“ When the door had closed Zara turned upon me like some wild thing, and I tell you, Franz, I wished myself at our little bower at Villa Huegel, playing dominoes with you or Mamma.
"Who art thou?" she cried. "So young, so gentle, so kind of aspect, yet I see thee in a haze of blood."
She walked around me in a circle, dragging her terrible crutch, the mice capering and vaulting.
"I can't make it out," she kept mumbling; "looks the German, but here men do the ruling, and her power for destruction—— Where does it come in?" ”

“ The word awakened Frau Krupp's self-respect. "Traitor!" she cried; "I would be a traitor to humanity if I continued making faggots to set the world afire."
The War Lord broke into wild laughter. "So that's the melody," he shouted, "echoes of the gutter Press in London, Paris, Petersburg, Tokyo! It's well you mentioned it, Frau Krupp; I know now exactly how we stand, you and I, the benefactor and the unworthy object of my magnanimity."
Bertha lay on the silken rug sobbing her heart out, but for Wilhelm the quivering form of the girl for whom he professed a father's love was mere air. ”

“ Bertha was lost to her; the supreme egotist had gained a strangle-hold on her flesh and blood.
With the strange intuition that often moves children to do the right thing at the right time when grown-ups are at their wits' end, Barbara seemed to divine what passed in her mother's mind and, burying her face in the Baroness's lap, she sobbed out convulsively words of consolation, of endearment and unbounded affection. Frau Krupp bent over the child's head and kissed her again and again. "My little girl, my Barbara, won't discard Mother, will she?" ”

“ Everybody admits that they were men animated by the highest motives and principles. They made Germany."
"I don't deny it; I underline every word you have said, Bertha. The foundations for Germany's greatness were laid within a stone's throw of this window; much of her supremacy in politics and economics was conceived between these four walls. But now that the goal is achieved, that the Fatherland enjoys unprecedented wealth and prosperity—let well enough alone."
"You talk as if I were the War Lord!" cried Bertha.
"You are his right hand: the War Lady."
"He is my guardian, my master." ”

“ Carried away by emotion, Franz had spoken harshly at times, but now his tone became coaxing.
"When you come into your own, promise me, Bertha, to accept no more orders for armament and arms of any kind. Dedicate the greatest steel plant of the world to enterprises connected with progress, with the advancement of the human race! Build railways, Eiffel towers for observation, machinery of all sorts, ploughs and other agricultural implements, but for God's sake taboo once and for all preparations for murder and destruction!" ”

“ The War Lady raised her hand and looked at him with ghastly, tear-stained eyes.
"Don't—oh, don't!" she breathed.
"The more you plead the quicker the catastrophe will come! You mean to keep me in a state of unreadiness, but my enemies are even less ready—time to strike!"
"Even Your Majesty can't make war without pretext," wailed Bertha.
"I can't, eh? I can't? And there are no pretexts, either? What about Morocco? If I seize the smallest harbour of that —— country, isn't that tantamount to invading Algiers? I tell you in such event France and Great Britain must fight whether they like or not. ”

“ The discrowned Cannon Queen told Franz the story of the Imperial interview. "He is the master," she said in conclusion, "Bertha his pawn, myself nobody."
"And we, the heads of the business, and our workmen, his slaves," added the chief electrician gloomily.
These two people, suddenly confronted by the unexpected—a wife shorn of her rights and wounded in her holiest maternal sentiments; an honest man commandeered to debase his genius and become an accessory to murder most foul—sat for a while in silence, brooding over their misfortune and the disasters threatening mankind as a consequence. ”

“ When the curtain had fallen behind Bertha the Baroness turned a white, severe face upon Franz. Then, abandoning all pretence of loyalty to the Grand War Lord, she told the terrible secrets long locked in her bosom, secrets imparted by her late husband or gathered from his lips during long, sleepless nights while he tossed on his pillow.
"It's the Frankenstein we have to fight," she said, "the pitiless, heartless, soul-less Evil One, intent upon setting the world afire through my child's inheritance. The plotting has been going on ever since the crowned monster was enthroned. ”

“ BERTHA to FRANZ.
DEAR FRANZ,—The gipsy Wilhelm and I visited is not at all like the ones that occasionally come to Essen at fair-time or by way of caravans. You know we always thought them impostors and, small doubt, they were, for the same yarn had to do for everybody: the tall, dark man, that would come into one's life, was conjured up even for little Barbara at the rate of ten pfennigs.
Mother Zara is a hundred years old if she is a day; a face the colour of an old green-back American bank-note crumpled up—thousand and one crow's-feet to the inch. ”

“ One can understand individual sacrifice, but seventy millions of people, every mother's son and daughter, turning beasts of prey! It baffles psychological speculation. Everywhere the "Evangelium of German superdom," as the War Lord sees it, is loud.
Small wonder Bertha, born of man-killer stock and suckled on the breasts of militarism, which nourished her kith and kin and their hundreds of thousands of dependents, believes unconditionally in the doctrines pronounced by her godfather, to her the God-head of power infinite, omniscience incarnate! ”

“ Down came the Brobdingnagian not like fifty, but like a hundred thousand tons, hitting the table an earthquake-like smack. It was all over in a second, but both Wilhelm and the War Lady's mother thought a lot in that tiny fragment of time. The casket was, of course, as flat as a window-pane and not much thicker, while of its contents there was no trace, the silk having become part and parcel of the metal. Nothing short of the melting-pot, said the expert, would yield isolated strains of the thousand bedizened ribbons. And, on top of it, Fraulein Krupp collected 250 marks for her orphanage! ”

“ You cannot fight the War Lord openly—pretend obedience, fall in with his plans apparently, be an enthusiastic faker, as far as he can see; but don't smirch my little girl's business honour and submerge the world under a tidal wave of blood by making other nations defenceless. I have your promise, Franz?"
"It's a vast prospect," answered the young engineer, "but I have sworn to stand by Bertha——"
"I thank you," said the Baroness, as the portières were noisily pushed aside and a child's voice cried: "Supper's ready." ”

“ But you will say, what of the German Navy? Surely that is a menace to England. Against whom but England are my squadrons being prepared? If England is not in the minds of those Germans who are bent on creating a powerful fleet, why is Germany asked to consent to such new and heavy burdens of taxation? My answer is clear. Germany is a young and growing empire. She has a world-wide commerce, which is rapidly expanding and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. ”

“ She rose and bowed ceremoniously.
"Your Majesty," she mumbled, pointing with her crutch to a glowing ember, one of several detached from the rest. "You once waged war for seven years on a stretch, yet the number of Prussians you killed, added to that of your own people that perished in battle and by disease, may be expressed in six noughts. And," turning to other debris, "your record, Catherine of Russia, is quite as inadequate as Maria Theresa's compared with the prospects for manslaughter held out by this young lady!" ”

“ Can you imagine King George V. so flaunting the decisions of Old Bailey and thereafter saddling the British public with a life pension of about £500 per annum in favour of the guilty party?
Can you imagine why such "sweet affection for the All Highest" should make up for lack of military qualities in a general officer slated for supreme command in the field?
For his crusade Maximilian Harden won much praise from English writers, but if he had let it flourish in high places for a decade longer, Great Britain would be richer in blood and treasure. ”

“ Helen has the most beauteous eyes, the daintiest figure, the most transparent complexion, the softest colour, the most exquisite feet, the sweetest smile and the most delightful air of superiority, and when her friend tenders her a box at the Play she will invite some girl conspicuously deficient in most of these excellences—human nature, or just plain, ordinary devilry. So Bertha's mother took a sort of grim satisfaction in the poor taste Bertha displayed in selecting her Court gowns. ”

“ He pushed a button, whereupon an illuminated map of Europe shot into a frame where, a second before, a Watteau shepherdess had impersonated les fêtes galantes du Roi. Drawing the sword, he delineated with its point the Central Empires, the Italian boot-leg, and Turkey's European possessions. Then he double-crossed France, Russia and Great Britain. "The enemy!" he cried. "Enemies of German greatness, of German expansion, of German kultur—therefore, enemies of the God of the Germans and of mine.
"But with your help I will smash them, pound them into a jelly, Bertha." ”

“ As liege lord of Prussia I deemed it my duty to prevent the disintegration of the Fatherland's war machinery, and had myself appointed Bertha's guardian, with full power to act. Of course, the Baroness does not like that; neither did the vassal's widow cherish the idea of becoming a chattel."
"And is she easily managed?" asked Franz, as he dealt the fractious Umberto a vicious blow between the ears.
"Not that fashion," replied the War Lord, when he had caught up with his guest; "flattery is the thing with girls. ”

“ The Baroness had never visited the Berlin Court, and her conception of its splendours resided in her own imagination.
As a matter of fact, the Berlin Court is the home of bad taste; plenty of fine shoulders, but draped with ugly and inappropriate material. Some few petite feet against an overwhelming majority too large and clumsily shod. Some fine arms and hands, since such are subjects of the War-Lord's appreciation, but faces broad, plain and uninteresting.
The taste of a man who allows his wife to keep a bow-legged attendant is necessarily deplorable ”

“ You were not born when Heinrich sallied forth in the name of patriotism. But reflect: there are thousands of charitable institutions like yours, not so richly endowed, not so splendid to look upon, but charnel-houses for Essen war victims just the same. And all filled to overflowing—even as the Krupp treasury is. Yet that Franco-German war, that made the Krupps and necessitated the asylums and hospitals, was Lilliputian compared with the Goliath war now in the making—partly thanks to you, Bertha. ”

“ Here we have a man decked out in ornate regimentals travelling about his country telling four millions of men: "You must die for Me," and immediately each man says to his wife: "I wonder if there is a special heaven for patriots like your husband?"
And to a certain class of persons he points out that science is but the handmaiden of wholesale murder, and that they must employ their God-given inventive genius, all their brains, all their time, to devise new ways and means for killing as many men, women and children as there are in the world outside of the German Empire. ”

“ And if in either country there is a small class of publicists who, for selfish and unpatriotic ends, desire to set the nations at variance—well, they are the footpads of politics and the enemies of the human race."
"You English are mad, mad—mad as March hares. What has come over you that you are so completely given over to suspicions quite unworthy of a great nation? What more can I do than I have done? I declared with all the emphasis at my command, in my speech at Guildhall, that my heart is set upon peace, and that it is one of my dearest wishes to live on the best of terms with England. ”

“ The shopkeepers, of course, knew Frau Krupp; they had known Bertha familiarly ever since she was in short frocks. The girl of seventeen had blossomed into the richest heiress of the world, yet it would have been almost indecent not to consider the elder woman first.
So the best chair was pushed forward for the Baroness, and man-milliners and mannequins fell over each other trying to win her applause for the goods offered. The widow of the Ironmaster smiled and talked vaguely about their merits, but announced that Bertha was to do her own choosing. ”

“ A world in arms, every mother's son turned upon every other mother's son, shooting, stabbing, bombing, suffocating. Cities laid waste, countrysides desolated, brave men changed to vultures, honest men to thieves—your work, Bertha Krupp! But the War Lady remains scathless! ”