HOFFMAN: When we are gone—the best of us,—what will the country do if it has no children?
HEDWIG: Why didn’t you think of that before?—before you started this wicked war?
HOFFMAN—I tell you it is a glory to be a war bride. There!
HEDWIG (with a shrug): A breeding machine! (They all draw back). Why not call it what it is? Speak the naked truth for once?
...
HOFFMAN: That isn’t the question now. We are going away—the best of us—to be shot, most likely. Don’t you suppose we want to send some part of ourselves into the future, since we can’t live ourselves? There, that’s straight; and right, too.
HEDWIG: What I said—to breed a soldier for the empire; to restock the land. (Fiercely). And for what? For food for the next generation’s cannon. Oh, it is an insult to our womanhood! You violate all that makes marriage sacred! (Agitated, she walks about the room). Are we women never to get up out of the dust? You never asked us if we wanted this war, yet you ask us to gather in the crops, cut the wood, keep the world going, drudge and slave, and wait, and agonize, lose our all, and go on bearing more men—and more—to be shot down! If we breed the men for you, why don’t you let us say what is to become of them? Do we want them shot—the very breath of our life?
HOFFMAN: It is for the fatherland.
HEDWIG: You use us, and use us,—dolls, beasts of burden, and you expect us to bear it forever dumbly; but I won’t! I shall cry out till I die. And now you say it almost out loud, “Go and breed for the empire.” War brides! Pah!
HOFFMAN: I never would dream of speaking to Amelia like that. She is the sweetest girl I have seen for many a day.