3

Several of the women flew out into the country, but except where people were gathered 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 aviators 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 Reichstaggebaeude, and every official head still affixed to its shoulders was as helpless—­a fuming prisoner in its own house—­as if those arrogant brains had turned to porridge.  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 Gisela 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 Wittelsbachs 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.  Certainly they always looked bored to the verge of dissolution.

The Munich Socialists had taken possession of the Residenz in which to proclaim their victory and the new Republic, 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 prearranged program, and under Gisela’s direct supervision, were turning such outlying buildings as commanded the highways leading 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, knowing that an attempt might be made to rush 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 baffled rage.

VII