could be more subservient. But 
 there was no question that he belonged to a small 
 exceptional class : while his wife, with all the domi 
 nating qualities of her father, was one of a rapidly 
 increasing number of German women, silently but 
 firmly rebellious. 
 
 The Herr baron was a typical Prussian aristocrat 
 and autocrat. The girls could hardly have had 
 less liberty in a convent. When they came from 
 their hotel to mine he escorted them over and often 
 came in. Luckily he liked me or I never should 
 have had the opportunity to know them as well as 
 I did. Nor should I have been able to continue the 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 185 
 
 acquaintance after the day I wickedly induced 
 them to run away with me to Copenhagen, where 
 we shopped, promenaded all the principal streets, 
 then took ices on the terrace of one of the restau 
 rants. When we returned he was storming up and 
 down the platform of the station, and he fairly 
 raved at the girls. "And you dared, you dared, to 
 go to Copenhagen, without permission, without 
 your mother, without me!" The girls listened 
 meekly, but whenever he wheeled laughed behind 
 his military back. Then he turned on me, but I 
 called him a tyrant and gave him my opinion of his 
 nonsensical attitude generally. As I was not his 
 daughter he gradually calmed down and seemed 
 rather to relish the tirade. Finally they all came 
 over to my hotel to tea. 
 
 " You see ! " said one of the girls to me afterward. 
 "I have not exaggerated. Do you think I want 
 another like that?" And, so far as I know, they 
 have never married. 
 
 I did not draw any of my characters on these 
 four delightful girls, but took the episode as a 
 foundation for the incidents and characters that 
 grew under my hand after I got round to the story. 
 
 The episode of Georg Zottmyer was also told me 
 by a German girl whom I got to know very well in 
 
186 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Munich, and who distantly suggested the character 
 of Gisela (that is to say in the very beginning. 
 As Gisela developed she became more like her own 
 legendary Brunhilda). 1 
 
 This young woman was as independent in her 
 life and in her ideas as any I ever met in England 
 or the United States. But fortune had been kind 
 to her. Her father died just after her education 
 was finished, and as he left little money, she went 
 to Brazil as governess in a wealthy family. She 
 remained in South America for several years, gain 
 ing, of course, poise and experience. Then a rela 
 tive died and left her a comfortable fortune. 
 When I met her she was living in Munich from 
 choice, like so many other Germans who were bored 
 with routine and rigid class lines. 
 
 She was a beautiful young woman, with dark hair 
 and eyes and a brilliant complexion, and dressed to 
 perfection, although she wore no stays. This may 
 have been a bit of vanity on her part, as the awful 
 reformkleid was in vogue, and fat German women 
 were displaying themselves in lumps and creases 
 and billows and sections that rolled like the un 
 trammelled waves of the sea. Her own figure was so 
 
 i For this reason I asked the most beautiful woman I 
 have ever seen of the heroic or goddess type to be photo 
 graphed for the frontispiece. G. A. 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 187 
 
 firmly molded aud so erect and supple that it 
 was, for all her fashionable clothes, quite inde 
 pendent of the corset. She had charming manners 
 combined with an imperturbable serenity, and al 
 ways seemed faintly amused. On the other hand, 
 she displayed none of the offensive German conceit 
 and arrogance. 
 
 We spent several days together at Partenkirchen, 
 one of the most picturesque spots in the Bavarian 
 Alps, and as we were both good walkers, and there 
 was no one else in the hotel who interested us, we be 
 came quite intimate. She was one of the first to talk 
 to me about the deep discontent and disgust of the 
 German women, and of her own utter contempt for 
 the meek hausfrau type, and for the tyrannies, 
 petty, coarse, often brutal, of the man in his home. 
 Nothing, she was determined, would ever tempt her 
 to marry, and she could name many others who 
 were making an independent life for themselves, 
 although, lacking fortune, often in secret. No mat 
 ter how much she might fancy herself in love (and 
 I imagine that she had had her enlightening ex 
 periences) she would not risk a lifelong clash of 
 wills with a man who might turn out to be a medi 
 eval despot. 
 
 It was then that she told me of the tentative pro 
 posal of one of her beaux (she had many) "Georg 
 
188 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 Zottmyer," which I have recorded almost literally 
 in the scene between this passing character and 
 Gisela in the Cafe Luitpolt. My object in doing so 
 was to give as realistic an impression as possible of 
 what the German woman is up against in deal 
 ings with her male. I knew Zottmyer personally, 
 and he interested me the more (as one is interested 
 in a bug under a microscope) because he had less 
 excuse for his conceit and arrogance than most Ger 
 man men : he was brought up in California, where 
 his father is a successful doctor. But that only 
 seemed to have made him worse. He returned to 
 Germany as soon as he was of age, more German 
 than the Germans, and despising Americans. 
 
 I had often wondered what became of this highly 
 interesting young woman, and when I began to 
 write The White Morning she popped into my 
 mind. I believe she could be a leader of some kind 
 if she chose. Perhaps she is. 
 
 The cases could be multiplied indefinitely. The 
 Erkels and Mimi Brandt are drawn, together with 
 their conditions, almost photographically. "Helo- 
 ise" finally married a Scot and went with him to 
 his own country, but her sisters were dragging out 
 their tragic lives when I left Munich. 
 
 A few days ago I met a highly intelligent Ameri- 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 189 
 
 can woman of German blood who, before the war, 
 used to visit her relatives in Germany every year. 
 I told her that I had written this story and she 
 agreed with me that it was on the cards the women 
 would instigate a revolution. " Never, " she said, 
 "in any country have I known such discontent 
 among women, heard so many bitter confidences. 
 Their feelings against their fathers or husbands 
 were the more intense and violent because they 
 dared not speak out like English or American 
 women. 
 
 There is no question that for about fifteen years 
 before the war there was a thinking, secret, silent, 
 watchful but outwardly passive revolt going on 
 among the women of Germany. I do not think it 
 had then reached the working women. It took the 
 war to wake them up. But in that vast class which, 
 in spite of racial industry, had a certain amount of 
 leisure, owing to the almost total absence of pov 
 erty in the Teutonic Empire, and whose minds were 
 educated and systematically trained, there was per 
 sistent reading, meditating upon the advance of 
 women in other nations, quiet debating unsuspected 
 of their masters ; and they were growing in numbers 
 and in an almost sinister determination every year. 
 Of course there were plenty of hausfraus cowed to 
 
190 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 the door mat, and, like the proletariat, needing a 
 war to wake them up ; but there were several hun 
 dred thousand of the other sort. 
 
 Now, all these women need is a leader. The 
 working women have their Rosa Luxemburgs, who 
 think out loud in public and get themselves locked 
 up; and, moreover, do not appeal to the other 
 classes for Germany is the most snobbish country 
 in the world. If there were or if there is such a 
 woman as Gisela Doring, who before the war had 
 acquired a widespread intellectual influence over 
 the awakening women of her race, and then, when 
 they were approaching the breaking point, had gone 
 quietly and systematically about making a revolu 
 tion, there is no question in my mind as to the out 
 come. 
 
 Just consider for a moment what the German 
 women have suffered during this war a war that 
 they were told was forced upon their country by 
 the aggressive military acts of Russia and France, 
 but which, owing to Germany s might, would hardly 
 last three months. For nearly three years they 
 have never known the sensation of appeased hun 
 ger, and, having always been immense eaters, have 
 suffered the tortures of dyspepsia in addition to 
 hunger. But, far worse, they have listened almost 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 191 
 
 continuously to the wails of their children for satis 
 fying food, children who are forever hungry and 
 who often succumb. Karl Ackerman, whose accu 
 racy no one has questioned, states in his book, Ger 
 many, The Next Republic?, that in 1916 sixty thou*- 
 sand children died of malnutrition in Berlin alone. 
 
 These women have lost their fathers, husbands, 
 sons well, that is the fortune of any war ; but they 
 are beginning to understand that they have lost 
 them, not in a war of self-defense, but to gratify 
 the insane ambitions and greed of a dynasty and a 
 military caste that are out of date in the twentieth 
 century. Their parents, when over sixty, have 
 died from the same cause as the children. Their 
 daughters, both unmarried and newly widowed, are 
 "officially pregnant," or the mothers of brats the 
 name of whose fathers they do not know. The 
 young girls of Lille hardly have suffered more. 
 The German victims are sent for, then sent home 
 to bear another child for Germany. 
 
 Now, we know what the German men are. 
 These women are the mothers and wives and sisters 
 of the German men; in other words, they are Ger 
 mans, body, and bone and brain-cells, capable of 
 precisely the same ruthless tactics when pushed too 
 hard if they have a leader. That, to my mind, is 
 
192 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 the whole point. Given that leader, they would ef 
 fect a revolution precisely as I have described in 
 my story. Nor would they run the risk of failure. 
 The German race is not eight-tenths illiterates and 
 two-tenths intellectuals, emotional firebrands, an 
 archists and sellers-out like the Russians. They 
 are uniformly educated, uniformly disciplined. 
 They will do nothing futile, nothing without the 
 most secret and methodical preparation of which 
 even the German mind is capable. It will be like 
 turning over in bed in camp: they will all turn 
 over together. They are damnably efficient. 
 
 It may be said: "But you may have spoiled 
 their chances with your book. You not only have 
 revealed them in their true character to their men, 
 but all the details of their probable methods in 
 working up and precipitating a revolution. You 
 have, in other words, put the German authorities 
 on their guard. 
 
 The answer to this is that no German of the 
 dominant sex could be made to believe in anything 
 so unprecedented as German women taking the 
 law into their own hands, uniting, and overthrow 
 ing a dynasty. Nothing can penetrate a German 
 official skull but what has been trained into it from 
 birth. Unlike the women, the system has made 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 193 
 
 the men of the ruling class into the sort of machine 
 which is perfect in its way but admits of no mod 
 ern improvements. That has been the secret of 
 their strength and of their weakness, and will be 
 the chief assistance to the Allies in bringing about 
 their final defeat. 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 
 
194 THE WHITE MORNING 
 
 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 considera 
 tion of the ruling caste, to say nothing of common 
 politeness, have inspired universal jealousy and 
 hatred, the more poignant as it must be silent. But 
 even the silent may find their means of vengeance, 
 as the noble discovers when he attempts recogni 
 tion in the intellectual world. But if he were a 
 propagandist, with the welfare of all Germany at 
 heart, and won his influence under an assumed 
 name, as Gisela Doring did, the revelation of his 
 identity, together with proof of dissociation from 
 his own class, would enhance his popularity im 
 mensely. Moreover, it would be incense to the van 
 ity of classes that never are permitted to forget 
 their inferior rank. 
 
 In this country there is a snobbish tendency to 
 exalt and boom any writer who is known to belong 
 to one of the old and wealthy families; and the 
 more snobbish the writer the more infectious the 
 disease. But then in this country, which has never 
 suffered from militarism, there is a naive tendency 
 to worship success in any form. In Germany my 
 heroine would have doomed herself to failure if 
 
THE WHITE MORNING 195 
 
 she had signed her work Gisela von Niebuhr. But 
 her early education, surroundings, position, to say 
 nothing of her four years in the United States 
 were just what gave her the requisite advantages, 
 and preserved her from many mistakes. She 
 starts out with no prejudices against any caste, 
 and an intense sympathy for all German women 
 who lack even the compensation of being hoch- 
 wohlgeboren. 
 
 No one knows what the future holds, or what un 
 expected event will suddenly end the war; but I 
 should not have written The White Morning if I 
 had not been firmly convinced that a Gisela might 
 arise at any moment and deliver the world. 
 
 GERTRUDE ATHERTON. 
 
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