Ancient history aside, the sign of the myrtle leaf was indeed prophetic of the horrors this marriage would impose upon humanity, in accordance with the compact between the War Lady’s husband and the War Lord; but, as nine out of every ten German brides are myrtle-bedecked, the fashionable crowd in the chapel had no mind for the augury.
Still, why mauve, the colour of mourning and old age, for the wedding gown? Since it was of the War Lady’s own selection, it suggested almost a premonition of the evil in store for Europe.
Did Bertha’s lens of imagery conjure up the ghosts of the millions who must die by the output of her factories that her own unborn offspring have more milliards to play with, and was she mourning in advance for the children she would render fatherless, for the hosts doomed to extinction because profits in the wholesale murder of men are surpassing high?
It is almost inconceivable that a person like the War Lady, engaged in the appalling trade of death-dealing, regarded her business other than a gigantic slaughter monopoly—a privileged one, to be sure, yet the most heinous of crimes against God and men just the same.
At the Courts of the eighteenth century "punishment boys" were kept, to be thrashed when small highnesses deserved to have their jacket warmed. Here, at the altar, Bertha, used to Royal State on account of her wealth, was about to engage a punishment boy. In future Gustav was to take the blame for all the enormities her factories would visit upon humanity!
The old-time punishment boys were well paid for their pains; the Krupp punishment boy was to have an income of seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling per annum. The old-time punishment boys were frequently loved by the masters for whom they suffered; Herr Krupp von Bohlen was loved by the young woman whom he relieved of grievous responsibility. Yet the note of mourning in her attire, and at her bosom the mark of "Abdul Hamid the Damned"!
The War Lady is sincerely religious, and so is the War Lord’s Imperial lady, only more so. Indeed, with Her Majesty the Church is almost an obsession, yet both the Queen of Prussia and the Queen of Essen have accepted presents from the wholesale assassin of Christians, who remembered only one thing to his credit in the course of thirty-three years of absolute rule: that he did not murder his brother. This was his plea to the Young Turks when deposed.