k 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:_

You'll take that back to-morrow, when your sister stands up in the
church with me.

_Hedwig:_ [_Starting up._]

Amelia? Marry you? No! Amelia, is this true?

_Amelia:_ [_Hesitating, troubled, and uncertain._]

They tell me I must--for the fatherland.

_Hedwig:_

Marry this man, whom you scarcely know, whom surely you cannot love!
Why, you make a mock of marriage! It isn't that they have tempted you
with the widow's pension? It is so tiny; it's next to nothing. Surely
you wouldn't yield to that?

_Amelia:_ [_Frightened._]

I did want to go as a nurse, but the priests and the generals--they say
we must marry--to--for the fatherland, Hedwig.

_Hoffman:_ [_To Hedwig._]

I command you to be silent!

_Hedwig:_

Not when my sister's happiness is at stake. If you come back, she will
have to live with you the rest of her life.

_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:_ [_Nodding slowly._]

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! [_Minna gasps, beginning to be terrified. Hoffman rages. Mother
gazes with anxious conce