Our nation knew everything now, and had made her choice, yet the twelve
hours’ interval between noon and midnight of August 4 were perhaps the
gravest moments in her modern history. I am tempted, not without some
misgivings, but with the confidence of a good intention, to trespass so
far on personal information as to lift the curtain on a private scene in
the tremendous tragic drama.
The place is a room in the Prime Minister’s house in Downing Street. The
Prime Minister himself and three of the principal members of his Cabinet
are waiting there for the reply to the ultimatum which they sent to
Germany at noon. The time for the reply expires at midnight. It is
approaching eleven o’clock. In spite of her “infamous proposal,” the
Ministers cannot even yet allow themselves to believe that Germany will
break her pledged word.
She would be so palpably in the wrong. It is late and she has not yet
replied, but she will do so--she must. There is more than an hour left,
and even at the last moment the telephone bell may ring and then the
reply of Germany, as handed to the British Ambassador in Berlin, will
have reached London.
It is a calm autumn evening, and the windows are open to St. James’s
Park, which lies dark and silent as far as to Buckingham Palace in the
distance. The streets of London round about the official residence are
busy enough and quivering with excitement. We British people do not go
in solid masses surging and singing down our Corso, or light candles
along the line of our boulevards. But nevertheless all hearts are
beating high--in our theatres, our railway stations, our railway trains,
our shops, and our houses. Everybody is thinking, “By twelve o’clock
to-night Germany has got to say whether or not she is a perjurer and a
thief.”
Meanwhile, in the silent room overlooking the park time passes slowly.
In spite of the righteousness of our cause, it is an awful thing to
plunge a great empire into war. The miseries and horrors of warfare
rise before the eyes of the Ministers, and the sense of personal
responsibility becomes almost insupportable. Could anything be more
awful than to have to ask oneself some day in the future, awakening in
the middle of the night perhaps, after rivers of blood have been shed,
“Did I do right after all?” The reply to the ultimatum has not even yet
arrived, and the absence of a reply is equivalent to a declaration of
war.