“How very interesting!” she said, turning to Lady Brand. “Perhaps your daughter-in-law will enlighten us a little about German psychology which we have found so puzzling. I should be so glad if she could explain to us how the German people reconcile the sinking of merchant ships, the unspeakable crime of the Lusitania with any belief in God, or even with the principles of our common humanity. It is a mystery to me how the drowning of babies could be regarded as legitimate warfare by a people proud of their civilisation.”
“Perhaps it would be better to avoid controversy, dear Miss Clutter,” said Lady Brand, alarmed at the prospect of an “unpleasant” scene which would be described in other drawing-rooms next day.
But Miss Clutter had adopted Ethel’s method of enquiry. She so much wanted to know the German point of view. Certainly they must have a point of view.
“Yes, it would be so interesting to know!” said another lady.
“Especially if we could believe it,” said another.
Elsa had been twisting and re-twisting a little lace handkerchief in her lap. She was very pale, and tried to conceal a painful agitation from all these hostile and enquiring ladies.
Then she spoke to them in a low, strained voice.
“You will never understand,” she said. “You look out from England with eyes of hate, and without pity in your hearts. The submarine warfare was shameful. There were little children drowned on the Lusitania, and women. I wept for them and prayed the dear God to stop the war. Did you weep for our little children and our women? They, too, were killed by sea warfare, not only a few, as on the Lusitania, but thousands and tens of thousands. Your blockade closed us in with an iron ring. No ship could bring us food. For two years we starved on short rations and chemical foods. We were without fats and milk. Our mothers watched their children weaken and wither and die, because of the English blockade. Their own milk dried up within their breasts. Little coffins were carried down our streets day after day, week after week. Fathers and mothers were mad at the loss of their little ones. ‘We must smash our way through the English blockade!’ they said. The U-boat warfare gladdened them. It seemed a chance of rescue for the children of Germany. It was wicked. But all the war was wickedness. It was wicked of you English to keep up your blockade so long after Armistice, so that more children died and more women were consumptive, and men fainted at their work. Do you reconcile that with God’s good love? Oh, I find more hatred here in England than I knew even in Germany. It is cruel, unforgiving, unfair! You, are proud of your own virtue and hypocritical. God will be kinder to my people than to you, because now we cry out for His mercy, and you are still arrogant, with the name of God on your lips but a devil of pride in your hearts. I came here with my dear husband believing that many English would be like him, forgiving, hating cruelty, eager to heal the world’s broken heart. You are not like him. You are cruel and lovers of cruelty, even to one poor German girl who came to you for shelter with her English man. I am sorry for you. I pity you because of your narrowness. I do not want to know you.”
She stood up, swaying a little, with one hand on the mantelpiece, as afterwards she told her husband. She did not believe that she could cross the floor without falling. There was a strange dizziness in her head, and a mist before her eyes. But she held her head high and walked out of the drawing-room, and then upstairs. When Wickham Brand came back she was lying on her bed very ill. He sent for a doctor who was with her for half-an-hour.
“She is very weak,” he said. “No pulse to speak of. You will have to be careful of her—deuced careful.”