THE PLOT DEVELOPS
Von G. is a Junker. He is also Germany's ablest special correspondent.
A Junker, let the uninitiated understand, is a Prussian land baron, or
one of his descendants, who considers dominion over the earth and all
its worms his by Divine Right. If, like von G., a Junker is an army
officer besides, active or _ausser Dienst_, and had a grandfather who
belonged to Moltke's headquarters in 1870-71, he is the superlatively
real thing. So, as my mission in Germany was study of the Fatherland in
its characteristic ramifications, I always felt myself richly favored by
the friendship and professional comradeship of von G. He was Junkerism
incarnate. Several years' residence in the United States had signally
failed to corrode von G.'s Junker instincts. Indeed, it intensified
them, for he was ever after a confirmed believer in the ignominious
failure of Democracy. It was he who popularized "Dollarica" as a German
nickname for "God's country."
Von G. and I roomed together at Kiel, sharing apartments and a bath in
the harbormaster's flat above the Imperial Yacht Club postoffice, whose
two stories of brick and stucco serve as "annex" to the always
overcrowded and palatial Krupp hotel, the Seebade-Anstalt, at the other
end of the flowered club grounds. That bath, which I mention in no
spirit of ablutionary arrogance, has to do with the story of von G., for
it was to bring me on a day destined to be historic in violent conflict
with Junkerism. Von G. and I regulated the bath situation at Kiel by
leaving word on our landlady's slate the night before which of us would
bathe first next morning and at what hour. The bath happened to adjoin
my sleeping quarters and von G. could not reach it except by crossing my
bedroom, which he always entered without knocking. On Sunday, June 28,
fateful day, von G. was timed to bathe at eight A.M., I at nine--so read
the schedule inscribed by our respective hands on the good _Frau
Hafenmcistcr's_ tablet. At seven-thirty I was roused from my feathered
slumbers by her soft footsteps--the softest steps of German
harbormasters' wives are quite audible--as she trundled across the room
to arrange Herr von G.'s eight o'clock dip. Junkers are punctual
people, but that morning mine was late. Eight, eight-thirty,
eighty-forty-five passed, and there was no sign of him. When nine
o'clock came, I thought I might reasonably conclude, in my rude,
inconsiderate American way, that von G. had overslept or postponed his
bath, so I made for the tub at the hour I had intended to. I was just
stepping one foot into it when--it was nine-ten now--von G., rubbing his
eyes, bolted in.
"What do you mean by taking my bath?" he yelled at me. "That's some of
your damned American impudence!"
Whereupon, imperturbably pouring the rest of me into the bath, I
ventured to suggest to Field-Marshal von G., that if he would drop the
barrack-yard tone and remember that I was neither a _Dachshund_ nor a
Pomeranian recruit, I would deign to hold converse on the point under
debate. I am not sure I spoke as calmly as that sounds, for to gain a
conversational lap on a German you must outshout him. At any rate, von
G., abandoning abuse, stalked whimperingly from the room, fired some
rearguard shrapnel about "just like an American's 'nerve'," and bathed
later in the day.
I did not see him again until about five o'clock that afternoon. He
bolted into my room this time, too, but in excitement, not anger.
"The Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife have been assassinated," he
exclaimed.
"Good God!" I rejoined, stupefied.
"It's a good thing," said von G. quietly.
For many days and nights I wondered what the Junker meant. I think I
know now. He meant that the War Party (of which he was a very potent
and zealous member) had at length found a pretext for forcing upon
Europe the struggle for which the German War Lords regarded themselves
vastly more ready than any possible combination of foes. The first year
of the war has amply demonstrated the accuracy of their calculations.
Germany's triumphs in the opening twelvemonth of Armageddon were the
triumphs of the superlatively prepared. If Serajevo had not come along
when it did--with the German military establishment just built up to a
peace-footing of nearly one million officers and men and re-armed at a
cost of two hundred and fifty million dollars; with von Tirpitz's Fleet
at the acme of its efficiency; with the Kiel Canal reconstructed for the
passage of super-dreadnought ironclads--Germany's readiness for war
might have been fatally inferior to that of her enemies-to-be. The
Fatherland was ready, armed to the teeth, as nation never was before.
The psychological moment had dawned.
This was the reassuring state of affairs at home. What did the War Party
see when it put its mailed hand to the vizor and looked abroad, across
to England, west over the Rhine to France, and toward Russia? It saw
Great Britain on what truly enough looked to most of the world like the
brink of revolution in Ireland. It saw a France, of which a great
Senator had only a few days before said that her forts were defective,
her guns short of ammunition and her army lacking in even such
rudimentary war sinews as sufficient boots for the troops. It saw a
Russia stirred by industrial strife which seemed to need only the threat
of grave foreign complications to inflame her always rebellious
proletariat into revolt. Serajevo had all the earmarks of providential
timeliness.
"It's a good thing," said the sententious von G.
The "trippers" from Hamburg and nearer-by points in Schleswig-Holstein,
whom the Sunday of Kiel Week attracts by the thousand, were far more
stunned than von G. by the news from Bosnia, which put so tragic an end
to their seaside holiday. The esplanade, which had been throbbing with
bustle and glittering with color, did not know at first why all the
ships in the harbor, British as well as German, had suddenly lowered
their pennants to half-mast, or why the Austrian royal standard had
suddenly broken out, also at the mourning altitude. The Kaiser was
racing in the Baltic. "Old Franz Josef," some said, "has died. He's
been going for many a day." Presently the truth percolated through the
awestruck crowds. The sleek white naval dispatch-boat _Sleipner_ tore
through the Bay, Baltic-bound. She carries news to William II when he
governs Germany from the quarter-deck of the _Hohenzollern_. _Sleipner_
dodged eel-like, through the lines of British and German men-of-war,
ocean liners, pleasure-craft and racing-yachts anchored here, there and
everywhere. In fifteen minutes she was alongside the Emperor's fleet
schooner, _Meteor V_, which had broken off her race on receipt of
wireless tidings of the Archducal couple's murderous fate. The
_Hohenzollern_ had already "wirelessed" for the fastest torpedo-boat in
port to fetch the Kaiser and his staff off the _Meteor_, and the
destroyer and _Sleipner_ snorted up, foam-bespattered, almost
simultaneously. The Emperor clambered into the torpedo-boat and started
for the harbor.
It was the face of a William II, blanched ashen-gray, which turned from
the bridge of the destroyer to acknowledge, in solemn gravity, the
salutes of the officers and crew of the British flagship, as the
Kaiser's craft raced past the _King George V_. Always stern of mien,
the Emperor now looked severity personified. His staff stood apart. He
seemed to wish to be alone, absolutely, with the overwhelming thoughts
of the moment. Three minutes later, and he stepped aboard the
_Hohenzollern_. Now another pennant showed at the mainmast of the
Imperial yacht--the blue and yellow signal flag which means: "His
Majesty is aboard, but preoccupied." I wonder if posterity will ever
know what monumental reflections flitted through the Kaiser's mind in
that first hour after Serajevo? Did he, like von G., think it was "a
good thing," too? I suppose the first stars and stripes to be
half-masted anywhere in the world that dread sundown were those which
drooped from the stern of _Utowana_, Mr. Allison Vincent Armour's
steam-yacht, anchored in the Bay off Kiel Naval Academy. A puffing
little launch took me out to the _Utowana_ as soon as I had gathered
some coherent facts, which I wanted to present to Mr. Armour and his
guests, American Ambassador and Mrs. James W. Gerard, of Berlin, who had
motored to Kiel the day before. Mrs. Gerard's sister, Countess Sigray,
is the wife of a Hungarian nobleman, and the Ambassador's wife, if my
memory serves me correctly, once told me of her sister's acquaintance
with both of the assassinated Royalties. We Americans discussed the
immediate consequences of the day's event--how the Kaiser would take it,
how it would affect poor old Emperor Francis Joseph. William II and
Admiral von Tirpitz had been the Archduke's guests at Konopischt in
Bohemia only a few weeks before. The Kaiser and the future ruler of
Austria-Hungary had become great friends. They were not always that.
There had been a good deal of the William II in Franz Ferdinand himself.
People often said it was a case of Greek meet Greek, and that two such
insistent personalities were inevitably bound to clash. Others said that
the Archduke, inspired by his brilliantly clever consort, always
insisted that German overlordship in Vienna would cease when he came to
the throne. Still others knew that despite antipathies and antagonisms,
the two men had at length come to be genuinely fond of each other, and
that their ideas and ideals for the greater glory of Germanic Europe
coincided.
These things we chatted and canvassed, irresponsibly, on _Utowana's_
immaculate deck. All of us were persuaded of the imminency of a crisis
in Austrian-Serbian relations in consequence of Princip's crime. But I
am quite sure not a soul of us held himself capable of imagining that,
because of that remote felony, Great Britain and Germany would be at war
five weeks later. Beyond us spread the peaceful panorama of British and
German war-craft, anchored side by side, and the thought would have
perished at birth.
Returned to the terrace of the Seebade-Anstalt, one found the atmosphere
heavily charged with suppressed excitement. Immaculately-groomed young
diplomats, down from Berlin for the Sunday, were twirling their
walking-sticks and yellow gloves which were not, after all, to accompany
them to Grand-Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia's garden-party. That,
like everything else connected with Kiel Week, had suddenly been called
off.
A party of Americans flocked together at the entrance to the hotel to
exchange low-spoken views on the all-pervading topic. There was big
Lieutenant-Commander Walter R. Gherardi, our wide-awake Berlin Naval
Attache, resplendent in gala gold-braided uniform, and Mrs. Gherardi,
who had motored me around the environs of Kiel that morning; Albert
Billings Ruddock, Third Secretary of the Embassy, and his pretty and
clever wife; and Lanier Winslow, Ambassador Gerard's private secretary,
his effervescent good nature repressed for the first time I ever
remembered observing it in that unbecoming and unnatural condition.
Secretary Ruddock's father, Mr. Charles H. Ruddock, of New York,
completed the group.
I met Mr. Ruddock, Sr., six months later in New York. "Do you remember
what you told me that afternoon at Kiel, when we were discussing
Serajevo?" he asked. I pleaded a lapse of recollection. "You said," he
reminded me, "'this means war.'"
The aspect of Kiel became in the twinkling of an eye as funereal as
Serajevo and Vienna themselves must have been in that blood-bespattered
hour. Bands stopped playing, flags not lowered to half-mast were hauled
down altogether, and beer-gardens emptied. "Hohenzollern weather,"
Teuton synonym for invincible sunshine, vanished in keeping with the
drooping spirits of everybody and everything, and bleak thunder-showers
intermingled with flashes of heat-lightning to complete the _mise en
scene_. A week of gaiety unsurpassed evaporated into gloom and
foreboding.
For myself it had been a week crowded with great recollections. Special
correspondents telegraphing to influential foreign newspapers,
particularly if they were English and American newspapers, were always
_persona gratissima_ with German dignitaries, even of the blood royal.
The group of us on duty at what, alas! was to be the last Kiel Week, at
least of the old sort, for many a year, were the recipients, as usual,
of that scientific hospitality which foreign newspapermen always receive
at German official hands. Before we were at Kiel twenty-four hours we
were deluged with invitations to garden-parties at the Commanding
Admiral's, to _soirees_ innumerable ashore and afloat, to luncheons at
the Town Hall, to the grand balls at the Naval Academy, and to functions
of lesser magnitude for the bluejackets. Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz had
left his card at my lodgings and so had Admiral von Rebeur-Paschwitz,
the Chief of Staff of the Baltic Station, who will be pleasantly
remembered by friends of Washington days when he was German Naval
Attache there. Captain Lohlein, the courteous chief of the Press Bureau
of the Navy Department at Berlin, had equipped me with credentials which
practically made me a freeman of Kiel harbor for the time being. In no
single direction was effort lacking, on the part of the authorities who
have the most practical conception of any Government in the world of the
value of advertising, to enable special correspondents at Kiel to
practise their profession comfortably and successfully. I must not
forget to mention the visit paid me by Baron von Stumm, chief of the
Anglo-American division of the German Foreign Office; for Stumm's
opinion of me underwent a kaleidoscopic and mysterious change a few
weeks later. Treasured conspicuously in my memories of Kiel, too, will
long remain the call I received from Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach's
private secretary, and the message he brought me from the Master of
Essen. It seems less cryptic to me now than then. I sought an
interview from the Cannon Queen's consort about the visit he and his
staff of experts had just paid to the great arsenals and dockyards of
Great Britain.
"Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach presents his compliments," said the
secretary, "and asks me to say how much he regrets he can not grant an
interview, as the matters which took him to England are not such as he
cares to discuss in public."
I wonder how many American newspaper readers, in the hurly-burly of the
fast-marching events which preceded and ushered in the war, ever knew of
the little army of eminent and expert "investigators" who honored
England with their company on the very threshold of hostilities? June
saw the presence in London, ostensibly for "the season," of Herr Krupp
von Bohlen und Halbach, accompanied not only by his plutocratic wife,
but by his chief technical expert, Doctor Ehrensberger of Essen, an
old-time friend of American steel men like Mr. Schwab and ex-Ambassador
Leishman, and by Herr von Buelow, a kinsman of the ex-Imperial
Chancellor, who was the Krupp general representative in England. With a
_naivete_ which Britons themselves now regard almost incomprehensible,
the Krupp party was shown over practically all of England's greatest
weapons-of-war works at Birkenhead, Barrow-in-Furness, Glasgow,
Newcastle-on-Tyne and Sheffield. They saw the world-famed plants of
Firth, Cammell-Laird, Vickers-Maxim, Brown, Armstrong-Whitworth and
Hadfield. Not with the eyes of Cook tourists, but with the practised
gaze of specialists, they were privileged to look upon sights which must
have sent them away with a vivid, up-to-date and accurate impression of
Britain's capabilities in the all-vital realm of production of war
materials for both army and navy. It was from this personally conducted
junket through the zone of British war industry that Herr Krupp von
Bohlen und Halbach returned--not to Essen, but to Kiel (where he has his
summer home) and to the Kaiser and von Tirpitz. It was to them his
report was made. I think I understand better now why he could not see
his way to letting me tell the British public what he saw and learned in
England. I was guileless when I sought the interview. Let this be my
apology to Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach for attempting to penetrate
into matters obviously not fit "to discuss in public."
During July England entertained three other important German emissaries,
each a specialist, as befitted the country of his origin and the object
of his mission. Doctor Dernburg came over. He spent ten strenuous days
"in touch" with financial and economic circles and subjects. No man
could be relied upon to bring back to Berlin a shrewder estimate of the
British commercial situation. A few days later Herr Ballin, the German
shipping king, crossed the channel. I recall telegraphing a Berlin
newspaper notice which explained that the astute managing director of
the Hamburg-American line went to England to "look into the question of
fuel-oil supplies." Herr Ballin, like Doctor Dernburg, also kept "in
touch" with the British circles most important and interesting to
himself and the Fatherland. He must have dabbled in high politics a
bit, too, for only the other day Lord Haldane revealed that he arranged
for Herr Ballin to "meet a few friends" at his lordship's hospitable
home at Queen Anne's Gate. Germans always felt a proprietary right to
seek the hospitality of the Scotch statesman who acknowledged that his
spiritual domicile was in the Fatherland.
Then, finally, came another German, far more august than Krupp von
Bohlen und Halbach, Dernburg and Ballin--Grand-Admiral Prince Henry of
Prussia. His visit fell within a week of Germany's declaration of war
against France and Russia. The Prince, who enjoyed many warm
friendships in England and visited the country at frequent intervals,
also spent a busy week in London. He saw the King, called on with
Prince Louis of Battenberg, the then First Sea Lord, and paid his
respects to Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty.
Englishmen only conjecture how he put in the rest of his time.
Perhaps an episode in the trial of Karl Lody, the German naval spy who
was executed at the Tower of London on November 6, has its place in the
unrecorded history of Prince Henry of Prussia's epochal visit to the
British Isles. Lody confessed to his military judges at Middlesex
Guildhall that he received his orders to report on British naval
preparations from "a distinguished personage."
"Give us his name," commanded Lord Cheylesmore, presiding officer of the
court.
"I would rather not tell it in open court," pleaded the prisoner, whom
Scotland Yard, the day before, had asked me to look at, with a view to
possible identification with certain Berlin affiliations.
"I will write his name on a piece of paper for the court's confidential
information," Lody added. His request was granted.
When we were officially notified that the Kaiser would proceed next
morning by special train to Berlin, we made our own preparations to
depart. The British squadron had still a day and a half of its
scheduled visit to complete, and Vice-Admiral Warrender told us he would
remain accordingly. The German Admiralty had extended him the
hospitality of the new War Canal for the cruise of his fleet into the
North Sea, but he decided to send only the light cruisers by that route
and take his battleships home, as they had come, by the roundabout route
of the Baltic.
On Monday noon, June 29, I went back to Berlin, to live through five
weeks of finishing touches for the grand world blood-bath.