“Even if France insists on her right to Shylock’s pound of flesh,” said Dorothy. “France is the enemy of the world’s peace.”
Bertram’s face flushed.
“I don’t want to argue,” he said, “but I know the sacrifice of France. I saw her agony with my own eyes. I’ve just been in the old battlefields again, among the peasants there. There’s only one thing that’s in all their minds—a dread of another war. They’re still not sure that one day Germany won’t come back again, and re-light the red fires. They want nothing but security, and they don’t see it, except in keeping Germany weak.”
“They’re going the wrong way to work to prevent another war,” said Dorothy. “There’s not an insult, a petty provocation, a threat of ignominy, that they haven’t heaped on Germany since the signing of Peace.”
“One must understand their point of view,” said Bertram. “Germany wasn’t very tender of French feelings in time of war, when she thought she was winning.”
He changed the topic of conversation. His advocacy of France seemed to distress Dorothy.
After dinner, when with a tactful word or two Von Arenburg left his wife alone with her brother, Dorothy revealed her thoughts more deeply, with an emotion which touched him, because he shared her hope.
“It’s not that I hate France,” she said. “I used to weep for France when German armies were trampling through her fields—during the years of death. But I hate war. Oh, Bertram, you’ve seen it, and can hardly tell what you’ve seen, because no words can tell it all, but I’ve suffered perhaps more than you. Imagine an English wife of a German husband through all these years! You can’t imagine. The torture of a dual allegiance—duty to my husband, pity for the German wounded—for their frightful slaughter—for the spiritual despair of the German people knowing, in spite of early victories, that they were doomed—for they knew it always! Then, on the other side, my love for England, my pride in English courage, my dreams at night because of English armies under German gunfire, with you, my dear, among them, somewhere in those dreadful fields. I’m angry with France now because she seems to prevent the spirit of peace.”
“She’s not sure that Germany won’t seek revenge again. Are you sure?”
Dorothy sighed, and seemed to think deeply of all that she knew about the German people. Then she told her brother that before the Armistice, and afterwards, the German people had revolted against the war, and militarism. They were all “Wilsonites.” If in defeat they’d been treated generously, they would have risen with immense, overwhelming emotion to new ideals of world peace. But the Treaty of Versailles seemed to put them in chains and doom them to an eternal servitude of debt to the victor nations. Then the attitude of France had been so harsh and so provocative that gradually the German people had hardened again in spirit, and the old venom had come back. The ideals of world peace were abandoned by French policy which sought only the ringing round of Germany with hostile states to keep her down under the menace of armed force. Now hatred for France smouldered in every German heart, and the future was black.