The Assault Part 4

The newspapers of July 21, 22 and 23 came in and indicated that for England Ulster had become Europe. There was obviously little s.p.a.ce for, and less interest in, dispatches from Berlin or Vienna describing the "undisguised concern" prevalent in those capitals. On July 21 I quoted "high diplomatic authority" for the statement that the pistol would be at Serbia's breast before the end of the week. But London remained impervious. More than one of my British colleagues, equally unsuccessful in stirring the emotions of his people, threw up his hands in resignation, muttering things about "British complacency," which would have come with poor grace from a mere American.

Since then it has occurred to me that England's sublime unconcern in the approach of Armageddon may have been more apparent than real. Sir Edward Grey's strenuous days and nights of telegraphing to his Continental amba.s.sadors, as England's White Paper revealed, had set in as early as July 20, when he wired Sir Edward Goschen to Berlin that "I asked the German Amba.s.sador today if he had any news of what was going on in Vienna with regard to Serbia." That was No. 1 in the series of historic dispatches comprising the official British record of the genesis of the war, which shows that there was no lack of antic.i.p.ation of coming events, as far as Downing Street was concerned. So I am impelled to think that there may have been method in Fleet Street's "splashing" (_Anglice_ for "featuring") pretty Miss Gabrielle Ray's entangled love affairs and minimizing the determination of Austria to plunge Europe into war. There is a fine spirit of solidarity in England concerning foreign affairs. British editors in particular traditionally refrain from crossing the policy of the Foreign Office, no matter what the party complexion of the minister in charge. They are accustomed to supporting it unequivocally either by omission or commission, as the interests of Great Britain from hour to hour suggest. Whenever an att.i.tude of debonair detachment toward a given "foreign affair" is best designed to promote the country's diplomatic programme, Fleet Street can be insensibility incarnate, national _esprit de corps_ effectually fulfilling the function of a censor. No one has ever told me that that is why the appointment of a new princ.i.p.al for Dulwich College received almost as much prominence on the morning of July 24 as news from Berlin, Vienna or Belgrade. My suggestion of the reason is a diffident surmise, pure and simple. It contributed materially, no doubt, toward making Germany believe that England was too "preoccupied" with Irishmen and suffragettes to think of going to war for her political honor.

But in Berlin things were now (July 24) moving toward the climax with impetuous momentum. On that day, summing up events and opinion in official and military quarters, I telegraphed the following message to London:

"'We are ready!' This was the sententious reply given today by a high official of the General Staff to an inquiry with regard to Germany's state of preparedness in the event that an Austro-Serbian conflict precipitates a European war.

"I am able to state authoritatively that the _casus foederis_ which binds Austria, Germany and Italy in alliance would come into effect automatically the instant Austria is attacked from any quarter other than Servia.[1]

[1] The "a.s.surances" given me by Foreign Office spokesmen, as reproduced in the foregoing telegram, were, of course, made at a moment when the German Government, no doubt quite sincerely, felt surer than it did ten days hence that the _casus foederis_ which obligated Italy to join Germany and Austria in war would be recognized by her without quibble.

Germany, as the world was so soon to find out, had convinced her own people that her war was a holy war of defense, but Italy, visiting upon her Triple Alliance partners the supreme condemnation of contemporary political history, deserted them on the palpable ground that their war was war of aggression, pure and unalloyed.

"I am further able to say that while Germany expects that war between Austria and Serbia is possible, owing to the admittedly unprecedented severity of the Austrian demands, this Government confidently hopes that hostilities will be confined to them.

"It would be going too far to say that 'war fever' prevails in Berlin to the extent it is reported to be rampant in Vienna. I find, however, even in circles to which the thought of war is ordinarily repugnant, that the imminent possibility of a European conflict is contemplated with equanimity. They say that Austria's resolute action has already cleared the atmosphere of long-prevailing 'uncertainty' which was gradually becoming insufferable. They declare in accents of relief that a situation has finally been reached where there can be no retreat. Far worse things, it is declared, are conceivable than the conflagration which Europe for years has half dreaded and half prepared for.

"Official Germany, nevertheless, does not believe that Russia will force the issue. It is argued that the matter at stake is entirely a domestic quarrel between Austria and Serbia and involves Pan-Slavism only indirectly. If Russia makes the controversy a pretext for a.s.sisting the Serbians, it is pointed out that 'the world's strongest bulwark of the monarchial principle would practically place the stamp of approval on regicide.' As suppression of regicide propaganda, root and branch, is the mainspring of the Austrian action, the German Government holds it is inconceivable that Russia could in such circ.u.mstances align herself with Serbia. If she does, and I am permitted to underline this phase of the crisis with all possible emphasis, the full strength of Germany's and Italy's armed forces are ready to be mercilessly hurled against her, and will be.

"A war against Russia would never be more popular in Germany than at the present moment. For months past the country has been educated by its most distinguished leaders to believe that an attack from Russia is imminent. During the past week Professor Hans Delbruck has been giving wide publicity to an 'open letter' received from a Russian colleague, Professor Mitrosanoff, containing the following pa.s.sage:

"'It must not be forgotten that Russian public opinion plays a vastly different role than it did a decade ago. It has now grown into a full political force. Animosity toward Germans is in everybody's heart and mouth. Seldom was public opinion more unanimous.'

"Almost simultaneously Professor Schiemann, the Kaiser's confidential adviser on world politics, has heaped fresh fuel on the anti-Russian fire by declaring: 'We have reason to think that the underlying purpose of President Poincare's visit to the Czar was to expand the Triple Entente into a Quadruple Alliance by the inclusion of Rumania against Germany.'

"The Bourse closed amid undisguised alarm and the wildest fears for what the week-end may bring forth. The public is inclined to remain rea.s.sured as long as the Kaiser consents to remain afloat in the _Hohenzollern_ in the fjords of Norway, but he can reach German waters in twenty-four hours aboard the speedy dispatch-boat _Sleipner_, which is attached to the Imperial squadron.

"I asked a military man today what show of force Germany would make at the outbreak of hostilities involving her. He said: 'She could easily mobilize one million five hundred thousand men within forty-eight hours on each of her frontiers, east and west. That gigantic total of three million would represent only the active war establishment and reserves.'"

CHAPTER VI

THE CLIMAX

My long-standing preconceptions of Berlin as the phlegmatic capital of a phlegmatic people were obliterated for all time at eight-thirty o'clock on Sat.u.r.day evening, July 25, 1914. Along with them went equally well-founded beliefs that, however incorrigible their War Party's l.u.s.t for international strife, the German ma.s.ses were pacific by temperament and conviction. When the news of Serbia's alleged rejection of Austria's ultimatum was hoisted in _Unter den Linden_, and Berlin gave way in a flash to a babel and pandemonium of sheer war fever probably never equaled in a civilized community, I knew that all my "psychology"

of the Germans was as myopic as if I had learned it in Professor Munsterberg's laboratory at Harvard. Instantaneously I realized that the stage managers had done their work with deadly precision and all-devouring thoroughness. If the mere suggestion of gunpowder could distend the nostrils of the "peaceful Germans" and cause their capital to vibrate in every fiber of its being as that first real hint of war did, I was forced to conclude that the cataclysm now impending would find a Germany animated to its innermost depths by primeval fighting pa.s.sions. Events have not belied the new and disquieting impressions with which Berlin's war delirium inspired me.

On the evening of July 25, after cabling to England and the United States accounts of the blackest Sat.u.r.day in Berlin bourse history, I made my way to _Unter den Linden_ in antic.i.p.ation of demonstrations certain to be provoked by the result of the Austrian ultimatum, no matter whether Serbia had yielded or defied. I reached the Wilhelmstra.s.se corner, where the British Emba.s.sy stood, only a moment after the fateful bulletin had been put up in the _Lokal-Anzeiger's_ windows. It read: "Serbia Rejects the Austrian Ultimatum!" That was not quite true--to put it mildly--as the world was soon to know that far from "rejecting" Count Berchtold's cavalier demands, Serbia bent the knee to every single one of them except that which called for abject surrender of her sovereign independence. But the huge crowds which had been gathered in _Unter den Linden_ since sundown--it was now a little past eight-thirty o'clock and still quite light--knew nothing of this.

All they knew and all they cared about was that "Serbien hat abgelehnt!"

War, the intuition of the mob a.s.sured it, was now inevitable.

"_Krieg! Krieg!_" (War! War!) it thundered. "_Nieder mit Serbien!

Hoch, Oesterreich!_" (Down with Serbia! Hurrah for Austria!) rang from thousands of frenzied throats. Processions formed. Men and youths, here and there women and girls, lined up, military fashion, four abreast.

One cavalcade, the larger, headed toward Pariser Platz and the Brandenburg Gate. Another eastward, down the Linden. A mighty song now rent the air--_Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser_ (G.o.d Save Emperor Francis), the Austrian national anthem. Then shouts, yelled in the accents of imprecation--"_Nieder mit Russland!_" (Down with Russia).

The bigger procession's destination was soon known. It was marching to the Austrian Emba.s.sy in the Moltke-stra.s.se. The smaller parade was headed for the Russian Emba.s.sy in _Unter den Linden_. In my taxi I decided to follow on to Moltke-stra.s.se, and, crossing to the far side of the Linden, I came up with the rearguard of the demonstrators just opposite the chateau-like Emba.s.sy of France in the Pariser Platz.

Gathered on the portico servants were cl.u.s.tered watching the "_manifestation_." At their hapless heads the processionists were shaking their German fists as much as to say that France, too, was included in the orgy of patriotic wrath now surging up in the Teutonic soul. It was a touch of humor in an otherwise overwhelmingly grim spectacle.

Through the entrance to the leafy Tiergarten, down the pompous and sepulchral Avenue of Victory, across the Konigs-Platz with its Gulliverian statue of the Iron Chancellor and the Column of Victory, through the district whose street nomenclature breathes of Germany's martial glory--Roon-stra.s.se, Bismarck-stra.s.se and Moltke-stra.s.se--the parade, now swelled to many times its original proportions, halted in front of the Austrian Emba.s.sy. Some self-appointed cheer-leader called for _Hochs_ for the ally, for another stanza of the Austrian national anthem, for more "Down with Serbia," and for more yells of defiance to Russia. Opposite the emba.s.sy-palace towered the ma.s.sive block-square General Staff building. From it there emerged, while the demonstration was at its zenith, three young subalterns. The mob seized them joyously, shouldered them and acclaimed them--the bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned and epauletted embodiment of the army on whom Germany's hopes were presently to be pinned. "_Krieg! Krieg!_" the war mongers chanted in ecstatic shrieks. Then "_Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles_," twin of the Austrian anthem as far as the melody is concerned, was sung with tremendous fervor. The crowd yelled for Emperor Francis Joseph's amba.s.sador, the Hungarian Count von Szogeny-Marich, but, if he was at home, he preferred not to face the mult.i.tude. Presently a beardless young emba.s.sy attache appeared at an open window--the physical personification of the allied Empire--and he almost reeled from the shock of the tumultuous shout hurtled in his monocled countenance.

For nearly an hour delirium reigned unbridled. Then the demonstrators betook themselves back to the Linden district, where they met up with more processions. Throughout the night, far into Sunday morning, Berlin reverberated with their tramp and clamor. My doubts as to the capital's temper toward war were resolved, my cherished confidence in the average German's fundamental love of peace shattered. Berlin is the tuning-fork of the Empire. As she was shrieking "War! War!" so, I felt sure, Hamburg and Munich, Dresden and Stuttgart, Cologne and Breslau, Konigsberg and Metz, would be shrieking before the world was many hours older. And when the Sunday papers reported that "fervent patriotic demonstrations" had broken out everywhere the night before, as soon as "Serbia's insolent action" was communicated to the public, something within me said that only a miracle could now restrain war-mad Germany from herself plunging into the fray.

I have said that Armageddon was instigated by the German War Party. In substantiation of that charge let me narrate a bit of unrecorded history. About four o'clock of the afternoon of July 25--the day of orgy in Berlin above described--the Austrian Foreign Office in Vienna issued a confidential intimation to various persons accustomed to be favored with such communications that the Serbian reply to the ultimatum had arrived and was satisfactory. It did not succ.u.mb in respect of every demand put forth by Austria, but it was sufficiently groveling to insure peace. Foreign newspaper correspondents, to several of whom the information was supplied, learned, when they applied at their own Emba.s.sies for confirmation, that the latter, too, had been formally acquainted with the fact that Serbia's concessions were far-reaching enough to guarantee a bloodless settlement of the ugly crisis.

Vienna breathed a long, sincere sigh of relief. She had feared the worst from the moment Count Berchtold dispatched _the Berlin-dictated ultimatum_ to Belgrade; but the worst was over now. Serbian penitence had saved Austrian face.

While correspondents were busily preparing their telegrams, which were to flash all over the world the welcome tidings that war had been averted, though only by a hair's breadth, the Austrian Foreign Office was telephoning to the Foreign Office in Berlin the text of Serbia's reply.

A certain journalist was on his way to the telegraph office to "file"

his "story." The editor of a great Vienna newspaper, a friend, intercepted him.

"Well, what are you saying?" the editor inquired. "That it's peace, after all," replied the correspondent.

"It _was_ peace," said the editor sadly, "but meantime Berlin has spoken."

The week of fate opened on Monday, July 27, amid general expectations that the worst had become inevitable. Popular alarm was not a.s.suaged by the impulsive action of the Kaiser, contrary to the preferences of the Government, in breaking off his Norwegian cruise when Serbia's defiance was wirelessed to the _Hohenzollern_ and rushing back to Kiel under full steam. "The Foreign Office regrets this step," reported Sir Horace Rumbold, acting British Amba.s.sador at Berlin, to Sir Edwin Grey. "It was taken on His Majesty's own initiative and the Foreign Office fears that the Emperor's sudden return may cause speculation and excitement."

It was, of course, characteristic of the monarch whom Paul Singer, the late Socialist chieftain, once described to me as "William the Sudden."

"Speculation and excitement" are precisely what the Kaiser's dramatic return did precipitate. He did not come into Berlin, but retired to the comparative privacy of the New Palace in Potsdam, to engage forthwith in protracted council with his political, diplomatic, military and naval advisers. Meantime Berlin throbbed with forebodings and unrest. The Stock Exchange almost collapsed. Values tumbled by the millions of marks. Fortunes vanished between breakfast and lunch. Financiers suicided. Savings banks were besieged by battalions of nervous depositors. Gold began to disappear from circulation.

At the Foreign Office, newspaper correspondents were informed that the situation was undoubtedly aggravated, but not "hopeless." Germany's aim was to "localize" the Austrian-Serbian war, which was now an actuality.

"All depends on Russia," Herr Hammann's automatons a.s.sured us when we asked who held the key to the situation. Germany remained, as she had been from the beginning of the crisis, merely "an interested bystander."

Austria had not sought her counsel, and "none had been offered." It would have been an insufferable offense (said the Hammannites) for Berlin to intrude upon Vienna with "advice" at such an hour. Austria was a great sovereign Power, Count Berchtold a diplomat of sagacity and courage, and Germany's role was obviously that of a silent friend. She had very particularly "not been concerned" with the admittedly stiff terms the rejection of which had now, unhappily, resulted in war. All this we were told at Wilhelmstra.s.se 76 in accents of touching sincerity.

The att.i.tude of the German public was now one of amazing resignation to the possibility of war. Men of affairs, who had during the preceding forty-eight hours in many cases seen great fortunes irresistibly slipping from their grasp, contemplated a European conflagration with incredible equanimity. I recall with especial distinctness the views expressed by my old friend, Geheimrat L., the head of an important provincial bank. "We have not sought war," he said, "but we are ready for it--far readier than any of our possible antagonists. Our preparedness, military, naval, financial and economic, is in the most complete state it has ever attained. Confidence in the army and navy is unbounded, and it is justified. For years the political atmosphere has been growing more and more uncomfortable for Germany (Geheimrat L.

evidently longed for "a place in the sun," too), and we have felt that war was inevitable, sooner or later. It is better that it comes now, when our strength is at the zenith, than later when our enemies have had time to discount our superiority." Geheimrat L. and I were standing in _Unter den Linden_ while he talked. Another procession of war-zealots tramped by, singing _Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles_. "You see,"

he said, pointing to the demonstrators and waving his own hat as the crowd shrieked "_Hoch der Kaiser!_", "we all feel the same way."

Germany, in other words, while not exactly spoiling for war, was something more than ready for it and would leap into the ring, stripped for the combat, almost before the gong had called time. Events did not belie that fantasy, either.

Sir Edward Grey was now making eleventh-hour efforts to stave off fate.

He was constrained to have Vienna view the Serbian imbroglio from the broad standpoint of a European question, which the Germanic Powers, of course, knew that it was. He proposed a conference in London between himself and the amba.s.sadors of Germany, Russia, France and Italy, in the hope of settling the Austrian-Serbian dispute on the basis of Serbia's reply to Count Berchtold's ultimatum. "It has become only too apparent,"

the British Foreign Secretary wrote a year later in a crushing rejoinder to the German Chancellor's revamped and distorted version of the war's beginnings, "that in the proposal we made, which Russia, France and Italy agreed to, and which Germany vetoed, lay the only hope of peace.

And it was such a good hope! Serbia had accepted nearly all of the Austrian ultimatum, severe and violent as it was." Herr Hammann's minions told us with pleasing plausibility of the reasons why Germany declined the conference proposal. "We can not recommend Austria," they said, "to submit questions affecting her national honor to a tribunal of outsiders. It would not be consistent with our obligations as an ally."

That was subterfuge unalloyed, as was amply proved by Germany's subsequent refusal even to suggest any other method of mediation, in which Sir Edward Grey had promised acquiescence in advance. The War Party's plans were plainly too far progressed to tolerate so tame and inglorious a retreat. It was thirsting for blood, and was in no humor to content itself with milk and water. It was like asking a champion runner, trained to the second and poised on the starting tape in an att.i.tude of trembling expectation of the "Go" pistol, to rise, return to the dressing-room, get into street clothes and cool his ardor for victory and laurels by taking a leisurely walk around the block. The Tirpitzes, the Falkehhayns, the Reventlows, the Bernhardis and the Crown Princes, lurking Mephistopheles-like in the background, leaned over Bethmann Hollweg and the Kaiser on July 28, while Sir Edward Grey's proposal was undergoing final consideration, and whispered in their ear an imperious "No!" Germany, as "evidence of good faith," the Wilhelmstra.s.se told us next day, was continuing to exercise friendly pressure "in the direction of peace" at both St. Petersburg and Vienna.

But, as the Colonel said of Mr. Taft, Berlin meant well feebly. The mills of the war G.o.ds were grinding remorselessly, and they were not to be clogged.

Early in the evening of Wednesday, July 29, the Kaiser summoned a council of war at Potsdam. The council lasted far into the night. Dawn of Thursday was approaching before it ended. All the great paladins of State, civilian, military and naval, were present. Prince Henry of Prussia, freshly arrived from London, brought the latest tidings of sentiment prevailing in England. The Imperial Chancellor and Foreign Secretary von Jagow were armed with up-to-the-minute news of the diplomatic situation in Paris and St. Petersburg. Russia's plans and movements were the all-dominating issue. General von Falkenhayn, Minister of War, was prepared with confidential information that, despite the Czar's ostensible desire for peace and his still pending communication with the Kaiser to that end, "military measures and dispositions" of unmistakably menacing character were in progress on both the German and Austrian frontiers. Lieutenant-General von Moltke, Chief of the General Staff, was supplied not only with corroborative information of the imminency of "danger" from Russia, but with rea.s.suring details of Germany's power to meet and check it.

Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz, Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral von Pohl, Chief of the Admiralty Staff, were ready to convince the Supreme War Lord that the fleet was no less prepared than the army for any and all emergencies. There was absolutely nothing, from a military and naval standpoint, so the generals and admirals were eager to demonstrate, to justify Germany in a.s.suming and maintaining anything but "a strong position."

Some day, perhaps, the history of that fateful night at Potsdam will be written, for there was Armageddon born. Its full details have never leaked out. So much I believe can be here set down with certainty--it was not quite a harmonious council which finally plumped for war. At the outset, at any rate, it was divided into camps which found themselves in diametrical opposition. The "peace party," or what was left of it, is said, loath as the world is to believe it, to have been headed by the Kaiser himself. Bethmann Hollweg supported his Imperial Master's view that war should only be resorted to as a last desperate emergency. Von Jagow, the innocuous Foreign Secretary, dancing as usual to his superiors' whistle, "sided" with the Emperor and the Chancellor.

Von Falkenhayn and von Tirpitz demanded war. Germany was ready; her adversaries were not; the issue was plain. Von Moltke was non-committal.

He is a Christian Scientist, and otherwise pacific by temperament.