The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.Moffett, Cleveland
History
The Conquest of America: A Romance of Disaster and Victory, U.S.A., 1921 A.D.
Moffett, Cleveland
Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction; Science fiction
The Germans had suffered heavy losses. The disaster to von Hindenburg’s
army in the battle of the Susquehanna had cost them over a hundred
thousand men. The revolt of Boston, the massacre of Richmond, had
weakened the Teuton prestige and had set American patriotism boiling,
seething, from Maine to Texas, from Long Island to the Golden Gate. There
were rumours of strange plots and counter-plots, also of a new great army
of invasion that was about to set sail from Kiel. Evidently the Germans
must have more men if they were to ride safely on this furious American
avalanche that they had set in motion, if they were to tame the fiery
American volcano that was smouldering beneath them.
In this connection I must speak of the famous woman’s plot that resulted
in the death of several hundred German officers and soldiers and that
would have caused the death of thousands but for unforeseen developments.
This plot was originated by women leaders of the militant suffrage party
in New York and Pennsylvania (the faction led by Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont
not approving) and soon grew to nation-wide importance with an enrolled
body of twenty thousand militant young women, each one of whom was
pledged to accomplish the destruction of one of the enemy on a certain
Saturday night between the hours of sunset and sunrise.
By a miracle these women kept their vow of secrecy until the fatal
evening, but at eight o’clock the plot was revealed to Germans in
Philadelphia through the confession of a young Quakeress who, after
playing her part for weeks, had fallen genuinely in love with a Prussian
lieutenant and simply could not bring herself to kill him when the time
came.
I come now to a sensational happening that I witnessed in Chicago, to
which city I had journeyed after the Richmond affair for very personal
reasons. If this were a romance and not a plain recital of facts I should
dwell upon my meeting with Mary Ryerson and our mutual joy in each
finding that the other had escaped unharmed from the perils of our recent
adventures.
Miss Ryerson, it appeared, after the discovery of her daring disguise had
been released on parole by order of General Langthorne, who believed her
story that she had taken this desperate chance as the only means of
saving Thomas A. Edison. Mary had heard the story of her brother’s heroic
death and to still her grief, had thrown herself into work for the Red
Cross fund under Miss Boardman and Mrs. C.C. Rumsey. She had hit upon a
charming way of raising money by having little girls dressed in white
with American flags for sashes, lead white lambs through the streets, the
lambs bearing Red Cross contribution boxes on their backs. By this means
thousands of dollars had been secured.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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