The Assault Part 7

_"Nicht unterliegen! Besser nicht zuruckkehren!_" (Don't be beaten!

Better not come back at all!) was the good-by greeting blown with the final kisses as many a trainload of embryonic heroes faded slowly from sight beneath the station's gaping archway. Germany was now indubitably convinced that its war was war in a holy cause. The time had come for the Fatherland to rise to the majesty of a great hour. "_Auf wiedersehen!_" sang the country to the army. But if there was to be no reunion, the army must go down fighting to the last gasp for _unsere gerechte Sache_, manfully, tirelessly, ruthlessly, till victory was enforced. Such were the inspiring thoughts amid which the boys in field gray trooped off to die for Kaiser and Empire.

The outstanding event of August 3 was the publication of the German Government's famous apologia for the war, the so-called "White Paper"

officially described as "Memorandum and Doc.u.ments in Relation to the Outbreak of the War." Early in the afternoon a telephone message arrived for me at the Adlon to the effect that if I would call at the Press Bureau of the Foreign Office at five o'clock, _Legationsrat_ Heilbron, one of Hammann's lieutenants whom I had known for many years, would be glad to deliver me an advance copy for special transmission to London and New York. I lay great stress on the fact that up to sun-down of August 3, 1914, I continued to be _persona gratissima_ with the Imperial German Government. It was true that one of the young Foreign Office cubs told off to censor press cablegrams at the Main Telegraph Office had, during the preceding three days, expressed annoyance with what he considered my eagerness to "go into details," but _Legationsrat_ Heilbron's invitation to fetch the "White Paper" was gratifying evidence that my relations with the powers-that-be were still "correct," even if not cordial. I was glad of that, because there was constantly in my mind the desire to remain in Germany, whatever happened, with a front-row seat for the big show. At the appointed hour I presented myself in Herr Heilbron's room on the ground floor of the Wilhelmstra.s.se front of the Foreign Office. He greeted me with old-time courtesy, though I found his demeanor perceptibly depressed. He handed me a copy of the _Denkschrift_, and, when I begged him for a second one, he complied with a gracious _bitte sehr_.

A London colleague had already intimated to me that the Imperial Chancellor, desiring to place the German case promptly and fully before the British and American publics, would "do his best" with the military authorities who were now in supreme control of the postal telegraph and cable lines to induce them to allow London and New York correspondents to file exhaustive "stories" on the White Paper. As I was sure, however, that Reuter's Agency for England and the a.s.sociated Press for America would be handling the affair at great length, my treatment of it was confined, as was usual under such circ.u.mstances, to telegraphing a brief introductory summary.

What struck me instantly as the hall-marks of the German publication were its treatment of the war as an exclusively Russian-provoked Russo-German affair and its brazenly _ex-parte_ character--how _ex-parte_ I did not fully realize till I read England's White Paper a week later. Sir Edward Grey laid his cards on the table, without marginal notes or comment of any kind, and asked the world to pa.s.s judgment. Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg's White Paper began with a lengthy plea of justification and ended with quotation of such communications between the Kaiser's Government and its amba.s.sadors and between the German Emperor and the Czar as would most plausibly support the Fatherland's case for war. It was manifestly a biased and incomplete record. It was in fact a doctored record, and suggested that its authors had Bismarck's mutilation of the Ems telegram in mind as a precedent, in emulation of which no German Government could possibly go wrong.

Although compiled to include events up to August 1, the German White Paper was silent as the grave in regard to Belgium and the negotiations with the Government of Great Britain. Issued on the night of August 3, when hundreds of thousands of German troops were waiting at Aix-la-Chapelle for the great a.s.sault on Liege--if, indeed, at that hour they were not already across the Belgian frontier--this sacred brief designed to establish the Fatherland's case at the bar of world opinion had no single word to say on what was destined to be almost the supreme issue of the war. It was the last word in Imperial German deception.

If the German public had known that Sir Edward Grey on July 30 had already "warned Prince Lichnowsky that Germany must not count upon our standing aside in all circ.u.mstances," I imagine its bitterness a few nights later, when the fable of England's "treacherous intervention" was sprung upon the deluded Fatherland, might have been less barbaric in its intensity.

Next to the omission of all reference to what Sir Edward Grey called Germany's "infamous proposal" for the purchase of British neutrality--a pledge not to despoil France of European territory if England would stand with folded arms while Germany violated Belgium and ravished the French Colonial Empire--the striking feature of the Berlin White Paper was the admission of German-Austrian complicity in the humiliation of Serbia. The Foreign Office, as I have previously explained, had zealously affirmed Germany's entire detachment from Austria's programme for avenging Serajevo. What did the White Paper now tell us? That

"Austria had to admit that it would not be consistent either with the dignity or the self-preservation of the Monarchy to look on longer at the operations on the other side of the border without taking action....

_We were able to a.s.sure our ally most heartily of our agreement with her view of the situation, and to a.s.sure her that any action she might consider it necessary to take in order to put an end to the movement in Servia directed against the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy would receive our approval_. We were fully aware, in this connection, that warlike moves on the part of Austria-Hungary against Servia would bring Russia into the question, and might draw us into a war in accordance with our duties as an ally."

The historic and ineffaceable fact is that Austria--wabbly, invertebrate Austria, which would even to-day, but for Germany, lay prostrate and vanquished--never made a solitary move in the whole plot to coerce Serbia without the full concurrence of the big brother at Berlin. It would be an insult to the intelligence of German diplomacy, stupid as it is, to imagine that the Kaiser's Government sat mute, unconsulted and nonchalant, while Austria worked out a scheme certain, as the Germans themselves admit in their White Paper, to plunge Europe into war.

It was my privilege on arriving in the United States on August 22, to furnish the _New York Times_ with the first copy of the German White Paper to reach the American public. In preparing a prefatory note to accompany the verbatim translation published in next day's paper, I selected the paragraph above quoted as _prima-facie_ evidence that the German claim of non-collusion with Austria is subterfuge--to give it the longer and less unparliamentary term.

The German White Paper was prepared formally for the information of the Reichstag, which was summoned to meet on Tuesday, August 4 of imperishable memory, for the purpose of voting $325,000,000 of initial war credits. Paris was not won in the expected six weeks, and the Reichstag has voted $7,500,000,000 of war credits up to this writing (September 1, 1915), with melancholy promise of still more to come. The twenty-four hours preceding the war sitting had not been eventless.

Monsieur Sverbieff and the staff of the Russian Emba.s.sy were the victims of gross insults from the mob in _Unter den Linden_, as they left their headquarters in automobiles for the railway station. Mounted police were present to "keep order," but their "vigilance" did not deter German men and youths from spitting in the faces of the Czar's representatives, belaboring them with walking-sticks and umbrellas, and offering rowdy indignities to the women of the amba.s.sadorial party. In front of the French Emba.s.sy menacing crowds stood throughout the day and night, waiting for a chance to exhibit German patriotism at Monsieur Cambon's expense. When Senor Pole de Bernabe, the Spanish Amba.s.sador, who was calling to arrange to take over the representation of France during the war, made his appearance, the mob mistook him for Cambon and was just prevented in the nick of time from a.s.saulting the Spaniard. How the French Emba.s.sy finally got away from Germany, under circ.u.mstances which would have shamed a Fiji Island government, was later related for the benefit of posterity in the French _Yellow Book_. When I read it months later, I remembered my first German teacher in Berlin, a n.o.blewoman, once telling me, when I asked her how to say "gentleman" in German: "There is no such thing as a 'gentleman' in the German language." That was paraphrased to me by another German on a later occasion, when, discussing the ability of German science, so well demonstrated during this war, to devise a subst.i.tute for almost anything, he remarked: "The only thing we can't make is a gentleman, because we never had a proper a.n.a.lysis of the necessary ingredients." The Germans, in their communicative moments, always used to acknowledge that Bismarck was right when he called them "a nation of house-servants." It is impressively exemplified on their stage, which boasts the finest character actors imaginable; but when a German player essays to portray the gentleman, he is grotesque. He gropes helplessly in a strange and unexplored realm.

On the day before the war session of the Reichstag, the Kaiser, more conscious than ever now of his partnership with Deity, ordained Wednesday, August 5, as a day of universal prayer for the success of German arms. Soon after its proclamation, William II, thunderously acclaimed, appeared in _Unter den Linden_ intermittently, en route to conference with high officers of state. He was clad, like every German soldier one now saw, in field-gray, and ready, one heard, to leave for the front at a moment's notice, to take up his post, a.s.signed him by Hohenzollern warrior traditions, on the battlefield in the midst of his loyal legions. Mobilization was now in full swing, and more and more troops were in evidence, crossing town to railway stations from which they were to be transported east or west, as the Staff's emergencies required. A week before, all these soldiers were in Prussian blue.

They were gray now, from head to foot, millions of them. Obviously the clothing department of the army had not been taken by "surprise" by the cruel war "forced" on pacific Germany. Three million uniforms can not be turned out in a whole summer--even in Germany. I thought of this, as gray streams, far into the evening, kept pouring through Berlin, and I thought what a marvelously happy selection that peculiar shade of drab-gray, of almost dust-like invisibility from afar, was for field purposes. To shoot at lines no more colorful than that, it seemed to me, would be like banging away at the horizon itself....

History, I suppose, will date Armageddon from August 1, when the German army and navy were mobilized, or perhaps from August 2, when Germany claims that Russia and France fired the first miscreant shots. But the red-letter day of the World Ma.s.sacre's opening week was beyond all question Tuesday, August 4, which began with the war sitting of the Reichstag and ended with England's declaration of war on Germany. It was destined to be especially big with import for me--of vital import, as events hanging over my unsuspecting head were speedily to reveal.

At midday, two hours before the session of the Reichstag in its own chamber, Parliament was "opened" by the Kaiser personally in the celebrated White Hall of the Royal Castle. I had applied for admission after the few available press tickets were already exhausted, but it was not difficult for me to visualize the scene. I had been in the White Hall on several memorable occasions in the past--during the visit of King Edward VII in February, 1909, at a brilliant State banquet and at the ball which followed; at the wedding of the Emperor's daughter, "the sunshine of my House," Princess Victoria Luise, and Duke Ernest August of Brunswick, in May, 1913; and a month later during the Silver Jubilee celebration of the Kaiser's reign, when our own Mr. Carnegie showered plaudits on the Prince of the world's peace. Tower, of _The World_ and _Daily News_, was lucky enough to secure a ticket to the Castle ceremonial, and he was bubbling over with excitement at having been privileged to partic.i.p.ate in so memorable a function. My old friend, Gunther Thomas, late of the _Newyorker-Staatszeitung_, now joyous in the prospect of joining the German Press Bureau's war staff, came back from the Castle almost pitying me for not having been there. "Wile, I tell you," I can hear him saying now, "it was beautiful, simply beautiful!

You missed it! It was enough to make one cry!" Thomas lived in New York seventeen years, but he returned to Germany a more devout Prussian than ever, as a man ought to be whose father fell gloriously at Koniggratz.

The description furnished by my English and Prussian colleagues evidently did not exaggerate the splendor and impressiveness of the scene at the White Hall. The Kaiser, in field-general's gray, entered, escorting the Empress. He was solemn, but not anxious-looking. Around the marble-pillared chamber, where only fifteen months before I had seen the Czar and George V of England tripping the minuet with German princesses as the Kaiser's honored guests, were grouped the first men of the Empire. In the places of distinction, closest to the canopied throne, each according to his Court rank, stood the Imperial Chancellor, General von Moltke, Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz and a score of other eminent officers of the civil, naval and military governments. Among the foreign amba.s.sadors only the representatives of Russia and France were missing from their old-time places. Mr. Gerard, modest and retiring as always, amid the glitter of gold lace and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons flashing on all sides, cut a more than ever self-effacing figure in his diplomatic uniform--the plain evening dress of an American gentleman.

The Kaiser read his War Speech, which he held in his right hand, while the left firmly gripped his sword-hilt. Beginning in a quiet tone, His Majesty's voice appreciably rose in intensity and volume as he approached the kernel of his message which told how "with a heavy heart I have been compelled to mobilize my army against a neighbor with whom it has fought side by side on so many fields of battle." The Imperial Russian Government, William II went on to say, "yielding to the pressure of an insatiable nationalism, has taken sides with a State which by encouraging criminal attacks has brought on the evil of war." That France, also, the Kaiser continued, "placed herself on the side of our enemies could not surprise us. Too often have our efforts to arrive at friendlier relations with the French Republic come in collision with old hopes and ancient malice." And when the Kaiser had ended, with an invitation to "the leaders of the different parties of the Reichstag"

(there were no Socialists present) "to come forward and lay their hands in mine as a pledge," the White Hall reverberated with applause which must have seemed almost indecorous in so august an apartment, but which, no doubt, rang true. It was then, I suppose, that Thomas felt like weeping, and so should I, perhaps, had I been there. The Kaiser, his handshaking-bee over, strode from the scene amid an awesome silence, and the statesmen, the generals and the admirals went their respective ways.

All was now in readiness for the real Reichstag session, in which words of deathless significance were to fall from the Chancellor's lips.

We were accustomed to sardine-box conditions in the always overcrowded press gallery of the Reichstag on "great days," but to-day we were piled on top of one another in closer formation even than a Prussian infantry platoon in the charge. Familiar faces were missing. Comert, of _Le Temps_, Caro, of _Le Matin_, and Bonnefon, of _Le Figaro_, were not there. They had escaped, we were glad to hear, by one of the very last trains across the French frontier. Lowenton (a brother of Madame n.a.z.imoff), Grossmann, Markoff and Melnikoff, our long-time Russian colleagues, were absent, too. Had they gained Wirballen in time, we wondered, or were they languishing in Spandau?

Doctor Paul Goldmann, _doyen_ of our Berlin corps, was in his accustomed seat, beaming consciously, as became, at such an hour, the correspondent-in-chief of the great allied Vienna _Neue Freie Presse_.

The British and American contingents were on hand in force. Never had we waited for a _Kanzlerrede_ in such electric expectancy. "Copy" in plenty, such as none of us had ever telegraphed before, was about to be made. Goldmann, a Foreign Office favorite, as well as the all-around most popular foreign journalist in Berlin, may have had an advance hint what was coming, as he frequently did, but to the vast majority of us--British, American, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Swiss, Spanish and Danish, sandwiched there in the _Pressloge_ so closely that we could hear, but not move--I am certain that the momentous words and extraordinary scenes about to ensue came as a staggering revelation.

Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg, who is flattered when told that he looks like Abraham Lincoln--the resemblance ends there--began speaking at three-fifteen o'clock. Gaunt and fatigued, he tugged nervously at the portfolio of doc.u.ments on the desk in front of him during the brief introductory remarks of the President of the House, the patriarchal, white-bearded Doctor Kaempf. The Chancellor's manner gave no indication that before he resumed his seat he would rise to heights of oratorical fire of which no one ever thought that "incarnation of pa.s.sionate doctrinarianism" capable. What he said is known to all the world now; how, in Bismarckian accents, he thundered that "we are in a state of self-defense and necessity knows no law!" How he confessed that "our troops, which have already occupied Luxemburg, may perhaps already have set foot on Belgian territory." How he acknowledged, in a succeeding phrase, to Germany's eternal guilt, that "that violates international law." How he proclaimed the amazing doctrine that, confronted by such emergencies as Germany now was, she had but one duty--"to hack her way through, even though--I say it quite frankly--we are doing wrong!" Our heads, I think, fairly swam as the terrible portent of these words sank into our consciousness. "Our troops may perhaps already have set foot on Belgian soil." That meant one thing, with absolute certainty. It denoted war with England. Trifles have a habit at such moments of lodging themselves firmly in one's mind; and I remember distinctly how, when I heard Bethmann Hollweg fling that challenge forth, I leaned over impulsively to my Swedish friend, Siosteen, of the _Goteborg Tidningen_, and whispered: "That settles it. England's in it now, too." Siosteen nods an excited a.s.sent. It is in the midst of one of the frequent intervals in which the House, floor and galleries alike, is now venting its impa.s.sioned approval of the Chancellor's words. I had heard Bulow and Bebel and Bethmann Hollweg himself, times innumerable, set the Reichstag rocking with fervid demonstrations of approval or hostility, but never has it throbbed with such life as to-day. It is the incarnation of the inflamed war spirit of the land. The more defiant the Chancellor's diction, the more fervid the applause it evokes.

"_Sehr richtig! Sehr richtig!_" the House shrieks back at him in chorus as he details, step by step, how Germany has been "forced" to draw her terrible sword to beat back the "Russian mobilization menace," how she has tried and failed to bargain with England and Belgium, how she has kept the dogs of war chained to the last, and only released them now when destruction, imminent and certain, is upon her.

All eyes in the Press Gallery are riveted on the broad left arc of the floor usurped by the one hundred and eleven Social Democratic deputies of the House of three hundred and ninety-seven members. For the first time in German history their cheers are mingling with those of other parties in support of a Government policy. That, after the Belgian revelation, is beyond all question the dominating feature of a scene tremendous with meaning in countless respects. There is nothing perfunctory about the "Reds'" enthusiasm; that is plain. It is real, spontaneous, universal. No man of them keeps his seat. All are on their feet, succ.u.mbing to the engulfing magnitude of the moment. That, it instantly occurs to us, means much to Germany at such an hour. It means that the hope which more than one of the Fatherland's prospective foes in years gone by has fondly cherished, of Socialist revolt in the hour of Germany's peril, was illusory hope. The Chancellor knows what it means. "Our army is in the field!" he declares, trembling with emotion. "Our fleet is ready for battle! The whole German nation stands behind them!" As one man, the entire Reichstag now rises, shouting its approval of these historic words in tones of frenzied exaltation. For two full minutes pandemonium reigns unchecked.

Bethmann Hollweg is turning to the Social Democrats. His fist is clenched and he brandishes it in their direction--not in anger this time, but in triumph--and, as if he were proclaiming the proud sentiment for all the world to hear, he exclaims, at the top of his voice, "Yea, the whole nation!" Thus was Armageddon born. Germany, all present knew, would be at war before another sun had gone down, not only with Russia and France, but with England, and, of course, with Belgium, too.

"Supposing the Belgians resist?" I asked Schmidt, of the _B. Z. am Mittag_, a German colleague whom I once christened Berlin's "star"

reporter, as we wandered, thinking hard, back to _Unter den Linden_.

"Resist?" he replied, half pitying the feeble-mindedness which prompted such a question. "We shall simply spill them into the ocean."

CHAPTER X

THE WAR REACHES ME

"We are not barbarians, my dear Wile!" exclaimed Gunther Thomas, when we met in the Adlon after the Reichstag sitting, in reply to my query about the safety of correspondents of English newspapers, now that Germany was about to annex Great Britain as an enemy in addition to Russia and France. I had found Thomas during ten years of acquaintance the best-informed German journalist I ever knew. His long residence in Park Row had grafted a "news nose" on him, which, coupled with a profound knowledge of the history and present-day undercurrents of his own country, made him an ideal and valuable colleague. I treasure my relations with him in grateful recollection. One required occasionally to dilute both his news and views with a strong solution of skepticism, for Thomas was both a Prussian patriot and representative of Mr.

Ridder's _New-Yorker Staatszeitung_. But nine times out of ten his counsel and information were like Caesar's wife. His a.s.surance to me on the evening of August 4, 1914, that his countrymen "were not barbarians"

was the most misleading piece of news he ever supplied me.

The imminence of hostilities with England revived irresistibly in my mind the qualms which had filled the Germans for a week previous on this very point. "What will the English do?" was the question they constantly flung at any one they thought likely to be able to answer it intelligently. It was the thing which gave themselves the most anxious heart-searching. The "war on two fronts," the purely Continental affair with the Dual Alliance, filled the average German with no concern. The Kaiser's military machine had been constructed to deal with France and Russia combined, and no German ever for a moment doubted its ability to do so. Events of the past year, I think it may fairly be said, have justified that confidence, for I suppose no expert anywhere in the world doubts but that for the presence of British sea power on France and Russia's side, the German eagle would in all probability now be screaming in triumph over Paris and Petrograd. But with the British "in," dozens of Germans confessed, as my own ears can bear testimony, their case was "hopeless." Few of them were persuaded that Germany could, in Bismarck's picturesque phrase, "deal with the British Navy in Paris." While the prospect of having to fight France and Russia did not disturb the Germans, the possibility of having to battle with Britain simultaneously filled them with undisguised alarm. They would not admit it now, but in the fading hours of July, 1914, and the opening days of August, it was a nightmare which pressed down so heavily upon their consciousness that they never spoke of it except in accents of dread.

The Hate cult had not yet toppled their reason. Lissauer's demoniacal ballad was still unwritten. In those anguished moments they talked of England, when not in terms of outright fear, as the "brother nation" of kindred blood and ideals with whom war was unthinkable because it would be nothing short of "civil war." Doctor Hecksher, a well-known National Liberal member of the Reichstag and _Stimmungsmacher_ (henchman) of the Foreign Office, busily a.s.sured English newspaper correspondents of the "horror" with which the mere idea of conflict with England filled the German soul. I thought it queer that one of my last dispatches to London, before Anglo-German telegraphic communication snapped, containing Doctor Hecksher's views and mentioning him by name, was ruthlessly censored in Berlin and returned to me as untransmissible.

That meant one of two things--that Doctor Hecksher was wrong in attributing to Germany overweening desires of peace with England, or that it was unwise to let me indicate that Teuton knees were quaking at the prospect of war with her. Certainly lachrymose expressions of hope that England would not feel called upon to "intervene" in Germany's "just quarrel" with her neighbors were common to the point of universality in Berlin on the eve of the clash. They were born of inherent conviction that German aspirations of imposing Hohenzollern hegemony on the Continent must and would be wrecked by England's adherence to her century-old policy of opposing so vital a disturbance in the balance of European power.

Uppermost in my mind just now was how to transmit at least the vital pa.s.sages of the Chancellor's "Necessity knows no law speech" to _The Daily Mail_. A merely informative bulletin about it to the editor had just been brought back from the Main Telegraph Office by my faithful young German secretary, Arthur Schrape, with the message that "no more dispatches to England are being accepted." That was about six o'clock P.M., at least three hours before Berlin or the world generally had any knowledge that England and Germany were actually at grips.

Communication with the United States, Schrape had been told, was still open, so the most natural thing in the world was to attempt to get Bethmann Hollweg's crucial statements to London by way of New York.

Then followed a decision on my part which was to prove my undoing--I committed the diabolical and treasonable crime of calling up my friend and colleague, Mackenzie, the able correspondent of the _London Times_ (like my own paper, _The Daily Mail_, the property of Lord Northcliffe), and discussing with him the feasibility of cabling the New York representatives of our respective papers to relay to London the news which we were unable to send directly from Berlin. We were telephoning in German, of course, as every one for three days past had been required to do, and we realized that practically every conversation, especially between highly suspicious characters like long-accredited Berlin newspaper correspondents, was being overheard by some spy with an ear glued to a receiver. Knowing all this perfectly well, we talked with entire freedom of our nefarious scheme for undermining the safety of the German Empire. Finally it was agreed that Mackenzie should come to my rooms in the Adlon and arrange with me there the text of a cablegram to New York which should bottle up the German fleet, encircle the Crown Prince's army and generally wreck the Kaiser's plans for subjugating Europe, even before the ink on the General Staff's plans was dry. We agreed that the surest way of striking this blow for England was to cable to New York a message whose veiled language would disclose to even the most stupid eye that it concealed a plot of heinous proportions. It was decided that we should concoct in cable language a cablegram reading like this:

"Chancellor just delivered importantest speech Reichstag. As communication England unlonger possible suggest your cabling Newyorks news."

Mackenzie, accompanied by his a.s.sistant, Jelf, now a volunteer-officer in Kitchener's army, arrived at the Adlon; we canva.s.sed the New York suggestion in detail--amid such secrecy that Schrape, a very keen-eared German of twenty-two and a patriot, who is also serving his Kaiser and Empire in field-gray, was permitted to partic.i.p.ate in our deliberations.

Then we came to the most treacherous decision of all, viz., not to carry out our grandiose project for confounding the German War Party's plot.

But we had gone far enough. We were discovered. Our machinations, though we knew it not, were seen through, our guns were spiked, and all that remained was to put us, as soon as possible, where we could do no further harm. Any number of Frenchmen and Russians were already in the same place.

Carelessly leaving behind me my typewriting-machine, fifty-pfennig map of the North Sea, copies of my preceding week's cablegrams, scissors, paste-pot, carbon-paper, the latest Berlin newspapers, and other telltale emblems of my infamy, I went to the American Emba.s.sy to discuss the latest and obviously greatest turn of the war kaleidoscope with Judge Gerard. There were a thousand and one questions to level at him.

Was it true that Sir Edward Goschen had already asked him to take charge of Great Britain's interests? What would panic-stricken American war refugees do now, with British warships blockading the German coasts?

Would it any longer be safe in Berlin for our people to talk their own language in public? Would the United States Government be making any declaration of neutrality, or something of that sort, to the German Government? Was the Emba.s.sy still in direct communication with Washington? Could it facilitate the transmission of our news-cablegrams to New York or Chicago? These were the things the journalistic brethren _en ma.s.se_ were anxious to know--and I recall vividly that the Amba.s.sador and his staff, despite a week of worries unprecedented, were still smiling and managing to reply to every question, however abstract or unanswerable, with invincible equanimity. I have since heard that there were fellow citizens who found Gerard, Grew, Harvey and Ruddock "inattentive." I suppose they were the patriots who couldn't understand why local checks on the First National Bank of Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania, "weren't good" at the Emba.s.sy, and who were "peeved"

because the Amba.s.sador couldn't tell them why Uncle Sam hadn't already started a fleet of dreadnoughts and liners-_de-luxe_ to Hamburg and Bremen to rescue his stranded tourist family. Or one of the complainants, who was "going to write to Bryan" about our "inefficient diplomatic service," may have been that plutocratic dame from Boston who demanded that Gerard should at least be able to commandeer "a special train" for the Americans, even if every military line in all Germany was at that hour choked with troop-transports. And yet we Yankees rank in effete Europe as a cool-headed and common-sense race!

What dominated my thoughts, of course, was whether, after all, I was now to be allowed to remain in Germany. My desire to do so was never stronger--to sit on the edge of history in the making at such a moment.

Judge Gerard resolved my doubts. I should "cheer up" and hope for the best. I tarried for a moment longer, to chat over the day's overwhelming developments with Mrs. Gerard, with whom I had not had my usual daily cup of tea and war conference. We wondered how long it would be before a formal declaration of war between England and Germany would be declared. I spoke of my pleasurable antic.i.p.ation at being permitted to live through the mighty days ahead of us in Berlin with herself and the Amba.s.sador. They would be experiences worthy of transmission to grandchildren. We agreed we should be privileged mortals, in a way, to be vouchsafed so tremendous an opportunity. I commented on Mrs.

Gerard's amazing lack of fatigue after four days and nights of trials and tribulations with terror-stricken compatriots. She spoke of the lively satisfaction it had given her to be of service of so homely and homespun a character, and remarked that young Mrs. Ruddock had been "a perfect brick" through it all, an _aide-de-camp_ whom a field-marshal might have envied....

Eight o'clock. Dusk had just fallen as I quitted the Emba.s.sy. A trio of servants cl.u.s.tered at the entrance was examining in the dim light a _Tageblatt_ "Extra" which, they said, was just out. I fairly s.n.a.t.c.hed at it. This is what it said:

+------------------------------------------------+ ENGLAND BREAKS OFF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH GERMANY The English Amba.s.sador in Berlin, Sir Edward Goschen, appeared this evening in the German Foreign Office and demanded his pa.s.sports. That denotes, in all probability, war with England! +------------------------------------------------+

I ought not to have been surprised, yet I was shocked. So England now, at last and really, was "in it." The realization was almost numbing. I stood reading and reading the _Extrablatt_, over and over again. "Joe"

Grew came hurrying up in his automobile. He, too, had the _Tageblatt_ in his hand. He was hastening to tell the Amba.s.sador the news. It was true, Grew said, beyond any doubt. Ye G.o.ds! What next? The world's coming to an end, one thought, was about all there was left. And that seemed nearer at hand than any of us ever felt it before.