WAR
"The Russian mobilization menace!" That was the great myth now
irrevocably fastened on the German mind. "The Cossacks at our gate!"
Thus was the Fatherland gulled by its war zealots into the belief that
the tide of blood sweeping down from the East could no longer be
stemmed. German war history was repeating itself. As 1870 was born in
deceit, so was 1914. Bismarck doctored the Ems telegram forty-four
years previous to extenuate the assault on France, and now the "Russian
mobilization menace," the Cossack bogy, was invented as justification
for precipitating and popularizing the conflict on which the Prussian
War Party's heart was set. A "state of war" had been decreed by the
Kaiser in accordance with the paragraph of the Imperial Constitution
which authorizes him to declare martial law whenever the domains of the
Empire or any part of them are in jeopardy. The Czar's hordes were
gathered on the Eastern frontier, preparing to launch a murderous,
burglarious attack on innocent, defenseless, peace-loving Germany. They
had done more than that--and here was another Hohenzollern 1870 analogy;
the Emperor of all the Russias had "insulted" the Kaiser by feloniously
massing his legions on the German border while William II, at Nicholas'
own request, was "working for peace." It was a pretty story, and German
public opinion, shrewdly prepared, swallowed it whole. Germans, their
Emperor's "honor" and their own safety now at stake, approved fervidly
the ultimatum which they were told had been presented at St. Petersburg,
demanding abandonment of the Czar's "provocative" military measures.
I have too much respect for the perfected might of the Teutonic
war-machine to believe that any German soldier worthy of the name ever
considered Russian military movements along the Prussian and Austrian
frontiers at the end of July, 1914, a "menace." It was only a fortnight
previous that the _German Military Gazette_, the official army organ,
had laughed the whole Russian army out of court as an organization
hardly worthy of Prussian steel. Now the transfer of half a dozen
Russian corps had become so vast a peril as to necessitate plunging the
whole German Empire into a "state of war!" Everybody who had eyes to
see and ears to hear in Germany, native and foreigner alike, always knew
that actual mobilization in that country was the merest formality. The
Germans were always ready for war. It was their commonest boast. A
high officer of the General Staff, twenty-four hours after Serbia's
rejection of the Austrian ultimatum, when asked _how_ ready Germany was
for eventualities, said, sententiously, "_All_ ready." My Junker
friend, Von G., of Kiel, himself a Prussian officer, would have snorted
with scornful glee if I had ever suggested to him that _any_ Russian
military measures could really "menace" Germany. He knew what I knew,
and what anybody with sense in Germany always understood, that, compared
to what the Fatherland with its comprehensive system of
military-controlled state railways could achieve in the way of final
"mobilization," Russia would require weeks where Germany would need only
days, or even hours. Germany would be like Texas, criss-crossed in every
direction with faultless means of communication and crammed with troops
and munitions, mobilizing against the rest of the United States, with
the latter having to concentrate armies on the Rio Grande from Florida,
Maine, Oregon and Lower California, and a shoe-string railway system
with which to do it. The "Russian mobilization menace" was Germany's
supreme bluff.
St. Petersburg had been given until twelve o'clock noon of Saturday,
August 1, to "demobilize." Failing to do so, Germany would be
"compelled to resort to a counter-mobilization." France had been called
upon to indicate what her attitude would be in case of a Russo-German
conflict, but the ultimatum to Paris, we understood, had no time limit
attached. All knew that the great decision rested essentially in
Russia's hands; that war with the Czar meant war with the French, too.
Twelve o'clock Berlin time came and went without word of any kind from
Count Pourtales, the Kaiser's ambassador in St. Petersburg. The Emperor
and his civil, military and naval advisers were closeted in a Crown
council at the Castle. Pourtales' message, if there was one, the
Foreign Office told us, would doubtless reach the Kaiser in the midst of
the council, which was a continuous one. Berlin waited in excruciating
impatience. The Bourse writhed in panic. Bankers met to consider
closing it altogether, but decided that the worst might be avoided by
limiting transactions to spot-cash deals. The air was electric with
rumor. Russia had asked for a further period of grace, one heard.
Hope, report said, while slender, was not yet utterly vanished.
The afternoon passed in almost insufferable anxiety. _Unter den Linden_
and the _Lustgarten_, the sprawling area around the Castle, were choked
with people tense with expectancy. Dread, rather than war fervor,
inspired them. About five-twenty o'clock, after one of the daily
heart-to-heart war talks I had been privileged to hold over the teacups
with Mrs. Gerard, I drove through the Wilhelmstrasse toward the Linden,
accompanied by my English colleague, Charles Tower, Berlin
representative of the _New York World_ and _London Daily News_. I do
not suppose the historic little spectacle was specially arranged in our
honor, but as a matter of fact we happened to pass the Foreign Office at
the very instant that Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg, grave with
inconcealable worry, was entering a plebeian taxicab. He was evidently
starting out on a transcendent mission, for he held in his hand a
document of such absorbing interest that he hardly raised his eyes from
it as he clambered into the cab. Accompanying him were Foreign Secretary
von Jagow and a military _aide-de-camp_. I blush to confess that Tower
and I were filled with such overweening curiosity to find out what that
ominous parchment contained, and where the Chancellor was taking it,
that we ordered our chauffeur to follow at not too respectful a
distance. I never saw a Berlin taxi tear through the heart of the
down-town district so madly as Bethmann Hollweg scorched down the
Behren-strasse, past the banks which line Germany's Wall Street and the
back of the Opera, into Franzoesische-strasse, over the little bridge
which spans the canal, and into the southern esplanade of the castle.
Only small crowds were gathered at this point, and the Chancellor's cab
swung past the sentries and through the big Neptune Gate of the
_Schloss_ almost unnoticed. Now instinctively certain of the nature of
Bethmann Hollweg's errand, Tower and I made our way to the _Lustgarten_,
since early morning an endless vista of faces stretching nearly all the
way from the Dom to the Brandenburg Gate end of _Unter den Linden_, a
mile to the west. We felt sure that the universally awaited Order of
Mobilization might be momentarily expected. As events developed, that
was the document which we had seen the Chancellor taking to the Kaiser.
It was six o'clock. The doleful chimes of the Cathedral across from the
Castle were summoning the people to the service of intercession ordained
by the Emperor earlier in the day. Solemnity hung over the multitude
like a pall. Men and women knew now that Russia's answer, or lack of
answer, whichever it might be, meant war, not peace. They had not long
to wait for confirmatory news. As soon as word was telephoned to the
Wolff Agency, the official news bureau, that the Imperial signature had
at length been officially given--that the sword was now, literally and
beyond recall, "forced" into William II's hands--the newspapers, which
had had sufficient advance information for their purposes, drenched the
capital with _Extrablaetter_ containing the fateful tidings:
+----------------------------------+
| |
| "UNIVERSAL MOBILIZATION OF THE |
| GERMAN ARMY AND NAVY!" |
| |
+----------------------------------+
Another two lines explained, breathlessly, that an order to that effect
had just been promulgated by the Supreme War Lord. The twelve-hour
period which Germany had granted to Russia for "the making of a loyal
declaration" had been ignored. To-morrow, added the chief announcement
in the most portentous _Extrablatt_ a German newspaper ever issued,
would be the first mobilization day. All Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the
_Furor Teutonicus_ would be busy donning shining armor. The deed was
done. "Gentlemen," the Kaiser is said to have remarked to Moltke,
Falkenhayn and the rest of the military clique, after affixing his
signature to the document which meant not only mobilization, but war,
"you will live to regret this."
In the midst of our exclusively German environment in those immortal
hours--we could now neither telegraph nor telephone in anything except
German, nor even read in anything except that language, for foreign
newspapers were no longer arriving--I must confess I was filled with no
little prepossession in Germany's favor. The Kaiser's case seemed not
only good. On the biased evidence available--we had, of course, no
other--it even seemed strong. Such fragmentary dispatches from abroad
as the Military Censor, already enthroned, permitted to be printed were
naturally only those which resolutely bolstered up the fiction of "our
just cause." Of the stealthy plot to violate Belgium we had no glimmer
of an inkling. We knew only of the "Russian mobilization menace," of
the Kaiser's wrecked efforts in the direction of "peace," and of the
reluctance with which impeccable Germany was stripping for the fray in
defense of her honor, rights and imperiled territorial integrity.
Convinced as I had long been of the War Party's lust for "the Day," a
setting appeared to have been contrived which put Germany in a
plausible, if not altogether blameless, light. It was mass-suggestion,
as a Berlin psychologist would describe it, all-hypnotizing in its
effects. It was not until five days afterward, when I had crossed the
German frontier, reached Dutch territory and come up with the truth that
the curtain was lifted and I could look out upon what seemed, after ten
days of "inspired" information in Berlin, like country which my eyes had
never seen before....
[Illustration: In front of the Royal Castle, Berlin, waiting for
announcement of mobilization, August 1st, 1914.]
The Mobilization Order tore through the capital with the velocity and
the shock of a shell. Expected, it yet stunned. The throng before the
Castle still sang _Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles_ and cheered for
the Kaiser, and desultory processions of young men and boys still
marched hither and thither across the town. But an atmosphere of
soberness and grim reality now descended upon Berlin. The street-corner
pillars which serve as bill-boards in Germany were already splashed red
with the official decree, gazetting August 2, 3 and 4 as the days when
the Kaiser's subjects, liable for military service with the first line
(Reserve), must report at long-appointed assembly depots, don long-ready
uniforms, and march each to his long-designated place in the
long-prepared war. Almost simultaneously the telegraph, now like the
railway and postal services automatically passed into military control,
brought every reservist in the realm definite information as to where
and when he was expected to present himself. The magic system which
Roon devised for hurling Germany's legions across the Rhine in '70 was
once again in mechanical, yet noiseless, motion. Sheer jubilation, the
grand-stand patriotism with which Berlin had reverberated for a week,
died out. There were good-bys to be said now, long good-bys, and affairs
to be wound up. The iron business of war was waiting to be attended to.
The crowds in _Unter den Linden_ and the _Lustgarten_ melted homeward,
silently, immersed in anxious reflection. Before they waked from their
next sleep, the first shot might be fired. On what new paths had the
Fatherland entered? Would they lead to death or glory? Never before, I
imagine, was the modern German, in his inimitable idiom, given so
furiously to think.
The war began early Sunday morning, August 2. Before nine o'clock
"Extras" were in the streets with the following official news, the very
first bulletin of the war:
"Up to 4 o'clock this morning the Great General Staff has received the
following reports:
"1. During the night Russian patrols made an attack on the railway
bridge over the Warthe near Eichenried (East Prussia). The attack was
repulsed. On the German side, two slightly wounded. Russian losses
unknown. An attempted attack by the Russians on the railway station at
Miloslaw was frustrated.
"2. The station master at Johannisburg and the forestry authorities at
Bialla report that during last night (1st to 2nd) Russian columns in
considerable strength, with guns, crossed the frontier near Schwidden
(southeast of Bialla) and that two squadrons of Cossacks are riding in
the direction of Johannisburg. The telephone communication between Lyck
and Bialla is broken down.
"According to the above, Russia has attacked German Imperial territory
and begun the war."
The "Russian mobilization menace" was now an accomplished fact, and the
Cossack bogy, too, converted into an officially hall-marked actuality!
Modern war, from the newspaperman's standpoint, consists principally of
two things--censorship and rumors. Both had now set in with a
vengeance. The first day in Berlin swarmed with irresponsible report.
People believed anything. Official news was scarce and "far between."
The second General Staff bulletin to be issued was a laconic
announcement that troops of the VIII (Rhenish) army corps had occupied
Luxemburg "for the protection of German railways in the Grand Duchy."
Eydtkuhnen, the famous German frontier station opposite the Russian
border town of Wirballen, was now reported occupied by Russian cavalry
detachments. A Russian had been caught in the act of trying to blow up
the Thorn railway bridge. Now France--like Russia, "without declaration
of war"--had violated the sacredness of German territory. French
aviators had flown into Bavaria and dropped bombs in the neighborhood of
Nuremberg, evidently with the intent of destroying military railway
lines. Canard succeeded canard. The famed "German war on two fronts"
was no longer a figment of the imagination. It had become immutable
fact. Monsieur Sverbieff, the Czar's ambassador, we heard, had already
received his passports. He would leave Berlin in the evening in a
special train to the Russian frontier. When would Monsieur Cambon, the
French ambassador, the Republic's accomplished representative in
Washington during our war with Spain, be given _his_ walking-papers? So
far rowdies had yelled _Deutschland, Deutschland ueber Alles_ only in
front of the Russian Embassy. Now that French airmen had shelled
Bavaria, how long would it be before the chateau in Pariser Platz would
be stormed?
The British Embassy was wrapped in Sabbath calm. Was not Berlin reading
with intensest gratification the Wolff Agency's carefully selected
London dispatches saying that "powerful influences are at work to
prevent England becoming involved in the war"? Mr. Norman Angell had
written in that sense to _The Times_--the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ reported with
undisguised satisfaction. A large number of British professors, it
added, had launched a "protest" against war with Germany, "the leader in
art and science and against whom a war for Russia and Serbia would be a
crime against civilization." A "great and influential meeting of
Liberals in the Reform Club" had adopted resolutions commending Sir
Edward Grey's efforts on behalf of peace and "energetically demanding
the strict preservation of English neutrality." The Germans took heart.
Blandly ignorant of their Government's secret diplomatic schemings, now
in frantic progress, to keep Great Britain out of the fray, they were
lulled by their rulers and doctored press reports into thinking that the
danger of interference from the other side of the North Sea was as good
as non-existent. The German Imperial Government practised this
deception on their own people till the last possible moment. German
newspaper readers, in those fitful hours, were being led to believe that
the voice of Britain was the pacifist, pro-German voice of Radicalism as
represented by journals like _The Daily News, Westminster Gazette_ and
_The Nation_. No intimation was permitted to reach the German public
that voices like _The Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Morning
Post_ and _Daily Telegraph_ were calling for the only action by the
Government consonant with British honor and British rights. The
outburst of fanatical rage against the "perfidious sister nation" so
soon to ensue was mainly due, I shall always remain convinced, to the
diabolical swindle of which the German nation was the victim at the
hands of its dark-lantern diplomatists. In that far-off day when the
scales have fallen from Teutonic eyes, I predict that the Germans will
call for vengeance on their deceivers. As they were duped about Russia,
so were they deliberately misled about England.
Before the war was half a day old the spy mania, which was destined to
be one of the most amazing symptoms of the war's early hours, was raging
madly from one end of the country to the other. It was directly
inspired and encouraged by the Government. The authorities caused it to
be known that "according to reliable news" Russian officers and secret
agents infested the Fatherland "in great numbers." "The security of the
German Empire," the people were informed, "demands absolutely that in
addition to the regular official organs, _the entire population_ should
give vent to its patriotic sentiments by co-operating in the
apprehension of such dangerous persons." "By active and restless
vigilance," continued this official incitement to lynch law, "everybody
can in his own way contribute toward a successful result of the war."
It was not to be expected that a nation so idolatrous of officialdom as
the Germans could possibly resist this _carte-blanche_ permit to every
man to play the role of an avenging sleuth. The inevitable result was
that Germany became in a flash the scene of a nation-wide "drive" for
spies, real or imaginary. Anybody who was either known to be a Russian
or remotely suspected of being one, or who even looked like a Russian,
was in imminent danger of his life. Now the notorious story of
"poisoning of wells in Alsace by French army surgeons" was circulated.
"Hunt for French spies!" promptly read the newest invitation to mob
violence. Weird "news" began to fill the _Extrablaetter_. A "Russian
spy" had been caught in _Unter den Linden_, masquerading as a German
naval officer. After being beaten into insensibility, he was dragged to
Spandau and shot. In another part of town a couple of Russian "secret
agents," disguised as women, were caught with "basketfuls of bombs."
They, too, we learned, were riddled with bullets an hour later at
Spandau. Everywhere, in and out of Berlin, the spy-hunt was now in full
cry. An automobile, in which women were traveling, was "reported" to be
crossing the country, en route to Russia with "millions of francs of
gold." The whole rural population of Prussia turned out to intercept
it.
One of the earliest victims of the espionage epidemic was an American
newspaperman, Seymour Beach Conger, the chief Berlin correspondent of
the Associated Press, who had started for St. Petersburg, where he was
formerly stationed, as soon as war became imminent, only to be arrested
by the spy-hunting Prussian police at Gumbinnen on the charge of being
"a Russian grand-duke." Conger's United States passport, unmistakable
journalistic credentials, well-known official status in Berlin and
convincingly American exterior availed him not. He had plenty of money
and a kodak, and that was enough. He must be a spy. For three days and
nights he was locked in a cell, and, even after he had contrived to
establish communication with the American Embassy in Berlin, he had
great difficulty in securing his release. It was eventually granted on
the understanding that he should ignore the Associated Press' orders to
proceed to Russia and remain in Berlin for the rest of the war, where, I
believe, he still is. I was told, but could never verify, that one of
the conditions of Conger's liberation was that he should not "talk
about" the affair.
How many hapless persons, Russians, French or unfortunates suspected of
being such, with nothing in the world against them more incriminating
than their real or imagined nationality, were put out of the way either
by German mob savagery, police brutality or fortress firing-squads in
those opening forty-eight hours of Armageddon will probably never be
known. I do not suppose the Germans themselves know. But this _I_
know--that even at that earliest stage of their sanguinary game they
conducted themselves in a manner which, had they done no other single
thing during the war to stagger humanity, would brand them as a race of
semi-barbarians. _Kultur_ gave a sorry account of itself in the
Hottentot days between August 2 and 5, of which I shall have more to
say, of a peculiarly personal nature, in a succeeding chapter.
War Sunday in Berlin, midst rumor and spy-chasing, was marked by an
impressive open-air divine service on the Konigs-Platz, that vast
quadrangle of spread-eagle statuary and gingerbread architecture in
which the sepulchral "Avenue of Victory" culminates. In the great area
between the Column of Victory and the bulky Bismarck memorial at the
foot of the gilt-domed Reichstag building a concourse of many thousands
gathered to hear a court chaplain, Doctor Dohring, sermonize eloquently
on a text from the Revelation of St. John, chapter II, verse 10: "Be
thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." It was
a singularly appropriate theme, for hundreds of reservists, their last
day in citizens' clothes, were in the throng. There was a moment of
indescribable pathos, as the chaplain, from a dais which raised him high
above the heads of the multitude, invoked the huge congregation to
recite with him the Lord's Prayer. Strong men and women were in tears
when the Amen was reached. The service was brought to a close with a
beautiful rendition by that mighty chorus of the _Niederlaendisches
Dankgebet_, the famous hymn which proclaimed at Waterloo a century
before the end of the Napoleonic terror.
Nightfall found those seemingly immobile Berlin thousands still
clustered, now almost beseechingly, round the Royal Castle. They
hungered for an opportunity to show the Supreme War Lord that Kaiser and
Empire were dearer than ever to German hearts in the hour of imminent
trial. Just before dark, while his outlines could still be plainly
distinguished even by the rearmost ranks of the crowd, William II,
thunderously greeted, stepped out once more to the balcony from which he
had told the populace two nights previous that the sword was being
"forced" into his hand. He beckoned for silence. Men reverently removed
their hats, and leaned forward on tiptoes, the better to hear the
Imperial message. This is what the Kaiser said:
"From the bottom of my heart I thank you for the expression of your love
and your loyalty. In the struggle now impending I know no more parties
among my people. There are now only Germans among us. Whichever
parties, in the heat of political differences, may have turned against
me, I now forgive from the depths of my heart. The thing now is that
all should stand together, shoulder to shoulder, like brothers, and then
God will help the German sword to victory!"
No historian of Germany in war-time will be able to say that his people
did not take the Kaiser's stirring admonition to heart.