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 Saturday evening, July 25, 1914. Along with them went equally well-founded beliefs that, however incorrigible their War Party's lust for international strife, the German masses 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 Muensterberg'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 passions. 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 Saturday in Berlin bourse history, I made my way to _Unter den Linden_ in anticipation of demonstrations certain to be provoked by the result of the Austrian ultimatum, no matter whether Serbia had yielded or defied. I reached the Wilhelmstrasse corner, where the British Embassy 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 assured 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_ (God 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 Embassy in the Moltke-strasse. The smaller parade was headed for the Russian Embassy in _Unter den Linden_. In my taxi I decided to follow on to Moltke-strasse, and, crossing to the far side of the Linden, I came up with the rearguard of the demonstrators just opposite the chateau-like Embassy of France in the Pariser Platz. Gathered on the portico servants were clustered 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 Koenigs-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-strasse, Bismarck-strasse and Moltke-strasse--the parade, now swelled to many times its original proportions, halted in front of the Austrian Embassy. 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 embassy-palace towered the massive 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 brass-buttoned 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 ueber 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 ambassador, the Hungarian Count von Szoegeny-Marich, but, if he was at home, he preferred not to face the multitude. Presently a beardless young embassy 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, Koenigsberg 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 succumb 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 Embassies 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 assuaged 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 Ambassador 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 assured 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 Wilhelmstrasse 76 in accents of touching sincerity.

The attitude 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 ueber 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 ambassadors 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 attitude 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 Wilhelmstrasse 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 gods 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 reassuring 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 assuming 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. Prince Henry of Prussia did not at least violently insist upon peace. I could never verify whether the German Crown Prince was permitted to participate in the war council or not. If he was, posterity may be sure that his influence was not exercised unduly in the direction of a bloodless solution of the crisis. Herr Kuehn, the Secretary of the Treasury, submitted satisfying figures to prove that, if war must be, Germany was financially caparisoned. From Herr Ballin came word that if war should unhappily be forced upon the Fatherland by the bear, the present positions of German liners were such that few, if any, of them would fall certain prey to enemy cruisers. Those which could not reach home ports would be able to take refuge in snug neutral harbors.

The next day, Thursday, July 30, I was able to telegraph my chiefs in London and New York that the fat was now almost irrevocably in the fire. The War Party's views had prevailed. The fiction that "Russian mobilization" was an intolerable peril which Germany could no longer face in inactivity had been so assiduously maintained that any reluctance to go to war, which may have lingered in the Kaiser's soul, was now overcome. The sword had literally been "forced" into his hand. Russia, it was decided, was to be notified that demobilization or German "counter-mobilization" within twenty-four hours was the choice she had to make. My information went considerably beyond this so-called "last German effort on behalf of peace." It was to the effect that while Germany had taken "one more final step" in the direction of an amicable solution of the crisis, _she did not really expect it to be successful, and had, indeed, resorted to it merely in order to be able to say that she had "left no stone unturned to prevent war_."

Germany was now in everything except a formally proclaimed state of war. Mobilization was not actually "ordered," but all the multitudinous preliminaries for it were well under way. As later developed, German reservists from far-off Southwest Africa were at that very moment en route to Europe on suddenly granted "leaves of absence." The terrible button at whose signal the German war machine would move was all but pressed. To prove it the super-patriotic, Government-controlled _Lokal-Anzeiger_ let a woefully tell-tale cat out of the bag. It issued a lurid "Extra" at two-thirty P.M., categorically announcing that "the entire German army and navy had been ordered to mobilize." After the news had spread through Berlin like wildfire and sent prices on the Bourse tobogganing toward the bottom at the dizziest pace of all the week, the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ twenty minutes later blandly issued another "Extra," explaining that through "a gross misdemeanor in its circulating department" the public had been furnished with "inaccurate news" about mobilization!

The good "_Lokal's_" news was not "inaccurate." It was only premature, for twenty-four hours later, on Friday, July 31, it was permitted, along with other papers, to flood the metropolis with another "Extra," officially proclaiming that Emperor William had declared Germany to be in a "state of war." The "Extras" added that the Kaiser would himself shortly arrive in Berlin from Potsdam. No one doubted now that the Fatherland was on the brink of grim and portentous events. War might only be a matter of hours, perhaps minutes. Instantaneously all roads led to _Unter den Linden_. Through it, now _Oberster Kriegsherr_ indeed--Supreme War Lord is not an ironical sobriquet foisted upon the German Emperor by detractors, as many people think, but an actual, formal title--the Kaiser would soon be passing. History was to be made to repeat itself. Old King William I, returning to Berlin from Ems on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War made a spectacular entrance into Berlin under identical circumstances. The welcome to his grandson must be no less imposing and immortal.

I was fortunate enough to secure a reserved seat in the grandstand--a table on the balcony of the Cafe Kranzler at the intersection of Friedrichstrasse and the Linden. The boulevard was jammed. All Berlin seemed gathered in it. Presently the triple-toned motor horn of the Imperial automobile tooted from afar the signal that the Kaiser was approaching. A tornado of cheers and _Hochs_ greeted him all along the _Via Triumphalis_. The Empress, at his side, smiled in token of the most spontaneous welcome the Kaiser ever received at the hands of his never overfond Berliners. The brass-helmeted War Lord himself was the personification of gravity. His favorite pose in public is uncompromising sternness; to-day it was the last word in severity. He did not seem a happy man, nor even so haughty as I always imagined he would be in the midst of war delirium. It was an unmistakably anxious Kaiser who entered his capital on that afternoon of deathless memory.

The Imperial show, smacking strongly of William's own stage management, had only begun, for now the Crown Prince's familiar motor signal, _Ta-tee, Ta-ta_, sounded from the direction of Brandenburg Gate, and presently he came along, with the beauteous and all-captivating Crown Princess Cecelie at his side. Squatting between them, saluting solemnly in sailor-suit, was their eldest son, the eight-year-old Kaiser-to-be. The ebullition of the crowd in _Unter den Linden_ knew no bounds at the sight of the Crown Prince, for years Berlin's darling. In striking contrast to the Kaiser's solemnity was his heir's smile-wreathed face, which, in the picturesque German idiom, was literally _freudestrahlend_ (radiant of joy). The specter of war was obviously not depressing the Colonel of the Death's Head Hussars. He beamed and grinned in boyish happiness as the mob surged round his car so insistently that for a minute it could not proceed. Right and left he stretched out his arm to shake hands with the frenzied demonstrators nearest him. The Crown Princess shared her consort's manifest pleasure, while the princeling saluted tirelessly. Then other cars whirled by, containing Prince and Princess August Wilhelm of Prussia and the remaining Princes, the sailor Adalbert, and Eitel Friedrich, Joachim and Oscar. The Hohenzollern soldier-family picture was to be complete at this immortal hour. Now there was a fresh outburst of acclamation almost as volcanic as that which greeted the Crown Prince. Admiral Prince Henry, in navy blue and steering his own automobile, was passing. The Kaiser's brother is very dear to the popular heart in Germany. As the Crown Prince typifies the army, so Prince Henry stands for the navy. The procession was brought up by the funereal Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg. For him the cheering was only desultory, as he is not a familiar figure, and many of the crowd obviously had no notion who the worried-looking old gentleman in silk hat and frock coat might be.

The throngs now streamed toward the Royal Castle in the confident hope that William the Speechmaker would not disappoint them. About six o'clock in the evening their patience and _Hochs_ were rewarded. Surrounded by the members of his family, the Kaiser appeared at the balcony window facing the Cathedral across the _Lustgarten_ (this was more of the 1870 precedent) and, looking down upon the densest and most fervent crowd of his subjects he ever faced, addressed to them in the guttural, jerky, but wonderfully far-reaching tones which are his oratorical style, the following homily:

"A fateful hour has fallen upon Germany. Envious people on all sides are compelling us to resort to just defense. The sword is being forced into our hand. If at the last hour my efforts do not succeed in maintaining peace, I hope that with God's help we shall so wield the sword that we shall be able to sheathe it with honor.

"War would demand of us enormous sacrifices in blood and treasure, but we shall show our foes what it means to provoke Germany, and now I commend you all to God. Go to church, kneel before God, and pray to Him to help our gallant army."

Berlin went to bed on the night of July 31 hoarse with _Hoching_ and footsore from standing and marching, but now indubitably certain that events were impending which would try the Fatherland's soul as it had never been tried before.