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.
[Illustration: Soldiers in the making--aiming practice]
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.