SLOW MUSIC
July in Berlin of the red summer of 1914 began as placidly as a feast
day in Utopia. The electric shock of Serajevo soon spent its force.
Germans seemed to be vastly more concerned over the effect of the
Archduke's assassination on the health of the old Austrian Emperor than
over resultant international complications. It was Sir Edward Goschen,
British Ambassador in Berlin, previously accredited to the Vienna court,
who recalled to me Francis Joseph's once-expressed determination to
outlive his heir. The doddering octogenarian had realized his grim
ambition.
The German Emperor returned to Berlin from Kiel on Monday, the 30th of
June. Ties of deep affection united him to his aged Austrian ally. It
was universally assumed that the Kaiser, with characteristic
impetuosity, would rush to Vienna to comfort Francis Joseph and attend
the Archduke's funeral. So, as events developed, he ardently desired to
do; but intimations speedily arrived from the _Hofburg_ that "Kaiser
Franz" had chosen to carry his newest cross unmolested by the flummery
and circumstance of State obsequies, and William II remained in Berlin
for honorary funeral services in his own cathedral in memory of the
august departed. Some day a historian, who will have great things to
tell, may relate the real reason for the baffling of the Kaiser's desire
to play the role of chief mourner at spectacular death-rites in the
other German capital. He had telegraphed the orphans of the murdered
Archduke and Duchess that his "heart was bleeding for them." Men who
have an X-ray knowledge of Imperial William's psychology were unkind
enough to suggest that he longed to parade himself before the mourning
populace of the Austrian metropolis as Lohengrin in the hour of its woe,
an Emperor on whom it were safer to lean than on the decrepit figurehead
now bowed in impotent grief, with a beardless grand-nephew of an heir
apparent as the sole hope of the trembling future.
Until the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand began to assert himself,
William II's influence at Vienna had been profound. Francis Joseph
liked and trusted him. Austria was frequently governed from Potsdam.
With the great bar to his ascendency removed from the scene, the German
Emperor may well have thought the hour at length arrived for the virile
Hohenzollerns to save the crumbling Hapsburgs from themselves, and
invertebrate Austria-Hungary from the Hapsburgs. But Vienna decided it
was better the Kaiser should stay at home. His political physicians, on
the evening of July 1, suddenly discovered that His Majesty was
suffering from that famous German malady known as "diplomatic illness,"
whereupon the court M.D. dutifully announced, through the obliging
official news-agency, that "owing to a slight attack of lumbago" the
Kaiser would not attend the funeral of the murdered Archduke, "as had
been arranged." Forty-eight hours later other "face-saving" procedure
was carried out--the Viennese court proclaimed that by the express wish
of the Emperor Francis Joseph, no foreign guests of any nationality were
expected to attend the Royal obsequies.
On Monday, July 6, William's "lumbago" having yielded to treatment,
there was sprung one of the most dramatic of all the _coups_ which
preceded the fructification of the German War Party's now
fast-completing conspiracy. Although martial law was being ruthlessly
enforced in Bosnia and Herzegovina and all Austria-Hungary was in a
state of rising ferment over the "expiation" which public opinion
insisted "the Serbian murderers" must render, the Kaiser's mind was made
up for him that the international situation was sufficiently placid for
him to start on his annual holiday cruise to the North Cape. Four days
previous, July 2, though the world was not to know it till many weeks
afterward, the military governor of German Southwest Africa unexpectedly
informed a number of German officers in the colony that they might go
home on special leave if they could catch the outgoing steamer. These
officers reached Germany during the first week in August, to find orders
awaiting them to join their regiments in the field. Notifications
issued to Austrian subjects in distant countries were subsequently found
also to bear date of July 2. Things were moving.
The _Hohenzollern_ steamed away to the fjords of Norway with the Kaiser
and his customary company of congenial spirits. The
Government-controlled _Lokal-Anzeiger_ and other journalistic handmaids
of officialdom forthwith proclaimed that "with his old-time tact our
Emperor, by pursuing the even tenor of his way, gives us and the world
this gratifying and convincing sign that however menacing the
storm-clouds in the Southeast may seem, _lieb' Vaterland mag ruhig
sein_. All is well with Germany." Or words to that effect. Germany
and Europe were thus effectually lulled into a false sense of security,
for, as one read further in other "inspired" German newspapers, "our
patriotic Emperor is not the man to withdraw his hand from the helm of
State if peril were in the air." So off went the Kaiser to his beloved
Bergen, Trondhjem and Tromsoe to flatter the Norwegians as he had done
for twenty summers previous and to shake hands with the tourists who
always "booked" cabins in the Hamburg-American North Cape steamers in
anticipation of the distinction the Kaiser never failed to bestow upon
Herr Ballin's patrons.
The Kaiser's departure from Germany was particularly well timed to
bolster up the fiction subsequently so insistently propagated, that
Austria's impending coercion of Serbia was none of Germany's doing. The
_Hohenzollern_ had hardly slipped out of Baltic waters when Vienna's
"diplomatic _demarche_" at Belgrade began. It was specifically asserted
that these "representations" would be "friendly." Europe must under no
circumstances, thus early in the game, be roused from its midsummer
siesta. The official bulletin from the _Hohenzollern_ read: "All's well
on board. His Majesty listened to-day to a learned treatise on Slav
archeology by Professor Theodor Schiemann. To-morrow the Kaiser will
inspect the Fridthjof statue which he presented to the Norwegian people
three years ago."
Austria-Hungary has a press bureau, too, and doubtless a Hammann of its
own; now it cleared for action. While Vienna's "friendly
representations" were in progress at Belgrade, the papers of Vienna and
Budapest began sounding the tocsin for "vigorous" prosecution of the
Dual Monarchy's case against the Serbian assassins and their
accessories. The Serbian Government meantime remained imperturbable.
Princip and Cabrinovitch, the takers of the Archduke and Duchess' lives,
after all were Austrian-Hungarian subjects, and their crime was
committed on Austrian-Hungarian soil. Serbia, said Belgrade, must be
proved guilty of responsibility for Serajevo before she could be
expected to accept it. Then the Berlin press bureau took the field.
The _Lokal-Anzeiger_ "admitted" that things were beginning to look as if
"Germany will again have to prove her Nibelung loyalty," _i.e._, in
support of Austria, as during the other Bosnian crisis, in 1909.
By the end of the second week of July the world's most sensitive
recording instruments, the stock exchanges, commenced to vibrate with
the tremors of brewing unrest. The Bourse at Vienna was disturbingly
weak. Berlin responded with sympathetic slumps. To the _Daily Mail_ in
London and the _New York Times_ I was able, on the night of July 10, to
cable the significant message that the German Imperial Bank was now
putting pressure on all German banks to induce them to keep ten per
cent. of their deposits and assets on hand in money. On the same day an
unexplained tragedy occurred in Belgrade: the Russian minister to the
Serbian court, Monsieur de Hartwig, Germanism's arch-foe in the Balkans,
died suddenly while taking tea with his Austrian diplomatic colleague,
Baron Giesling.
Germany the while was going about its business, which at mid-July
consists principally in slowing down the strenuous life and extending
mere nocturnal "bummeling" in home haunts to seashore, forests and
mountains for protracted sojourns of weeks and months. The "cure"
resorts were crowded. In the _al fresco_ restaurants in the cities, one
could hear the Germans eating and drinking as of peaceful yore. The
schools were closed and Stettiner Bahnhof, which leads to the Baltic,
and Lehrter Bahnhof, the gateway to the North Sea, were choked from
early morning till late at night with excited and perspiring Berliners
off for their prized _Sommerfrische_. _Herr Bankdirektor_ Meyer and
_Herr_ and _Frau Rechtsanwalt_ Salzmann were a good deal more interested
in the food at the _Logierhaus_ they had selected for themselves and the
_kinder_ at Heringsdorf or Westerland-Sylt than they were in Austria's
avenging diplomatic moves in Belgrade. Stock-brokers were only
moderately nervous over the gyrations of the Bourse. Germans who had
not yet made off for the seaside or the Tyrol felt surer than ever that
war was a chimera when they read that Monsieur Humbert had just revealed
to the French Senate the criminal unpreparedness of the Republic's
military establishment.
Strain between Austria and Serbia was now increasing. Canadian Pacific,
German stock-dabblers' favorite "flyer," tumbled on the Vienna and
Berlin Bourses to the lowest level reached since 1910. Real war rumors
now cropped up. Austria was reported to have "partially mobilized" two
army corps. Canadian Pacifics continued to be "unloaded" by nervous
Germans in quantities unprecedented. Now Serbia was "reported" to be
mobilizing. It was July 17. England, we gathered in Berlin, was
thinking only of Ireland. Berlin correspondents of great London dailies
who were trying to impress the British public with the gravity of the
European situation had their dispatches edited down to back-page
dimensions--if they were printed at all. One colleague, who represented
a famous English Liberal newspaper, had arranged, weeks before, to start
on his holidays at the end of July. He telegraphed his editor that he
thought it advisable to abandon his preparations and to remain in
Berlin. "See no occasion for any alteration of your arrangements," was
wired back from Fleet Street.
The German War Party, acting through Hammann, now perpetrated another
grim little witticism. It was solemnly announced in the Berlin
press--on July 18--that the third squadron of the German High Seas Fleet
was to be "sent to an English port in August (!) to return the visit
lately paid to Kiel by a British squadron." Britain's Grand Armada the
while was assembled off Spithead for the mightiest naval review in
history--two hundred and thirty vessels manned by seventy thousand
officers and men. King George spent Sunday, July 19, quietly at sea,
steaming up and down the endless lines of dreadnoughts and lesser
ironclads. The Lord Mayor of London opened a new golf course at
Croydon. And Ulster was smoldering.
Highly instructive now were the recriminations going on in the German,
Austrian and Serbian press. Belgrade denied that reserves had been
called up. The _North German Gazette_, the official mouthpiece of the
Kaiser's Government, no longer seeking to minimize the seriousness of
the Austrian-Serbian quarrel, expressed the pious hope that the
"discussion" would at least be "localized." Canadian Pacifics still
clattered downward. Acerbities between Vienna and Belgrade were growing
more acrimonious and menacing from hour to hour. Diplomatic
correspondence of historic magnitude, as the impending avalanche of
White Papers, Blue Books, Yellow Books and Red Papers was soon to show,
was already (July 20) in uninterrupted progress, though the quarreling
Irishmen and militant suffragettes of Great Britain knew it not, any
more than the summer resort merrymakers and "cure-takers" of Germany.
The foreign offices, stock exchanges, embassies, legations and newspaper
offices of the Continent were fairly alive to the imminence of
transcendent events, but the great European public, though within ten
days of Armageddon, was magnificently immersed in the ignorance which
the poet has so truly called bliss.
Her "friendly representations" at Belgrade having proved abortive,
Austria now prepared for more forceful measures. On July 21 Berlin
learned that Count Berchtold, the Viennese foreign minister, had
proceeded to Ischl to submit to the Emperor Francis Joseph the note he
had drawn up for presentation to Serbia. As the world was about to
learn, this was the fateful ultimatum which poured oil on the European
embers and set them aglare, to splutter, burn and devastate in a
long-enduring and all-engulfing conflagration. Simultaneously--though
this, too, was not known till months later--the Austrian minister at
Belgrade sent off a dispatch to his Government, declaring that a
"reckoning" with Serbia could not be "permanently avoided," that "half
measures were useless," and that the time had come to put forward
"far-reaching requirements joined to effective control." That, as
events were soon to develop, was an example of the diplomatic rhetoric
which masters of statecraft employ for concealment of thought. It meant
that nothing less than the abject surrender of Serbian sovereignty would
appease Vienna's desire for vengeance for Serajevo.
During all these hours, so pregnant with the fate of Europe, the German
Foreign Office was stormed by foreign newspaper correspondents in quest
of light on Germany's attitude. Was she counseling moderation in
Vienna, or fishing in troubled waters? Was she reminding her ally that
while Serajevo was primarily an Austrian question, it was in its broad
aspects essentially a European issue? Was the Kaiser really playing his
vaunted role as the bulwark of _European_ peace, or was Herr von
Tschirschky, his Ambassador in Vienna, adjuring the Ballplatz that it
was Austria's duty to "stand firm" in the presence of the crowning Slav
infamy, and that William of Hohenzollern was ready once again to don
"shining armor" for the defense of "Germanic honor"?
These are the questions we representatives of British and American
newspapers persistently launched at the veracious Berlin Press Bureau.
What did Hammann and his minions tell us? That Germany regarded the
Austrian-Serbian controversy a purely private affair between those two
countries; that Germany had at no stage of the imbroglio been consulted
by her Austrian ally, and that the last thing in the world which
occurred to the tactful Wilhelmstrasse was to proffer unasked-for
counsel to Count Berchtold, Emperor Francis Joseph's Foreign Minister,
at so delicate and critical a moment. Vienna would properly resent such
unwarranted interference with her sovereign prerogatives as a Great
Power--we were assured. Germany's attitude was that of an innocent
bystander and interested witness, and nothing more. That was the
version of the Fatherland's attitude sedulously peddled out for both
home and foreign consumption.
Behind us lay a week of tremor and unrest unknown since the days,
exactly forty-four years previous, preceding the Franco-Prussian War.
The money universe, most susceptible and prescient of all worlds, rocked
with nervous alarm. Its instinctive apprehension of imminent crisis was
fanned into panic on the night of July 23, when word came that Austria
had presented Serbia an ultimatum with a time limit of forty-eight
hours. My own information of Vienna's crucial step was prompt and
unequivocal. It was on its way to London and New York before seven
o'clock Thursday evening, Berlin time. I was gratified to learn at the
_Daily Mail_ office in London three weeks later that I had given England
her first news of the match which had at last been applied to the
European powder barrel. It was five or six hours later before general
announcement of the Austrian ultimatum arrived in Fleet Street.
I was not surprised to learn that my startling telegram had aroused no
little skepticism. During many days preceding it was the despair of the
Berlin correspondents of British newspapers that they seemed utterly
unable to impress their home publics with the fast-gathering gravity of
the European situation. London was no less nonchalant than Paris and St.
Petersburg. England was immersed to the exclusion of everything else in
the throes of the Irish-Ulster crisis. Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward
Carson loomed immeasurably bigger on the horizon than all Austria and
Serbia put together. In the boulevards, cafes and government-offices of
Paris the salacious details of the Caillaux trial absorbed all thought.
In St. Petersburg one hundred sixty thousand working men threatened an
upheaval which bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the revolutionary
conditions of 1905. But it was the invincible indifference of London, as
it seemed in Berlin, which appealed to us most.
The newspapers of July 21, 22 and 23 came in and indicated that for
England Ulster had become Europe. There was obviously little space 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 ambassadors, 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 Ambassador 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 anticipation
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
attitude 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 principal 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 "assurances" 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 assisting 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 circumstances 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 Delbrueck has been giving
wide publicity to an 'open letter' received from a Russian colleague,
Professor Mitrosanoff, containing the following passage:
"'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
reassured 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.'"