Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/123

Women and War us in every great national crisis. Germany knows the cost of war, but she is out for conquest, and the spoils of conquest. She recalls with pleasure the two hundred million pounds extorted from France in 1871, she hopes this time to "bleed her white" (Bismarck's cruel phrase is a compendium of Prussian policy), she dangles before German eyes the promise of indemnities which will make good all losses, and she enjoys a foretaste of bliss by levying ruinous fines upon French and Flemish towns which have tasted the utmost bitterness of defeat. France knows the cost of war, and is ill prepared to pay it; but her alternative is yielding her soil, and all she holds sacred and dear, to a ruthless invader. Even a nation of Quakers, or, we hope, a nation with women in "the seat of judgment," would reject submission on such terms. England knows the cost of war, but she also knows the cost of German supremacy. She is at last aware that her national life is at stake. 107