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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 41252
   :PG.Title: The Assault
   :PG.Released: 2012-10-31
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Frederic William Wile
   :DC.Title: The Assault
              Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1916
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE ASSAULT
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      Cover

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   .. _`Ambassador Gerard.`:

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      :alt: Ambassador Gerard.

      Ambassador Gerard.

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      THE ASSAULT

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      Germany Before the Outbreak and
      England in War-Time

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      *A Personal Narrative*

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      By
      FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE

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      Author of "Men Around the Kaiser"

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      ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND FACSIMILES OF
      DOCUMENTS AND CARTOONS

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      INDIANAPOLIS
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
      PUBLISHERS   

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      COPYRIGHT 1916
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

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      PRESS OF
      BRAUNWORTH & CO.
      BOOK MANUFACTURERS
      BROOKLYN, \N. \Y.

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      *To*
      AMBASSADOR AND MRS. GERARD

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      LIFE-SAVERS

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      IN GRATITUDE

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   INTRODUCTION

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This is not a "war book."  It has not been my
privilege at any stage of the Great Blood-Letting to come
into close contact with the spectacular clash and din of
the fray.  Abler pens than mine, many of them wielded
by the "neutral" hands of American colleagues, are
immortalizing the terrible, yet irresistibly fascinating,
scenes of this most stupendous drama.  But every
drama has its scenario and its prologue and its
behind-the-curtain scenes--none ever written was so rich in
these preliminaries and accessories as is Europe's epic.
To have witnessed and lived through some of these was
vouchsafed me; and to take American readers with
me down the line of the past year's recollections and
impressions is the sole object of this unpretentious
effort.  History, Carlyle said, was some one's record
of personal experiences.  To such experiences, as far
as possible, the pages of this book are confined.

For thirteen years to the week--I have always had
a respectful horror of thirteen--I was a resident of
Berlin.  During the first five years of that period
my identity was clear: I was the representative in
Germany of an American newspaper, the *Chicago
Daily News*.  But in 1906 I became an international
complication, for it was then I joined the staff of the
*London Daily Mail*, which converted my status into
that of an *American* serving *British* journalistic
interests in *Germany*.  It was not long afterward that
welcome opportunity presented itself to renew home
professional ties in connection with my British work,
and for several years prior to the outbreak of the war
I carried the credentials of Berlin correspondent of the
*New York Times* and the *Chicago Tribune*.  They
were on my person, with my United States passport,
the night of August 4, 1914, when the Kaiser's police
arrested me as an "English spy."

I feel it necessary to introduce so highly personal a
narrative with these details in order to make plain, at
the outset, that it is the narrative of an American
born and bred.  My proudest boast during ten years'
association with Great Britain's premier newspaper
organization was that I never lost my Americanism.
My English editor, on the occasion of my earliest
physical conflict with the Mailed Fist in Berlin, doubtless
recalls taking me to task for invoking the protection of
the United States Embassy, just as my British
colleagues, concerned in the same imbroglio, had invoked
the aid of their Embassy.  Of the reams I have written
for the *Daily Mail* in my day, I never sent it anything
which sprang more sincerely from the heart than the
message to its editor that I had not renounced
allegiance to my country when I pledged my professional
services to a British newspaper.

I have no higher aspiration, as far as this volume is
concerned, than that critics of it, hostile or friendly,
may pronounce it "pro-Ally" from start to finish.  I
shall survive even the charge that it is "pro-English."  I
mean it to be all of that, as I have tried to breathe
sincerity into every line of it.  But I shall not feel inclined
to accept without protest an accusation that the book
is "anti-German."  It is true that I regard this
essentially a German-made, or rather a Prussian-made, war,
and that I hold Prussian militarism and militarists
solely responsible for plunging the world into this
unending bath of blood and tears.  It is true that I wish
to see Germany beaten.  I wish her beaten for the
Allies' sake and for my own country's sake.  A victorious
Germany would be a menace to international liberty
and become automatically a threat to the happiness and
freedom of the United States.  My years in Germany
taught me that.  But I cherish no scintilla of hatred or
animosity toward the German people as individuals,
who will be the real victims of the war.  I saw them
with my own eyes literally dragged into the fight
against their will, fears and judgment.  I know from
their own lips that they considered it a cruelly
unnecessary war and did not want it.  They were joyful and
prosperous a year and a half ago--never more so.
They craved a continuance of the simple blessings of
peace, unless their tearful protestations in the fateful
month preceding the drawing of their mighty sword
were the plaints of a race of hypocrites, and I do not
think the percentage of hypocrisy higher in Germany,
man for man, than elsewhere in the world.  The
German's *Gott strafe England* cult, for example, is no
revelation to any man who has lived among them.
Their hatred for Perfidious Albion has long been
vigorous and purposeful.

During the war I have lived in Germany, England
and the United States--a week of it in Berlin, three
months at different periods in America, and the rest of
the time in London.  My observations of Germany
have not been confined to the six and a half days the
Prussian police permitted me to tarry in their midst,
for my work in London has dealt almost exclusively
with day-by-day examination of that weird production
which will be known to history as the German war-time
Press.  I am quite sure the perspective of the life
and times of the Kaiser's people in their "great hour"
was clearer from the vantage-ground of a newspaper
desk near the Thames embankment than it could
possibly have been had it been my lot to view the
Fatherland at war as an observer writing, under the hypnotic
influence of mass-suggestion, of Germany from within.

Though I deal with Britain in war-time, no pretense
is made of treating so vast a subject except by way of
fleeting impressions.  Indeed, nothing but snap-shots of
British life are possible at the moment, so kaleidoscopic
are its developments and vagaries.  I am conscious
that the pictures I have drawn are, therefore,
superficial, but no portrayal of a people in a state of flux
could well be otherwise.  Although the concluding
chapters were written in October, conditions now (in
mid-December) have altered vitally in many
directions.  Sir John French no longer commands the
British Army in France and Flanders.  Serbia has gone
the way of Belgium.  Gallipoli has been abandoned.
The Coalition Government, established at the end of
May, is widely considered a failure at the end of
December.  The Man in the Street, that oracle of
all-wisdom in these Isles, is asking whether the war can
be won without still another, and more sweeping,
change of National leadership.

I hope my British friends, and particularly my
professional colleagues of ten years' standing, will not find
my snap-shots too under-exposed.  The camera was in
pro-British hands every minute of the time.  If the
pictures appear indistinct, I trust the photography will
at least not be criticized as in any respect due to lack
of sympathy with the British cause.

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   F. W. W.
   London, December 20, 1915.

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   CONTENTS

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   CHAPTER

   I.  `The Curtain Raiser`_
   II.  `The First Act`_
   III.  `The Plot Develops`_
   IV.  `The Stage Managers`_
   V.  `Slow Music`_
   VI.  `The Climax`_
   VII.  `War`_
   VIII.  `The Americans`_
   IX.  `August Fourth`_
   X.  `The War Reaches Me`_
   XI.  `The Last Farewell`_
   XII.  `Safe Conduct`_
   XIII.  `Complacency Rules The Waves`_
   XIV.  `Pro-Ally Uncle Sam`_
   XV.  `The Helmsmen`_
   XVI.  `The General, The Admiral and the King`_
   XVII.  `"Your King And Country Want You"`_
   XVIII.  `War in the Dark`_
   XIX.  `The Internal Foe`_
   XX.  `The Empire of Hate`_
   XXI.  `The New England`_
   XXII.  `Quo Vadis?`_

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   New Introductory Chapter

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   HOW EUROPE VIEWS AMERICAN INTERVENTION

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It will hardly be possible for any faithful chronicler
of that transcendent event to record that America's
entry into the war set embattled Europe by the ears.
The most such a historian can say of the impression
created in Allied countries is that the abandonment of
our neutrality toward the "natural foe to liberty"
produced profound satisfaction but nothing in the way of
a staggering sensation.  Even in Germany and among
her vassals, declaration of war by the United States
failed to provoke consternation, although it was
received in a spirit of nonchalance which was more
studied than real.  The Damoclean sword of
Washington had hung so long in the mid-air of indecision
that when the blow fell its effect was to a large extent
lost upon beneficiary and victim alike.  The peoples
who became our Allies were gratified; the Germans
mortified.  But our leap into the arena stained with
nearly three years of combatant blood was so belated
that it seemed bereft of the power to plunge either our
friends into paroxysms of enthusiasm or our enemies
into the depths of despair.

I am speaking exclusively of the first impressions
generated by President Wilson's call to arms.  In
Allied Europe, as well as Germanic Europe, opinion is
changing, now that the words of April are merging
into the deeds of midsummer.  Still different emotions
will fire the breasts of both our comrades-in-arms
and of the common foe when the full magnitude of
American intervention dawns upon their reluctant
consciousness.  As yet the illimitable import of America's
"coming in" is only faintly realized.  Europe's attitude
toward the new belligerent is too strongly intrenched in
decade-old disbelief in the existence of American
idealism and in gross ignorance of our actual potentialities
for war, spiritual as well as physical, to be lightly
abandoned.  We shall have to win our spurs.  There
is at this writing no inclination whatever to present
them to us on trust.

In the introduction to the original edition of *The
Assault*, which was completed at the end of 1915, I
was un-neutral enough to utter the pious hope that
Germany would be beaten.  I confessed to the creed
that "a victorious Germany would be a menace to
international liberty and become automatically a threat to
the happiness and freedom of the United States."  I
said that "my years in Germany taught me that"--years
lived in closest contact with Prussian militarism
long before it had taken the concrete form of savagery
at sea.  With that passion for corroboration of his
own prejudices and predictions, which is inherent in
the average man, and which dominates most writers,
I rejoice to feel that our government and country have
at length joined in liberty's fray from the identical
motives which induced me at the outset to take the only
side that it seemed possible for an American to espouse.

Properly to analyze Europe's mentality in respect of
the United States' entry into the war we need to bear
in mind that for the thirty-two preceding months
President Wilson was the riddle of the political
universe.  Europe had been assured ceaselessly since
August, 1914, that America was overwhelmingly and
irretrievably pro-Ally, though its confidence in such
assertions was shipwrecked when we failed to go to
war over the *Lusitania* incident and was never fully
restored.  Not even Berlin could reconcile the Washington
government's invincible neutrality with the alleged
existence of universal counter-sentiment.  Europeans
are educated to believe that public opinion is the only
monarch to whom the American citizenry owns
allegiance.  They were unable to comprehend a president
who so resolutely refused to bow to the people's
sovereign will.  In its myopic misconception of American
conditions, Allied Europe indulged in grotesque
misinterpretation of Mr. Wilson's hesitancy and mystic
diplomacy.  He had been "re-elected by German
votes."  In London Americans were solemnly asked
if the true explanation of his policy did not lie in
the fact that he had "a German wife!"  It was also
mooted that he had "a secret understanding" with
Count Bernstorff.  The president was this, that and
the other thing--everything, in fact, except what he
ought to be.  No American chief magistrate since
Lincoln was ever so magnificently misunderstood, none so
incorrigibly maligned.

Thus it was that although the United States' action
under President Wilson's sagacious leadership did not
fill Europe with either animation or excitement, it
nevertheless came as a full-fledged surprise to both sets
of belligerents.  Briton, Frenchman, Russian and
Italian, as well as German, Austrian and Hungarian, each
in his own dogmatic way, had long since and definitely
made up their minds that America did not mean to
fight.  Their cocksureness on this cardinal point was
not unnaturally supported by the circumstances of
President Wilson's re-election on what was commonly
understood to be the democratic candidate's paramount
campaign issue--his success in keeping the country out
of the war.  In the two or three days in which
Mr. Wilson's fate trembled in the balance of the Electoral
College, a London newspaper, venting splenitic
feelings long pent up, gratefully acclaimed the premature
announcement of Mr. Hughes' triumph as an historic
and deserved rebuke of the statesman who was "too
proud to fight."

Within a month President Wilson, in his first public
utterance since election day, made his "peace-without-victory"
address to the Senate.  This cryptic deliverance
was interpreted in Allied Europe as not only
obliterating all possibility of America's entering the
war against Germany, but as actually promoting
Germany's efforts, launched about the same time, to secure
a premature, or "German," peace.  There was probably
no time during the entire war when feeling against
the president and the United States in general ran
higher in England and France than during the ensuing
weeks.  It was not so much what one read in the public
prints, for press utterances were restrained if not
unqualifiedly friendly, that impelled many an American
in London and Paris to seek cover from the withering
blast of criticism and impatience to which he now
found his country subjected.  It was rather the
sentiments encountered among Englishmen and Frenchmen
in private that supplied the real index to, and revealed
the full intensity of, the disappointment and
indignation now aroused in Allied lands.

Indelibly impressed upon my memory is the passionate
outburst of a dear--and, of course, temperamental--French
friend in London.  He is a gentleman, a
scholar and sincere lover of America, where he found
the charming lady who is now his wife.  He had
retired to a bed of illness in consequence of the climatic
iniquities which will forever make it impossible for
a Frenchman ever really to like England, and I was
paying him a neighborly visit of inquiry.  Though I
had hoped and intended that the acrimonious topic of
America would for once be eliminated from our
conversation, I was not to be spared what turned out to be
almost the most violent castigation of the United
States and all its works under which I could ever
remember to have winced.  I was left in no doubt that his
outpouring of righteous Gallic wrath, though it sprang
to a certain degree from temperature as well as
temperament, was the voice of France crying out in holy
anger with the great but recreant sister republic.
Wilson had "surrendered to the Germans and
pro-Germans."  They were now getting their reward.  The
president was "playing the Kaiser's peace game."  He
may not have meant to do so, but that is what his
Senate manifesto amounted to, in French estimation.
"The Americans care only for their money."  So be it.
France would not forget.  *Jamais*!  Americans would
rue the day they had sent back to the White House
the man who was now stabbing crucified democracy in
the back!

The essential difference between the French and the
English is that Frenchmen usually say what they feel,
and Englishmen feel what they do not say.  Emotions
were given to Frenchmen to be expressed; to Englishmen,
to be suppressed.  Almost identically the same
emotions which fired the French soul, as typified by
the instance I have just cited, filled British breasts, but
owing to the psychic machinery with which his
organism is equipped the Englishman was able more
successfully to stifle them.  The public tone toward the
latest manifestation of our "war policy" was
punctiliously correct.  It was discussed by the great
newspapers in terms of polite dismay but almost invariably
in good temper.  Yet millions of Britons were boiling
within, and if wearing their hearts on their sleeves
had been "good form," there is little reason to doubt
that their ebullitions would have been no less articulate
or meaningful than those of my distinguished French
friend herein narrated.

It was about at this time, the end of 1916, that an
American colleague, Edward Price Bell, of *The
Chicago Daily News*, set forth in the columns of *The
Times* upon a bold adventure--an attempt to persuade
captious Britons that, far from desiring to "play the
Kaiser's game," President Wilson was actually anxious
to make war on Germany, and, indeed, was
deliberately, as was his way, proceeding in that direction.
It was a risky throw for the doyen of the American
press in London, who enjoyed a reputation for sanity
and sagacity and who had good reason for desiring to
preserve the respect of a community in which his
professional lot had been cast for sixteen years.  I
purpose summarizing the course of Bell's effort to scale
the walls of British prejudice because of its immensely
symptomatic and psychological interest.

"I believe that Wilson wants to go to war," Bell
wrote to *The Times* on December 23.  "I believe that
he wants to fight Germany.  I believe that he wants
Germany to commit herself to a program that would
warrant him in asking the American people to enter the
conflict."  In every allied quarter in Europe,
practically without exception, Bell's letter produced a
prodigious and contemptuous guffaw.  Americans in
Europe, any number of them, joined in the gibes.
Undismayed, Bell returned to the attack within three days.
"America can not keep out of this war unless Germany
gives way," he wrote on December 26.  "The time
may come very soon when President Wilson will be
under the necessity of making his appeal to the
American nation."  The thunderer did not consign Bell's
letters to the editorial waste-basket, where most
Englishmen believed they belonged, yet it declined, in its
scrupulously courteous way, to associate itself with
its correspondent's manifestly fantastic and fanatical
sophistry.  In an editorial comment *The Times*
expressed its reluctance to place any trust in Bell's
exposition of the policy "which Mr. Wilson so carefully
wraps up."  Bell had by this time become a laughing-stock
far beyond the confines of the metropolitan area
of London.  Paris, Petrograd and Rome read his
letters and shook with incredulous mirth.  The feelings
of fellow-Americans toward him began to be tinged
with pity.

Yet Bell broke forth afresh on New Year's Day with
his third letter to Printing House Square, asserting,
roundly, that "America will and can support no peace
but an Entente peace."  On January 25 *The Times*
printed Bell's fourth letter within five weeks, in which
he this time declared unequivocally that "Mr. Wilson's
purpose is solely to inform the world what
America stands for and what he is willing to ask
America, if need be, to fight for."

Germany now proclaimed her new policy of
unrestricted submarine warfare.  Mr. Gerard was recalled
from Berlin and Count Bernstorff received his
passports in Washington.  Yet Allied faith in America,
momentarily revived by these events, took wings once
more when it became known that Mr. Wilson's next
"step" would be armed neutrality.  The editor of *The
Times*, who had been exceptionally tolerant of the
pestiferous Bell, imagined now, I fancy, that events had
at length put a timely end to the letter-writing energies
of the Chicago scribe; for Englishmen, with notably
few exceptions, had by this time pretty well
"eliminated" America from their calculations.  But on
February 22, inspired perhaps by the rugged traditions
clinging to that date, Bell cleared for action for the
fifth time and next day *The Times* printed him for
the fifth time.  He wrote: "I will risk the view that
we are on the edge of great things in America--things
worthy of the country of Washington and Lincoln.
America, I feel, is about to fructify internationally--about
to make her real contribution to humanity and
history."  *The Times* now went so far as to suggest,
with characteristic prudence, that Bell's "sagacious and
racy letter deserves careful consideration by all who
are trying to understand the situation in
Washington."  Unhappily, there was little evidence in the
continued British mistrust of America that *The Times'*
counsel was being taken widely to heart.

On February 27 Bell craved the indulgence of *The
Times* for his sixth, and final, epistle to the skeptics.
With what was destined to turn out to be rare
prescience and penetration, he now said that Mr. Wilson's
delay in coming to grips with Hohenzollernism meant
only that "the president wants the public temper so
hot throughout America that it will instantly burn to
ash any revolutionary unrest or any opposition by the
pacifist diehards."  Five weeks later the United States
and Germany were at war, with the American nation
united in fervent support of the president's
pronunciamento that the task which demanded the renunciation
of our neutrality was one to which "we can dedicate
our lives, our fortunes, everything we are and
everything we have."  The hour of Europe's awakening
from its scornful dreams had come.

For several days after Congress, at the president's
instigation, voted to "accept the gage of battle," there
lay neatly folded up in a certain front room of the
American Embassy in London a fine, new American
flag.  It had been put there for a special purpose--to be
hoisted at a psychological moment believed to be
imminent.  Our people in Grosvenor Gardens, in their
hearty, imaginative American way, considered that
there might possibly be a "demonstration" in welcome
of Britain's latest comrade-in-arms.  There were
visions of a procession, brass bands and cheering
crowds; and the spick and span stars and stripes were
to be flung to the glad breeze when the "demonstrators"
reached the scene and called for a speech from
Ambassador Page on the Embassy balcony.  Such things
happened when Italy and Roumania "came in."  Surely
history would not fail to repeat itself in the case of
"daughter America."  But neither procession, bands,
cheers nor crowds ever materialized.  After all, we
could not expect Englishmen to celebrate in honor of
the greatest mistake they had ever made in their lives.
That would be something more than un-English.  It
would be a violation of all the laws of human nature.

Yet I suppose there was not an American in Great
Britain who was not keenly disappointed at the
conspicuously undemonstrative character of our welcome
into the Allied fold.  I must not be understood as
minimizing the warmth of either governmental or press
utterances evoked by President Wilson's Lincolnesque
speech to Congress and the action which so promptly
ensued.  The sentiments expressed by Mr. Lloyd
George, Mr. Asquith, Mr. Bonar Law, Lord Robert
Cecil and Lord Bryce, in and out of Parliament, and
the thoughts which found vivid expression in the
columns of the newspapers of London and the provinces
left little to be desired; but eloquent and hearty as they
were, their effect upon that all-powerful molder of
British public opinion known as the Man in the Street
was strangely negligible.  I am sure I am not the only
American in England who, waiting for words of
greeting from British friends and not getting them,
was irresistibly constrained to search for the reason.
Our chagrin was not lessened by assurances from
Paris that "France was going wild with joy"; that the
president's speech was being read aloud in the schools
and officially placarded on all the hoardings of the
republic; that the government buildings were flying the
tricolor and "Old Glory" side by side; and that American
men were being publicly embraced in the boulevards.

Many Americans found themselves, for reasons
never entirely clear to them, the objects of "congratulation."  I
know of at least one instance in which a very
estimable American lady, showered with "congratulations"
by British friends on the action of her country,
preserved sufficient presence of mind to suggest that
she thought "congratulations" were due to the Allies.
Another favorite view advanced by *vox populi* was
that America had only "come in" at this late stage of
the sanguinary game because "the war was won" and
intervention now was "safe" and "cheap."  It was not
uncommon to be told that our determination to "spend
the whole force of the nation" was due to commercial
acumen and our desire to safeguard the heavy
"investment" we had already made in the Allied cause.
Last-ditchers--their name was legion: the Englishmen who
refused to believe even yet that America "meant
business"--declined to throw their hats into the air and
shout until "big words" had become "big deeds."  Much
more impressive in my own ears seemed the
explanation that Britons were not tumultuous in our
honor because these days of endless sacrifice--the
spring offensive in France was at its height and the
nation's best were falling in thousands--were not days
for cheering and flag-waving.  And, finally, there was
that extensive school of thought which had always
and sincerely opposed American intervention on the
ground that America, as a neutral granary and arsenal,
was a more effective Allied asset than a belligerent
America which would naturally and necessarily
husband its vast resources for its own military requirements.

The story of Germany's state of mind toward
America's entry into the lists against her is soon told.
The German government and German people looked
upon us as all but declared enemies throughout the
war.  They felt, and repeatedly said, that we were
doing them quite as much damage as neutrals as we
could possibly inflict in the guise of belligerents.  That,
indeed, was the argument on which Hindenburg and
his fellow-strategists based the "safety" of inaugurating
unrestricted submarine warfare and the moral certainty
of war with the United States as a result.  Not
all Germans blithely relegated the prospect of a
formally hostile America to the realm of inconsequence.
Hindenburg and Ludendorff know nothing about
America.  But men like Ballin, Gwinner, Rathenau
and Dernburg know that the United States, in a
famous German idiom, is, indeed, "the land of unlimited
possibilities."  There can be no manner of doubt that
the vision of America's limitless resources harnessed
to those of the nations already at war with their
country always filled the business giants of the Fatherland
with all the terror of a nightmare.  But as those
elements, both before and during the war, were as a
voice crying in the wilderness of Prussian militarism,
they were condemned to silence when the dreaded
thing became a reality; and the only note that issued
forth from Berlin was the "inspired" croak in the
government-controlled press that only the expected
had happened; that Hindenburg's plans had been made
with exact regard for that which had now supervened,
and that Germany's irresistible march to victory
would not and could not be arrested by anything the
Americans could do.

Doubts were universally expressed in America and
in Allied Europe as to whether the Kaiser's
government would permit President Wilson's crushing
indictment of Prussianism to be published in Germany.  One
heard of picturesque schemes to drop millions of copies
of the speech over the German trenches and towns
from aeroplanes.  In at least one widely-read German
newspaper, the *Berliner Tageblatt*, a Radical-Liberal
journal which has not entirely surrendered its
old-time independence, the president's speech was printed
almost verbatim.  In nearly every paper there were
adequate extracts.  But such effect as they may have
been designed to create upon the German body
politic--particularly the president's insistence that America's
war is with "the Imperial German Government" and
not with "the German people"--was nullified by the
press bureau's imperious orders to editors to reject
Mr. Wilson's "moral clap-trap" as impudent and
insolent interference with Germany's domestic concerns.
Under the leadership of the celebrated Berlin
theologian, Professor Doctor Adolf Harnack, meetings of
German scholars and *savants* were organized for the
purpose of giving public expression to the "unanimity
and indignation with which the German nation protests
against the American president's officious intrusion
upon matters which are the affair of the German people
and themselves alone."  Or words to that effect.

Meantime the so-called comic press of Germany,
which to an extent probably unknown in any other
country of the world gives the keynote for popular
sentiment, engaged in an orgy of unbridled abuse of
President Wilson, the United States and Americans in
general.  The *leitmotif* of hundreds of cartoons,
caricatures and jokes was that the "American money power"
had "dragged" us into the war.  *Simplicissimus*
epitomized German thoughts of the moment in a full-page
drawing entitled "High Finance Crowning Wilson
Autocrat of America by the Grace of Mammon."  The
president was depicted enthroned upon a dais resting
on bulging money-bags and surmounted by a canopy
fringed with gold dollars.  A crown of shells and
cartridges is being placed upon his head by the grinning
shade of the late J. Pierpont Morgan.  In the
background is the filmy outline of George Washington,
delivering the farewell address.

Then, of a sudden, German press policy toward the
United States underwent a radical change.  Silence
supplanted abuse.  It became so oppressive and so
profound as to be eloquent.  The purpose of this
organized indifference soon became crystal-clear: on the
one hand to bolster up German confidence in the
innocuousness of American enmity, and, on the other, to
slacken the United States' war preparations by
committing no "overt act" of word or deed designed to
stimulate them.  Bernstorff had by this time reached
Berlin and there is reason to suspect that his was the
crafty hand directing the new policy of ostensible
disinterestedness in American belligerency.  The arrival
of American naval forces in European waters; the
inauguration of conscription; the far-reaching
preparations for succoring our Allies with money, food and
ships; the splendid success of the Liberty Loan; the
presence of General Pershing and the headquarters
staff of the United States Army in France; the
enrollment of nearly ten million young men for military
service; our ambitious plans for the air war; the
girding up of our loins in every conceivable direction, that
we may play a worthy part in the war--all these things
have been either deliberately ignored in Germany, by
imperious government order, or, when not altogether
suppressed from public knowledge, been slurred or
glossed over in a way designed to make them appear
as harmless or "bluff."  Finally, in an "inspired"
article which offered sheer affront to the large body of
truly patriotic American citizens of German extraction,
the *Cologne Gazette* bade Germans to continue to pin
their faith in "our best allies," *i.e.*, the German-Americans,
who might be relied upon (quoth the semi-official
Watch on the Rhine) to "inject into American public
opinion an element of restraint and circumspection
which has already often been a cause of embarrassment
to Herr Wilson and his English friends."  "We
may be sure," concluded this impudent homily, "that
our compatriots are still at their post."

Events have marched fast since America "came in."  In
Great Britain and France men of perspicacity are
not quite so jubilant over the effects of the Russian
revolution as they were three months ago.  They
realize that the amazing cataclysm which began in
Petrograd on March 13 warded off a treacherous peace
between Romanoff and Hohenzollern, but also, alas! that
it has effectually eliminated Russia as a fighting
factor for the purposes of this year's campaign.
Englishmen and Frenchmen are only now beginning to
comprehend the immeasurable task that confronts New
Russia in the erection of a democratic state on the
ruins of autocracy while faced by the simultaneous
necessity of warring against an enemy in occupation
of vast Russian territory.

To-day there is little inclination in London or Paris
to underestimate the providential importance of
American intervention.  The specter of dwindling
manpower in both countries is of itself sufficient to cause
them to gaze gratefully and longingly toward our
untapped reservoir of human sinews.  *What is happening
in chaotic and liberty-dazed Russia forces Englishmen
and Frenchmen, however disconcerting to their pride,
to acknowledge the absolute indispensability of
American support*.  There are many among them candid
enough to admit that democracy's horizon might now
be perilously beclouded if the United States had
refrained from playing a man's part in the battle of
the nations.  In Berlin, too, the true import of
America's decision is dawning upon government and
governed alike.

Our Allies expect us to justify our world-wide
reputation for speed and organizing capacity and to
transfer our activities from the forum of Demosthenes to
the field of Mars.  They are impressed by what we
have already accomplished--I write on the day when
the arrival of the first American army in France, well
within three months of our entering the war, is
officially announced.  But amid our remote isolation from
the scene of the conflict, safeguarded by geographical
guarantees that its consuming fires can hardly ever
sear our own soil, Englishmen and Frenchmen
wonder whether we are able to estimate the magnitude of
the effort required of us if we are to rise to the
majestic zenith of our potentialities.  Some of them,
seemingly no wiser for their myopia of recent times,
are frankly skeptical on that point.

It is our bounden duty, as I am sure it is our
unconquerable resolve, to disillusion our Allies.  To us
has fallen the privilege of proving that our mighty
sword has been drawn in earnest and that we shall not
sheathe it until America's plighted word is gloriously
made good.  "Make Good!"  Leaping to the tasks
which await us on land and sea with that indigenous
idiom on their lips, our soldiers and sailors need crave
for no more inspiring slogan.  Allied Europe expects
us--expects us almost anxiously--to "make good."

London, June 28, 1917.

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CURTAIN RAISER`:

.. class:: center x-large

   THE ASSAULT

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium

   THE CURTAIN RAISER

.. vspace:: 2

Countess Hannah von Bismarck
missed her aim.  The beribboned bottle of
"German champagne" with which she meant truly
well to baptize the newest Hamburg-American
leviathan of sixty thousand-odd tons on the placid
Saturday afternoon of June 20, 1914, went far wide of its
mark.  The Kaiser, impetuous and resourceful, came
gallantly and instantaneously to the rescue.  Grabbing
the bottle while it still swung unbroken in midair by the
black-white-red silken cord which suspended it from
the launching pavilion, Imperial William crashed it
with accuracy and propelling power a Marathon
javelin-thrower might have envied squarely against the
vast bow.  The granddaughter of the Iron Chancellor,
a bit crestfallen because she had only thrown like any
woman exclaimed: "I christen thee, great ship,
*Bismarck*!" and the milky foam of the *Schaumwein*
trickled in rivulets down the nine- or ten-story side of
the most Brobdingnagian product which ever sprang
from shipwrights' hands.  Then, with ten thousand
awestruck others gathered there on the Elbe side, I
watched the huge steel carcass, released at last from
the stocks which had so long held it prisoner, glide
and creak majestically down the greasy ways midst
our chanting of *Deutschland, Deutschland, über
Alles*.  Half a minute later the *Bismarck* was
resting serenely, house-high, on the surface of the murky
river five hundred yards away.  The Kaiser and Herr
Ballin shook hands feelingly, the royal monarch
smiling benignly on the shipping king.  The military band
blared forth *Heil Dir im Siegeskranz*, and the last
fête Hamburg was destined to know for many a
troublous month had passed into history.

Countess von Bismarck had missed her aim!  I
wonder if there are not many, like myself, who
witnessed the ill-omened launch and who endow it now
with a meaning which events of the intervening year
have borne out?  For, surely, when the Great General
Staff at Berlin reviews dispassionately the beginnings
of the war, as it some day will do, there will be an
absorbingly interesting explanation of how the
machine which Moltke, the Organizer of Victory, handed
down to an incompetent namesake and nephew missed
*its* aim, too--the winning of the war by a series of
short, sharp and staggering blows which should decide
the issue in favor of the Germans before the next snow.
The argument has been advanced, in vindication of
Germany's innocent intentions, that the Hamburg-American
line would never have launched the mighty
*Bismarck* if the Fatherland was planning or
contemplating war.  But the ship was not to have made her
maiden transatlantic voyage until April 1, 1915, the
centenary of her great patronym's birth.  The German
Staff expected to dictate a glorious peace long before
that time, and might have done so but for Belgium,
Joffre, "that contemptible little British army," and
other miscalculations.  If the Staff, like Countess von
Bismarck, had not missed its aim, the *Bismarck* would
have poked her gigantic nose into New York harbor
on scheduled time, a mammoth symbol of Germany,
the World Power indeed, and fitting incarnation of
the new Mistress of the Seas.  Who knows but what
perhaps grandiose visions of that sort were in the
far-seeing Herr Ballin's card-index mind?

The Kaiser customarily visits the Venice of the
North on his way to Kiel Week, the yachting festival
invented by him to outrival England's Cowes, and
the launch of the *Bismarck* was timed accordingly.
From Hamburg the Emperor proceeds aboard the
Imperial yacht *Hohenzollern* up the Elbe to Brunsbüttel
for the annual regatta of the North German Yacht
Squadron, a club consisting for the most part of
Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck patricians with the love of
the sea inborn in their Hanseatic veins.  There was
no variation from the time-honored programme in
1914.  William II even adhered to his unfailing
practice of delivering an apotheosis of the marine
profession at the regatta-dinner of the N.G.Y.S. aboard
the Hamburg-American steamer on which Herr Ballin
is wont to entertain for Kiel Week a party of two or
three hundred German and foreign notables.  There
was no glimmer of coming events in the guest-list of
S.S. *Victoria Luise*, for it included Mr. John Walter,
one of the hereditary proprietors of *The Times*, and
several other distinguished Englishmen soon to be
Germany's hated foes.

By that occult agency which determines with
diabolical delight the irony of fate, it was ordained that
Kiel, 1914, should be the occasion of a spectacular
Anglo-German love-feast, with a squadron of British
super-dreadnoughts anchored in the midst of the
peaceful German Armada as a sign to all the world
of the non-explosive warmth of English-German
"relations."  That, at any rate, was the design of that
unfortunately nebulous element in Berlin, headed by
Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg, known as the Peace
Party; for had certain highly-placed Germans acting
under the Imperial Chancellor's inspiration had their
way, the British Admiralty yacht *Enchantress*, the
official craft of the First Lord of the Admiralty and
actually bearing that dignitary, Mr. Winston Churchill,
M.P., would have been convoyed to Kiel by
Vice-Admiral Sir George Warrender's ironclads.  The
Kaiser's approval of the Churchill project--as I
happen to know--had been sought and secured.  Eminent
friends of an Anglo-German rapprochement in
London had done the necessary log-rolling in England.
Matters were regarded in Germany so much of a
*fait accompli* that an anchorage diagram issued by
the naval authorities at Kiel only a fortnight before
the "Week" indicated the precise spot at which
Mr. Churchill and the *Enchantress* would make fast in the
harbor of Kiel Bay.

.. _`Watching for the Kaiser's Armada.`:

.. figure:: images/img-004.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Watching for the Kaiser's Armada.

   Watching for the Kaiser's Armada.

But Mr. Churchill did not come.  I know why.
Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz, to whom the half-American
*enfant terrible* of British politics was a pet
aversion, did not want him at Kiel.  Mr. Churchill's
visit might have resulted in some sort of an
Anglo-German naval *modus vivendi*, or otherwise postponed
"the Day."  The German War Party's plans, so soon
to materialize, would have been sadly thrown out of
gear by such an untimely event, and von Tirpitz is
not the man to brook interference with his
programmes.  Had not the German Government, under
the Grand-Admiral's invincible leadership, persistently
rejected the hand of naval peace stretched out
by the British Cabinet?  Was it not Mr. Churchill's
own proposals to which Berlin had repeatedly
returned an imperious No?  Could Germany afford to
run the risk of being cajoled, amid the festive
atmosphere of Kiel Week, into concessions which she had
hitherto successively withheld?  Von Tirpitz said No
again.  For years he had been saying the same thing
on the subject of an armaments understanding with
Britain.  He said No to Prince Bülow when the
fourth Chancellor suggested the advisability of
moderating a German naval policy certain to lead to
conflict with Great Britain.  He said No to Doctor von
Bethmann Hollweg when Bülow's successor
timorously suggested from time to time, as he did, the
foolhardiness of a programme which meant, in an
historic phrase of Bülow's, "pressure and
counter-pressure."  Von Tirpitz had had his way with two
German Chancellors, his nominal superiors, in
succession.  He never dreamt of allowing himself to be
bowled over now by an amateur sailor from London,
who, if he came to Kiel, would only come armed with a
fresh bait designed to rob the Fatherland of its
"future upon the water."

Until a bare two weeks before the date of the
arrival of the British Squadron in German waters,
nothing was publicly known either in London or Berlin
of the projected trip of Mr. Churchill to Kiel.  Von
Tirpitz thereupon had resort to the weapon he wields
almost as dexterously as the submarine--publicity--to
depopularize the scheme of the misguided friends
of Anglo-German peace.  It was not the first time, of
course, that the Grand-Admiral had deliberately
crossed the avowed policy of the German Foreign
Office.  Von Tirpitz now caused the Churchill-Kiel
enterprise to be "exposed" in the press, in the
confident hope that premature announcement would
effectually kill the entire plan.  It did.  Tirpitz diplomacy
scored again, as it was wont to do.  Whereof I speak
in this highly pertinent connection I know, on the
authority of one of von Tirpitz's most subtle and
trusted henchmen.  To the latter's eyes, I hope, these
reminiscences may some day come.  He, at least, will
know that history, not fiction, is recited here.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FIRST ACT`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium

   THE FIRST ACT

.. vspace:: 2

"I am simply in my element here!" exclaimed the
Kaiser ecstatically to Vice-Admiral Sir George
Warrender, as the twain stood surveying the
glittering array of steel-blue German and British
men-of-war facing one another amicably on the unruffled
bosom of Kiel harbor at high noon of June 25.  From
my perch of vantage abaft the forward
thirteen-and-one-half-inch guns of His Britannic Majesty's
superdreadnought battleship *King George V*, whither the
quartette of London correspondents had been banished
during William II's sojourn in the flagship, I could
"see" him talking on the quarter-deck below, speaking
with those nervous, jerky right-arm gestures which
are as important a part of his staccato conversation
as uttered words.

The Kaiser was inspecting *his* flagship, for when
he boarded us, almost without notice, in accordance
with his irrepressible love of a surprise, Sir George
Warrender's flag came down and the emblem of the
German Emperor's British naval rank, an Admiral of
the Fleet, was hoisted atop all the British vessels in
the port.  For the nonce the Hohenzollern War Lord
was Britannia's senior in command.  Aboard the
four great twenty-three-thousand-ton battleships, *King
George V, Audacious, Centurion* and *Ajax* and the
three fast "light cruisers" *Birmingham, Southampton*
and *Nottingham* there was, for the better part of an
hour, no man to say him nay.  I wonder if he, or any
of us at Kiel during that amazing week, let our
imaginations run riot and conjure up the vision of the
*Birmingham* in action against German warships off
Heligoland within ten short weeks, or of the
*Audacious* at the bottom of the Irish Sea, victim of a
German mine, five months later?

Warrender's squadron had come to Kiel two days
before.  Another British squadron was at the same
moment paying a similar visit of courtesy and
friendship to the Russian Navy at Riga.  The English said
then, and insist now, that their ships were dispatched
to greet the Kaiser and the Czar as sincere messengers
of peace and good-will.  The Germans, in the myopic
view they have taken of all things since the war
began, are convinced that the White Ensign which
floated at Kiel six weeks before Great Britain and
Germany went to war was the emblem of deceit and
hypocrisy, sent there to flap in the Fatherland's
guileless face while Perfidious Albion was crouching for
the attack.  They say that to-day, even in presence
of the incongruous fact that Serajevo, which
applied the match to the European powder-barrel, wrote
its red name across history's page while the British
squadron was still riding at anchor in Germany's war
harbor.

It was exactly ten years to the week since
British warships had last been to Kiel.  I happened to be
there on that occasion, too, when King Edward VII,
convoyed by a cruiser squadron, shed the luster of his
vivacious presence on the gayest "Week" Kiel ever
knew.  Meantime the Anglo-German political
atmosphere had remained too stubbornly clouded to make
an interchange of naval amenities, of all things, either
logical or possible.  It was the era in which Germania
was preparing her grim battle-toilet for "the Day"--for
all the world to see, as she, justly enough, always
insisted.  They were the years in which her new
dreadnought fleet sprang into being.  It was the
period in which offer after offer from England for
an "understanding" on the question of naval
armaments met nothing but the cold shoulder in
Tirpitz-ruled Berlin.  Not until the summer of 1914 had it
seemed feasible for British and German warships to
mingle in friendly contact.  Doctor von Bethmann
Hollweg quite legitimately accounted the
arrangement of the Kiel love-feast as an achievement of no
mean magnitude, viewed in the light of the ten
acrimonious years which preceded it.  The War Party,
realizing its harmlessness, and, indeed, recognizing its
value for the party's stealthy purposes, blandly
tolerated it.  Even Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz was on
hand to do the honors, and no one performs them more
suavely than Germany's fork-bearded sailor-statesman.

The day after Sir George Warrender's vessels
crept majestically out of the Baltic past Friedrichsort,
at the mouth of Kiel harbor, to be welcomed by
twenty-one German guns from shore batteries, the
symptomatic event of the "Week" was enacted--the formal
opening of the reconstructed Kaiser Wilhelm Canal.
I place that day, June 24, not far behind the
sanguinary 28th of June, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand
fell, in its direct relationship to the outbreak of
the war.  When the giant locks of Holtenau swung
free, ready henceforth for the passage of William II's
greatest warships, the moment of Germany's
up-to-the-minute preparedness for Armageddon was signalized.

For ten plodding years tens of thousands of hands
had been at work converting the waterway which
links Baltic Germany with North Sea Germany (Kiel
with Wilhelmshaven) into a channel wide and deep
enough for navigation by battleships of the largest
bulk.  After an expenditure of more than fifty million
dollars the canal, dedicated with pomp and ceremony
in 1892 to the peaceful requirements of European
shipping, was now become a war canal, pure and
simple, raised to the war dimension and destined, as the
German War Party knew, to play the role for which
it was rebuilt almost before its newly-banked stone
sides had settled in their foundations.  When I
watched proud William II, standing solemn and
statue-like on the bridge of his Imperial yacht
*Hohenzollern*, as her gleaming golden bow broke through
the black-white-red strand of ribbon stretched across
the locks, I recall distinctly an invincible feeling that
I was witness of an historic moment.  Germany's
army, I said to myself, had long been ready.  Now
her fleet was ready, too.  With an inland avenue of
safe retreat, invulnerably fortified at either end,
Teuton sea strategists had always insisted that the
Fatherland's naval position would be well-nigh
impregnable.  That hour had arrived.  There was
the Kaiser, before my very eyes, leading the way
through the War Canal for his twenty-seven-thousand-five-hundred-ton
battleships and battle cruisers, and
even for his thirty-five-thousand-ton or fifty-thousand-ton
creations of some later day, for the War Canal was
made over for to-morrow, as well as for to-day.  The
German war machine tightened up the last bolt when
William of Hohenzollern emerged from Holtenau
locks into the harbor of Kiel, spectacular symbol of
the fact that German ironclads of any dimensions
were now able to sally back and forth from the Baltic
to the North Sea and hide for a year, as the world has
meantime seen, even from the Mistress of the Seas.
No wonder a British bluejacket, forming the link of
an endless chain of his fellows dressing ship round
the rail of the *Centurion* in honor of the War Lord,
whispered audibly to a mate, as the *Hohenzollern*
steamed down the line to her anchorage, "Say, Bill,
don't he look jest like Gawd!"  Perhaps the
Divinely-Anointed felt that way, too.

When the Kaiser had left the *King George V* after
a politely cursory "inspection"--the only real
"understanding" effected between England and Germany at
Kiel was a tacit agreement on the part of officers and
men to do no amateur spying in one another's ships--Sir
George Warrender summoned us from the turret
and told us some details of the All-Highest visitation.
The Emperor had been "delighted to make his first
call in a British dreadnought aboard so magnificent
a specimen as the *King George V*" (she and her
sisters being at the time the most powerful battleships
flying the Union Jack).  He wanted the Vice-Admiral
to assure the British Government what pleasure it
had done the German Navy "in sending these fine
ships to Kiel."  He hoped nothing was being left
undone to "complete the English sailors' happiness" in
German waters.  That extorted from Sir George
Warrender the exclamation that German hospitality, like
all else Teutonic, was seemingly thoroughness
personified, for somebody had even been thoughtful enough
to lay a submarine telephone cable from the Seebade-Anstalt
Hotel to the Vice-Admiral's flagship, so that
Lady Maude Warrender might talk from her
apartments on shore directly to her husband's quarters
afloat.

"Yes," continued the Kaiser, who is a genial
conversationalist and *raconteur*, "I am in my element in
surroundings like these.  I love the sea.  I like to go
to launchings of ships.  I am passionately fond of
yachting.  You must sail with me to-morrow, Admiral,
in my newest *Meteor*, the fifth of the name.  I race
only with German crews now.  Time was when I had
to have British skippers and British sailors.  You see,
my aim is to breed a race of German yachtsmen.  As
fast as I've trained a good crew in the *Meteor*, I let
it go to the new owner of the boat.  I am the loser
by that system, but I have the satisfaction of knowing
that I am promoting a good cause."  The confab was
approaching its end.  "Oh, Admiral, before I forget,
how is Lady ........ and the Duchess of ........?
I know so many of your handsome Englishwomen."

Sir George Warrender's captains and the officers
of the flagship were now grouped around him for a
farewell salute to their Imperial senior officer.  The
Kaiser spied the *King George V's* chaplain, and
leaning over to him inquired, gaily, "Chaplain, is there
any swearing in this ship?"  "Oh, never, Your
Majesty, never any swearing in a British
dreadnought!"  The War Lord liked that, for we who had
been in the Olympian heights for'd remembered his
laughing aloud at this veracious tribute to Jack Tar's
world-famed purity of diction.

Kiel Week thenceforward was an endless round of
Anglo-German pleasantries.  A Zeppelin, harbinger
of coming events, hovered over the British squadron
at intervals, her crew wagging cheery greetings to
the ships while acquainting themselves at close range
with the looks of English dreadnoughts from the sky.
British sailormen paid fraternal visits to German
dreadnoughts and German sailormen returned their
calls.  The crew of the *Ajax* gave a music-hall
smoker in honor of the crew of the big battle-cruiser
*Seydlitz*, the Teuton tars being no little awestruck
by the complacency with which two heavyweight
British boxers pummeled each other a sea-green for six
rounds and then smilingly shook hands when it was
all over.  Germans never punch one another except in
gory hate, and they seldom fight with their fists.  The
Kaiser was host nightly at splendid State dinners in
the *Hohenzollern* and Vice-Admiral Warrender
returned the fire with state banquets aboard the *King
George V*.  The atmosphere was fairly thick with
brotherly love.  It was not so much as ruffled even
when the octogenarian Earl of Brassey, who wards
off rheumatism by an early morning pull in his
row-boat, was arrested by a German harbor-policeman as
an "English spy" for approaching the forbidden
waters of Kiel dockyard.  German diplomacy was
typically represented by Lord Brassey's zealous captor,
for the master of the famous *Sunbeam* brought that
venerable craft to Kiel to demonstrate that Englishmen
of his class sincerely favored peace, and, if
possible, friendship with Germany.  Wilhelmstrasse tact
was exemplified again when, by way of apology to
Lord Brassey, the Kiel police explained that there
was, of course, no intention of charging him with
espionage.  The policeman who arrested him merely
thought he was nabbing a smuggler!  At dinner that
night in the *Hohenzollern*, the Kaiser chuckled
jovially at Lord Brassey's expense.  England's
greatest living marine historian stole away from Kiel with
the *Sunbeam* in the gray dawn of the next day, with
new ideas of German courtesy to the stranger within
the gate.  He had intended to stay longer.

.. _`A naval Zeppelin cruising over the British squadron at Kiel.`:

.. figure:: images/img-014.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: A naval Zeppelin cruising over the British squadron at Kiel.

   A naval Zeppelin cruising over the British squadron at Kiel.

Of all the billing and cooing at Kiel there is
photographed most indelibly on my memory the glorious
jamboree of the sailors of the British and German
squadrons in the big assembly hall at the Imperial
dockyard on the Saturday night of the "Week."  There
were free beer, free tobacco, free provender for
everybody, in typical German plenty.  A ship's
band blared rag-time and horn-pipes all night long.
Only the supply of Kiel girls fell short of the demand,
but that only made merrier fun for the bluejackets,
who, lacking fair partners, danced with one another,
and when the hour had become really hilarious, they
tripped across the floor, when they were not rolling
over it, embracing in threes, bunny-hugging,
grotesquely tangoing, turkey-trotting and fish-walking
more joyously than men ever reveled before.

There, I thought, was Anglo-German friendship in
being--not an ideal, but an actuality.  I am sure the
British and German tars at Kiel that boisterous
Saturday night which melted into the Sunday of Serajevo
little dreamt that when next they would be locked in one
another's arms, it would be at grips for life or death.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PLOT DEVELOPS`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium

   THE PLOT DEVELOPS

.. vspace:: 2

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 Attaché, 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 scène*.  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 Attaché 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 Bülow, a kinsman of the
ex-Imperial Chancellor, who was the Krupp general
representative in England.  With a *naïveté* 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.





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.. _`THE STAGE MANAGERS`:

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   CHAPTER IV


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   THE STAGE MANAGERS

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Armageddon was plotted, prepared for and
precipitated by the German War Party.  It was
not the work of the German people.  What is the
"War Party"?  Let me begin by explaining what it is
*not*.  It is not a party in the sense of President
Wilson's organization or Colonel Roosevelt's Bull
Moosers.  It maintains no permanent headquarters or
National Committee, and holds no conventions.  The
only barbecue it ever organized is the one which
plunged the world into gore and tears in August, 1914,
though its attempts to drench Europe with blood are
decade-old.  You would search the German city
directories in vain for the War Party's address or
telephone number.  No German would ever acknowledge
that he belonged to Europe's largest Black Hand
league.  You could, indeed, hardly find anybody in
Germany willing even to acknowledge that the War
Party even existed.  Yet, unseen and sinister, its grip
was fastened so heavily upon the machinery of State
that when it deemed the moment for its sanguinary
purposes at length ripe, the War Party was able to
tear the whole nation from its peaceful pursuits and
fling it, armed to the teeth, against a Europe so
flagrantly unready that more than a year of strife finds
Germany not only unbeaten but at a zenith of fighting
efficiency which her foes have only begun to approach.

When the German War Party pressed the button
for the Great Massacre, the Fatherland had, roundly,
sixty-seven million five hundred thousand inhabitants
within its thriving walls.  At a liberal estimate, no
one can ever convince me that more than one million
five hundred thousand Germans really wanted war.
*They* were the "War Party."  Sixty-six millions of
the Kaiser's subjects, immersed in the most abundant
prosperity any European country of modern times
had been vouchsafed, longed only for the continuance
of the conditions which had brought about this state
of unparalleled national weal.  I do not believe
that William II, deep down in his heart, craved for
war.  I can vouch for the literal accuracy of a hitherto
unrecorded piece of ante-bellum history which bears
out my doubts of the Kaiser's immediate responsibility
for the war, though it does not acquit him of supine
acquiescence in, and to that extent abetting, the War
Party's plot.

On the afternoon of Saturday, August 1, 1914, the
wife of Lieutenant-General Helmuth von Moltke, then
Chief of the Great German General Staff, paid a visit
to a certain home in Berlin, which shall be nameless.
The *Frau Generalstabschef* was in a state of obvious
mental excitement.

"*Ach*, what a day I've been through, *Kinder*!" she
began.  "My husband came home just before I left.
Dog-tired, he threw himself on to the couch, a total
wreck, explaining to me that he had finally accomplished
the three days' hardest work he had ever done
in his whole life--he had helped to induce the Kaiser
to sign the mobilization order!"

There is the evidence, disclosed in the homeliest, yet
the most direct, fashion, of the German War Party's
unescapable culpability for the supreme crime
against humanity.  The "sword" had, indeed, been
"forced" into the Kaiser's hand.  This is no brief for
the Kaiser's innocence.  No man did more than William
II himself, during twenty-six years of explosive
reign, to stimulate the military clique in the belief that
when the dread hour came the Supreme War Lord
would be "with my Army."  Yet German officers,
in those occasional moments when conviviality bred
loquacity, were fond of averring, as more than one
of them has averred to me, that "the Kaiser lacked
the moral courage to sign a mobilization order."  *Die
Post*, a leading War Party organ, said as much during
the Morocco imbroglio in 1911.  Perhaps that is why
General von Moltke had to force the pen, which for
the nonce was mightier than the sword, into the
reluctant hand of William II.

The Kaiser was constitutionally addicted to
swaggering war talk, but, in my judgment, he preferred
the bark to the bite.  He likes his job.  Like our
Roosevelt, he has a "perfectly corking time" wielding the
scepter.  Raised in the belief that the Hohenzollerns
were divinely appointed to their Royal estate, William
II dearly loves his trade.  He does not want to lose
his throne.  In peace there was little danger of its ever
slipping from under him, thanks to a Socialist
"movement" which was noisy but never really menacing.  In
war Hohenzollern rule is in perpetual peril.  Hostile
armies, if they ever battered their way to Potsdam,
would almost surely wreck the dynasty, even if the
mob had not already saved them that trouble.  The
Kaiser, sagacious like every man when his livelihood
is at stake, always had these dread eventualities in
mind.  His personal interests, the fortunes of his
House, all lay along the path of manifest
safety--peace.  Meantime his concessions to the War Party
were generous and frequent.  He rattled the saber on
its demand.  He donned his "shining armor" at
Austria's side when the Germanic Powers coerced Russia
into recognition of the Bosnian annexation in 1909.
He sent the *Panther* to Agadir harbor in 1911
because the War Party howled for "deeds" in Morocco.
It hoped that history in Northwestern Africa would
repeat itself--that the Triple Entente would yield to
German bluff as it yielded in Southeastern Europe
two years previous.  It did not, and it was then that
the German War Party swore a solemn vow of "Never
Again!"  The days of the Kaiser who merely
threatened war were numbered.  Next time the sword would
be "forced" into his hand.  "Before God and history
my conscience is clear.  *I did not will this war*.  One
year has elapsed since I was *obliged* to call the German
people to arms."  Thus William of Hohenzollern's
manifesto to his people from Main Headquarters on
the first anniversary of the war, August 1, 1915.
Herewith I place *Frau Generalstabschef* von Moltke
on the stand as chief witness in the Kaiser's defense.

I have said that sixty-six million Germans wanted
peace and one million five hundred thousand demanded
war.  But in Germany *minority* rules.  It rules
supreme when the issue is war or peace, and when the
German War Party *insisted* upon deeds instead of
speeches the nation, Kaiser and all, Reichstag and
Socialist, Prince and peasant, had but one alternative--to
yield.  In July, 1914, the War Party imperiously
asked for war, and war ensued.  That is the ineffaceable
long and short of Armageddon.  I am persuaded
that William II on July 31 was confronted with something
strangely like an abrupt alternative of mobilization
or abdication.

Assertions of the German people's consecration to
peace may strike the reader as incongruous in face of
the magnificent unanimity with which the entire
Fatherland has waged and is still waging the war.
But such a view leaves wholly out of account the most
prodigious and amazing of all the German War
Party's preparations--the skilful manipulation of
public opinion for "the Day."  In ten brief days--those
fateful hours between July 23, when Austria
launched her brutal ultimatum at Serbia, and August
1, when mobilization of the German Army and Navy
made a European conflagration a certainty--Germany's
vast peace majority, by deception which I shall
outline in a subsequent chapter, was converted into a
multitudinous mob mad for war.

I count the merely material preparations of the War
Party--the steady expansion of Krupps, the development
of the Fleet, the invention of the forty-two
centimeter gun, the vast secret storage of arms and
ammunition, the 1913 increase of the Army, the
accumulation of a war-chest of gold, the stealthy
organization of every conceivable instrument and resource of
war down to details too minute for the ordinary mind
to grasp; all these, I count as nothing compared to the
hypnotization of the German national mind extending
over many years.

In England and America the name of Bernhardi
was on everybody's lips as the archpriest of the war.
I doubt if one man in ten thousand in Germany ever
heard of Bernhardi before August, 1914.  He became
an international personality mainly through the graces
of foreign newspaper correspondents in Berlin, who,
recognizing his book, *Germany's Next War*, as
classic proclamation of the War Party's designs on
the world, dignified it with commensurate attention,
not because of its authorship, but because of
its innate *authoritativeness*.  The result was the
translation of *Germany's Next War* into the English
language, and subsequently, I suppose, into every
other civilized language in the world.  Perhaps I am
myself to some extent responsible for Bernhardi's
vogue in the United States.  He was going to cross
our country en route back to Europe from the Far
East, and wrote to ask me to suggest to him the name
of an American translator and publisher for his books.
Bernhardi, a mere retired general of cavalry with a
gift for incisive writing, woke up to find himself
famous.  But nothing could be more beyond the mark
than to imagine that he was the pioneer of German
war-aggression.  He was merely its most plain-spoken
prophet.  The way had been blazed for decades before
he appeared upon the scene.  After Bernhardi had
been successfully launched on the bookshelves of the
world, the German War Party took him up, and it was
not long before *Die Post*, the *Deutsche Tageszeitung*
and other organs of blood-and-iron were able to make
"the highly gratifying" announcement that Bernhardi's
manual had been compressed into a fifty-pfennig
popular edition, so that the German masses might be
educated in the inspiring doctrine of manifest Teuton
destiny, as Bernhardi so unblushingly set it forth.

The German War Party's certificate of incorporation
is dated Versailles, January 18, 1871, when, on
the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of the
creation of the Kingdom of Prussia, Bismarck and
Moltke crowned victorious William I of Prussia
German Emperor.  Cradled in Prussianism, the German
War Party has always been Prussian, rather than
German.  To the credit of Bavaria, Saxony, Baden and
Wurttemberg be that forever remembered.  Denmark
and Austria, during the seven years preceding
Versailles, had had their lessons.  Now France lay
prostrate, despoiled of her fairest provinces and financially
bled white, as the conqueror imagined.  From that
moment the Prussian head began swelling with
invincible self-esteem, to emerge in the succeeding
generation in an insensate and megalomaniac conviction that
to the race which had accomplished what the Germans
had achieved nothing was impossible.  "World
Power"--Rule or Ruin--became the national slogan.

In the reconstruction years following the 1870-71
campaign non-military Germany was bent on laying
the foundations of Teuton industrial greatness.  The
project was vouchsafed no support from the military
hotspurs who, within ten years of Sedan and Paris,
did their utmost to force Bismarck into giving
humbled France a fresh drubbing, that her power to rise
from the dust might be crushed for all time.  Then
the Prussian War Party demanded that the scalp of
Russia be added to its insatiable belt.  Bismarck
propitiated the Bernhardis of that day by thundering in
the Reichstag that "We Germans fear God, and
nothing else in this world!"  When the Chancellor of Iron
burnt that piece of bombast into the German soul in
1887, a year before William the Speechmaker was
enthroned, he wrote the German War Party's
"platform."  Since then it has had many planks added to
it, but all of them have rested squarely and firmly on
the concrete upon which they were imbedded, viz.,
that *Furor Teutonicus* was a power which, when it
went forth to slay and conquer, was invincible because
it was filled with naught but the fear of God.
*Nouveau riche* Germany, with France's one billion
two hundred and fifty million dollars of gold indemnity
in its pocket, ceased to be the Fatherland of homely
virtues, celebrated in song and story, and became the
plethoric Fatherland, drunk with power and wealth
won by arms, the Fatherland which was to adopt the
gospel of political brutality as a new national
*Leit-motif*.  "We, not the Jews, are God's chosen people.
Our military prowess and our intellectual superiority
make German *Weltmacht* manifest destiny.  Full
steam ahead!"  Thus it was, a generation ago, that
the German War Party was launched on its mad career.

During the war the English-reading world has
heard much of Treitschke and Nietzsche, just as it has
had its ears dinned full of Bernhardi.  Germans with
scars on their faces and other marks of a college
education--a gentry numbering several millions--know
and venerate their Treitschke and Nietzsche, and to
their pernicious dogma is due in large degree the war
lust of so-called cultured Germany; yet to the German
masses these renowned apostles of Might is Right are
little more than names.  Of far more importance for
the purpose of tracing the origin of the Armageddon
are the living captains of the "War Party," not its
deceased intellectual sponsors.  Historians of the present
era will gain the really illuminating perspective by
relegating Nietzsche, "that half-inspired, half-crazy
poet-philosopher," and Treitschke, his more modern
kindred spirit, to the dead past and elevating Tirpitz
and the Crown Prince, Koester of the German Navy
League and Keim of the German Army League to
their places.  It is men like them, politicians like
Heydebrand, literary firebrands like Reventlow and
Frobenius, and press-pensioners like Hammann who
were the real pioneers of Armageddon.  These are
names with which the English-reading world,
enchanted by the myopic prominence given to the
writings of Nietzsche, Treitschke and Bernhardi, are not
familiar.  But they are the real stage managers of the
war tragedy, and it is with them I shall deal before
narrating the culminating effects of their devilry.

Prince Bülow, fourth Imperial Chancellor and most
urbane of statesmen, will live in German history as a
man who resembled Bismarck in but one important
particular--the gift of phrase-making.  Bismarck's
aphorisms are quoted by Germans with the awesome
regard in which Anglo-Saxons cite Shakespeare.
Bülow's name will be enshrined in Teuton memory
for an epigram which had as direct a psychic influence
on the German War Party's demand for the present
war as any other one thing said, written or done in
Germany in the last fifteen years.  When he
proclaimed that Germany demanded her "place in the
sun," he flung into the fire fat which was to go sizzling
down the age.  It was worth its weight in precious
gems to the blood-and-iron brigade.  As Bismarck's
blasphemous bluster in 1887 gave the War Party of
that day its fillip, Bülow in 1907 supplied the spurred
and helmeted zealots of his era with a flamboyancy no
less vicious.  They snatched it up with alacrity, and,
being Germans, proceeded to exploit it with masterly
efficiency and deadly thoroughness.  A "place in the
sun" forthwith inspired an entirely new German
literature.  It became the spiritual mother of this war.

Like all the War Party's dogma, the "place in the
sun" doctrine is sheer cant.  Germany has occupied an
increasingly expansive "place in the sun" for forty-four
years without interruption.  In 1913, Doctor Karl
Helfferich, a director of the Deutsche Bank, who is
now Secretary of the Imperial Treasury, in a pamphlet
spread broadcast throughout the world, thus
summarized Germany's "place in the sun":

"The German National Income amounts today to
ten thousand seven hundred fifty million dollars
annually as against from five thousand seven hundred
fifty to six thousand two hundred fifty million dollars
in 1895.  The annual increase in wealth is about two
thousand five hundred million dollars, as against a
sum of from one thousand one hundred twenty-five to
one thousand two hundred fifty million dollars fifteen
years ago.

"The wealth of the German people amounts today
to more than seventy-five thousand million dollars, as
against about fifty thousand million dollars toward
the middle of the nineties.  These solid figures
summarize, expressed in money, the result of the enormous
economic labor which Germany has achieved during
the reign of our present Emperor."

Doctor Helfferich continued the story of the incessant
widening of the Fatherland's "place in the sun."  He
told of the steady rise of the population at the rate of
eight hundred thousand a year; of the development of
German industry at so miraculous a pace that while
Germany in the middle eighties was losing emigrated
citizens at the rate of one hundred thirty-five thousand
a year, the total had sunk in 1912 to eighteen thousand
five hundred, and that Germany had become, many
years before that date, an *importer* of men, instead of
an exporter; that the net tonnage of the German
mercantile fleet increased from 1,240,182 in 1888 to
3,153,724 in 1913; that German imports and exports,
during the rich years immediately prior to 1910,
increased from one thousand five hundred million
dollars to nearly four thousand million dollars, and in
1912 exceeded five thousand millions.

By a "place in the sun" Prince Bülow meant,
primarily, territorial expansion for Germany's "surplus
population."  Yet even in this respect German
aggrandizement kept pace with her fabulous economic
development.  When war broke out in 1914, the German
colonial empire oversea was hundreds of thousands of
square miles more extensive than Germany in Europe.
It is true that the Germans went in for colonial
land-grabbing late in the game, after England, particularly,
had acquired the best territory in both hemispheres,
and many years after the Monroe Doctrine had
effectually checked European expansion in the Americas.
As the result of "colonial empire" in inferior regions
of the earth, the total white population of German
colonies in 1913 was less than twenty-eight thousand,
or roundly, three and one-half per cent. of the *annual*
growth of German population.  Although acquired
nominally for "trade," Germany's commerce with her
colonies in imports and exports totaled in 1914 a
fraction more than twenty-five million dollars, or about
*one-half of one per cent.* of Germany's total trade of
five thousand million dollars in 1912.  Germany's lust
for a larger "place in the sun," as it has been aptly
described by the author of *J'Accuse*, is "square-mile
greed," pure and simple, and as the same frank and
brilliant writer points out, Germany not only demands
a "place in the sun," but claims it for herself alone,
insisting that the rest of the world shall content itself
with "a place in the shade."

To popularize the "place in the sun" theory two
great German national organizations went valiantly
to work--the Pan-German League and the German
Navy League.  The Pan-Germans, whose efforts
were seconded by a subsidiary society called the
Association for the Perpetuation of Germanism Abroad,
set themselves the task of educating German public
opinion in regard to "the bitter need" of a "Greater
Germany," to be achieved by hook or crook.  The
German Navy League dedicated itself to fomenting
agitation designed to meet the Kaiser's expressed "bitter
need" of vast German sea power.  Ostensibly private
in character, both of these militant propaganda
organizations enjoyed more or less official countenance and
support.  On occasion, when their activities appeared
too pernicious or threatened to obstruct the subtle
machinations of German diplomacy, the Government
would convincingly "disavow" the leagues.  But all
the time they were working for Germany's "place in
the sun."  Under their auspices, the country for years
was drenched with belligerent and provocative
literature, which harped ceaselessly on the theme that what
Germany could not secure by diplomacy she must
prepare to extort by the sword.

As the Pan-Germans and the Navy League cherished
twin aspirations, it was not surprising that two
men, General Keim, a retired officer of the army, and
Count Ernst zu Reventlow, a retired officer of the
navy, should be moving spirits in both organizations.
General Keim, in his zeal to support Admiral von
Tirpitz's big navy schemes, eventually went to such
extremes in the pursuit of his duties as president of the
Navy League that the organization's existence as a
national association was momentarily threatened.  It
was giving the game away.  Keim was thereupon
removed from his position, to be succeeded by the Grand
Old Man of the German Fleet, Grand-Admiral von
Koester.  Koester was *suaviter in modo*, but no less
*fortiter in re* than Keim.  Entering the presidency of
the Navy League in the midst of the Dreadnought
era, when Germany's dream of her "future upon the
water" was sweetest, his systematic fanning of the
public temper, especially against England, left nothing
to be desired.

General Keim, deposed from the leadership of the
Navy League, was presently kicked up-stairs by the
German War Party and made president of the
newly-formed "German Defense League."  This association
was organized to launch a national agitation in favor
of increasing the German military establishment.

The methods which had caused Keim's "downfall"
from the presidency of the Navy League were
promptly employed by him in the new army league.
With a host of influential newspapers and "war
industry" interests at their back, plus the benevolent
patronage of the Imperial family and Government, Koester
and Keim carried out for six years preceding August,
1914, the most prodigious and audacious propaganda
crusade in European history.  Germany's need for "a
place in the sun," on whatever particular chord they
harped, was always their keynote.  The "Defense
League" scored its crowning triumph in 1913 by
accomplishing the passage of the celebrated Army Bill
whereby the land forces of the Empire were
augmented at an expense of two hundred fifty million
dollars--the immediate preliminary step to the assault
of Europe by the Kaiser's legions.

Count Reventlow, a Jingo of Jingoes, rendered both
the navy and army leagues valiant support in the
columns of his newspaper, the *Deutsche Tageszeitung*,
and in a regular grist of pamphlets and books which
his facile pen from time to time reeled off.  Reventlow
was one of the archpriests of the War Party.  A
champion hater of everything foreign, he was
temperamentally fitted to advocate the doctrine of Force
and Germany's right to world-conquest by fire and
sword.  Count Reventlow, whom it was my pleasure
to know intimately, hated England, France and Russia
with a ferocity delightful to behold.  His
Francophobism was little diminished by his marriage to a
charming French noblewoman.  He hated America,
too.  I could never quite divine the gallant Count's
reason for eating an American alive, in his mind, every
morning for breakfast, and for despising us as
cordially as he detested Mr. Winston Churchill, Monsieur
Delcassé or the Czar, until he confessed to me one day
that he lost a fortune through unfortunate speculation
in a Florida fruit plantation.  Thenceforth,
apparently, Reventlow's anti-Americanism knew no bounds.
It was more explosive than usual during his discussion
of the *Lusitania* massacre, but it was pathological.

A pillar of the German War Party, whose name is
almost entirely unknown abroad, is Doctor Hammann,
chief of the notorious Press Bureau of the German
Foreign Office and Imperial Chancellery.  Hammann
for twenty years, because one of the craftiest, has been
one of the most powerful men in German politics.  For
two decades he survived the incessant vicissitudes and
intrigues of the Foreign Office, which indeed were
more than once of his own making.  He was frequently
credited with being "the real Chancellor" in Bülow's
days because of his sinister influence over that suave
statesman.  Hammann's nominal duties were confined
to manipulating the German press for the Government's
purposes and to exercising such "control" over
the Berlin correspondents of foreign newspapers as
might from time to time appear feasible or possible.
Himself a retired journalist of unsavory reputation--he
was a few years ago under indictment for perjury
in an unlovely domestic scandal--he seemed to his
superiors an ideal personage to deal with the Fourth
Estate, which Bismarck trained Germans to look upon
as "the reptile press."  Hammann's function, for the
War Party's purposes, was to mislead public opinion,
at home and abroad, as to the real intentions and
machinations of *Weltpolitik*.  Under his shrewd
direction German newspapers, restlessly propagating the
Fatherland's need for "a place in the sun," systematically
distorted the international situation so as to
represent Germany as the innocent lamb and all other
nations as ravenous wolves howling for her
immaculate blood.  That Hammann is regarded as having
rendered "our just cause" priceless service was proved
only a few months ago by his promotion to a full
division-directorship in the Foreign Office.  He had
hitherto ranked merely as a *Wirklicher Geheimrat*, or
sub-official of the department, although as a matter of
fact five Foreign Secretaries, "under" whom he
nominally served, were mere putty in the hands of
Germany's Imperial Press Agent-in-Chief.

Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz, of course, has for years
been one of the super-pillars of the German War
Party.  The Kaiser's Fleet is the creation of von
Tirpitz, though William II receives popular credit for
the achievement, and von Tirpitz created it essentially
for war.  Von Tirpitz once honored me with a
heart-to-heart confab on Anglo-German naval rivalry.  He
rebuked me in a paternal way for specializing in
German naval news.  Germany had no ulterior motive, he
said.  She was building a defensive fleet primarily,
though one that would be strong enough, on occasion,
to "throw into the balance of international politics a
weight commensurate with Germany's status as a
World Power."  Von Tirpitz was the incarnation of
the naval spirit which longed for the chance to show the
world that Germany at sea was as "glorious" as centuries
of martial history had proved her on land.  German
sailors chafed under the corroding restraint of
peace.  They hankered for laurels.  They were tired
of manning a dress-parade fleet, whose functions
seemed to be confined to holding spectacular reviews
for the Kaiser's glorification at Kiel.  They hungered
for "the Day."  Von Tirpitz has denied passionately
that they ever drank to "the Day" in their battleship
messes.  But it was the unspoken prayer which lulled
them to well-earned sleep, for in consequence of the
iron discipline and remorseless labor which von Tirpitz
imposed on his officers and men in anticipation of
"Germany's Trafalgar," the Kaiser's Fleet was the
hardest worked navy in the world.  No Armada in
history was ever so perpetually "battle-ready" as the
German High Seas Fleet.  It was the Fleet which
made its very own that other hypocritical German
battle-cry, "The Freedom of the Sea," which means, of
course, a German-ruled sea.

Von Tirpitz's task was not only to build the fleet
but to agitate German public opinion uninterruptedly
in favor of its constant expansion.  To him and the
Navy League, which he controlled, and to his Press
Bureau and its swarm of journalistic and literary
parasites, were due the remarkable Anglophobe
campaigns which resulted in the desired periodical additions
to the Fleet.  A politician of consummate talent, von
Tirpitz held successive Reichstags in the palm of his
hand.  No Imperial Chancellor, though nominally his
chief, was ever able to override the imperious will of
von Tirpitz the Eternal.  Repeatedly in the years
preceding the war England held out the hand of a naval
*entente*.  The War Party and von Tirpitz said "No!"  And
Armageddon became as inevitable as the setting sun.

I have enumerated only the outstanding figures of
the German War Party.  They could be supplemented
at will--there are the men like Professor von
Schmoller, of the University of Berlin, who foresees
the day when "a nation of two hundred million
Germans oversea would rise in Southern Brazil"; or
Professor Adolf Lasson, also of Berlin, who proclaimed
the doctrine that Germans' "cultural paramountcy over
all other nations" entitles them to hegemony over the
earth; or Professor Adolf Wagner, the Berlin
economist, who excoriates compulsory arbitration as the
refuge of the politically impotent and a dogma
beneath the dignity of the Germany of the Hohenzollerns;
or the whole dynasty of politician-professors
like Delbrück, Zorn, Liszt, Edward and Kuno Meyer,
Eucken, Haeckel, Harnack, or minor theorists like
Münsterberg, who year in and year out preached the
doctrine of Teutonic superiority, Teutonic invincibility
and Teutonic "world destiny."  These intellectual
auxiliaries of the War Party in their day have sent tens
of thousands of young men out of German universities
with politically polluted minds.  Their class-rooms
have been the real breeding ground and recruiting
camps of the German War Party.

And then, of course, in addition to the admirals
who wanted war, and the professors who glorified
war, and the editors, pamphleteers, Navy and Army
League leaders and paid agitators who wrote and
talked war, there was the German Army, represented
by its corps of fifty thousand or sixty thousand
officers, which was the living, ineradicable incarnation of
war and with every breath it drew sighed impatiently
for its coming.  I suppose armies in all countries more
or less constitute "war parties."  But never in our
time has an army tingled and spoiled for battle as
sleeplessly as the legions of the Kaiser.  It was written
in the stars that it was only a question of time when
they would realize their aspiration to prove that the
German war machine of the day was not only the peer,
but incomparably the superior, of the Juggernauts with
the aid of which Frederick the Great and Moltke
remapped Europe.

But the Grand Mogul of the German War Party,
its pet, darling and patron saint, was Crown Prince
William, the Kaiser's ebullient heir who contributed so
conspicuously to Germany's loss of Paris in September,
1914.  For ten years he was the apple of the army's
eye.  William II's oratorical peace palaverings long
ago convinced his military paladins that their hopes
could no longer with safety be pinned on the monarch
who would do nothing but *rattle* his saber.  "A place
in the sun" could never be achieved by such tactics,
they argued, so they transferred their affections and
their expectations to the "young man" who cheered
in the Reichstag when his father's Government was
accused of cowardice in Morocco.  They placed their
destinies in the keeping of the Imperial hotspur who
wrote in his book, *Germany in Arms*, that "visionary
dreams of everlasting peace throughout the world are
un-German."  Their real allegiance was sworn henceforth
to the swashbuckling young buffoon, who, taking
leave of the Death's Head Hussars after two years'
colonelcy, admonished them to "think of him whose
most ardent desire it has always been to be allowed to
share at your side the supreme moment of a soldier's
happiness--when the King calls to arms and the bugle
sounds the charge!"  It was an open secret that when
the Crown Prince was exiled to the command of a
cavalry regiment in dreamy Danzig, far away from
the frenzied plaudits of the multitude in Berlin, the
Kaiser's action was inspired by the disquieting
realisation that his heir was acquiring a popularity, both
in and out of the army, which boded ill for the security
of the monarch's own status with his subjects.

These, then, are the men, and these their principal
methods, which provided the scenario for the
impending clash.  As with every great "production,"
preliminary plans were well and truly laid.  Rehearsals,
in the form of stupendous maneuvers on "a strictly
warlike basis," had brought the chief actors, scene
shifters and other accessories to first-night pitch.  The
stage managers' work was done.  They had now only
to take their appointed places in the flies and wings
and let the tragedy proceed.  The rest could be left to
the puppets on both sides of the footlights.  A month
of slow music, and then the grand *finale*.





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.. _`SLOW MUSIC`:

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   CHAPTER V


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   SLOW MUSIC

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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 rôle 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 Tromsö 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 rôle 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, cafés 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:

.. vspace:: 2

"'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]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

   [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.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: medium

"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 Delbrück 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 rôle 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 Poincaré'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.'"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE CLIMAX`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium

   THE CLIMAX

.. vspace:: 2

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 Münsterberg'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 château-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 Königs-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 über 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 Szögeny-Marich, but, if he was at home, he
preferred not to face the multitude.  Presently a
beardless young embassy attaché 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,
Königsberg 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."

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 2

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 rôle 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 über 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
Kühn, 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 Café
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.

.. _`Soldiers in the making--aiming practice`:

.. figure:: images/img-076.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Soldiers in the making--aiming practice

   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."

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WAR`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium

   WAR

.. vspace:: 2

"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 Französische-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 *Extrablätter* containing the
fateful tidings:

::

   +----------------------------------+
   |                                  |
   |  "UNIVERSAL MOBILIZATION OF THE  |
   |      GERMAN ARMY AND NAVY!"      |
   |                                  |
   +----------------------------------+

.. vspace:: 1

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....

.. _`In front of the Royal Castle, Berlin, waiting for announcement of mobilization, August 1st, 1914.`:

.. figure:: images/img-084.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: In front of the Royal Castle, Berlin, waiting for announcement of mobilization, August 1st, 1914.

   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 über 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:

.. vspace:: 2

"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."

.. vspace:: 2

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 über 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
rôle 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 *Extrablätter*.  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 *Niederländisches 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:

.. vspace:: 2

"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!"

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE AMERICANS`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium

   THE AMERICANS

.. vspace:: 2

On the occasion, nine or ten years ago, when
it was my privilege to be presented for the first
time to that most sane and suave of German statesmen,
Prince Bülow--it was at one of his so-called
"parliamentary evenings" at the Imperial Chancellor's
Palace during the political season,--he inquired, pleasantly:

"How long are you remaining in Germany?"

"Just as long as Your Serene Highness will permit,"
I responded, half facetiously and half seriously, for
foreign correspondents are occasionally expelled from
Germany for pernicious professional activity.

For the ten days preceding August 1, 1914, while
the European cloudburst was gathering momentum,
such time as I could spare from the chase for the
nimble item was devoted to patching up my journalistic
fences in Berlin, with a view to remaining there
throughout the war.  There was at that time no
conclusive indication that England would be involved.
Having seen Germany in full and magnificent stride in
peace, I was overwhelmingly anxious to watch her in
the practise of her real profession.  As an American
citizen and special correspondent of three great
American newspapers--the *New York Times, Philadelphia
Public Ledger* and *Chicago Tribune*--and fully accredited
as such in German official quarters, I had every
reason to hope that, even if England were drawn into
the war (as to which I, myself, was never in doubt),
my previous status as Berlin correspondent of Lord
Northcliffe's *Daily Mail* would not interfere with my
remaining in Germany as an American writing
exclusively for American papers.  It was, of course,
obvious that if this permission were granted me, my
connection with the British news organization, which
for years was Germany's *bête noire*, would have
automatically to cease.

In Ambassador Gerard, as ever, I found a ready
supporter of my plans.  He recognized, as I did, that
a "*Daily Mail* man," particularly one who had specialized,
as I did for eight years, in publishing as much
as I dared about Germany's palpable preparations for
war, would perhaps be on thin ice in asking favors
of the Kaiser's Government at such an hour.  But
Judge Gerard also knew that, while persistently doing
my duty in reporting the sleepless machinations of the
German War Party to attain "a place in the sun," I
had written copiously in England and with equal
faithfulness of the many attractive and favorable aspects
of German life and institutions.  In 1913 I produced a
little book, *Men Around the Kaiser*, which from cover
to cover was a sincere hymn of praise of almost
everything Teutonic.  This foreigner's tribute to the real
source of modern German greatness--the Fatherland's
captains of science, art, letters, commerce, finance and
industry--was considered so fair and flattering to the
Germans that *Männer um den Kaiser*, a German translation,
went through eight editions to the two of the
English original.  During the Zabern army upheaval
in Alsace-Lorraine in the winter of 1913-14 an article
of mine in *The Daily Mail* entitled "What the Colonel
Said" was the only presentation of the German
military attitude published in England.  Even the War
Party newspapers in Berlin honored me with a
reproduction of that attempt to interpret the Prussian
point of view that, where the sacredness of the King's
tunic is at stake, all other considerations vanish into
insignificance.

The Ambassador suggested, in the always practical
way of American diplomacy, that I should assemble
for him a *dossier* of some of my newspaper work in
Berlin showing that I had consistently attempted to
show the bright, as well as the dark side, of the
German picture.  Judge Gerard promised to submit my
desire to remain in Germany during war, if war
came, to Foreign Secretary von Jagow and to recommend
that my aspiration should be gratified.  It was
welcome news which the Ambassador was finally
enabled to give me on August 1, that the Foreign
Secretary had considered my application and granted it.  I
rejoiced that a long-cherished ambition seemed on the
brink of realization--to see the terrible German
war-machine at work, to report its sanguinary operations
from the inside, and perhaps some day to record in
a book, which would have been incomparably more
vital than this bloodless narrative, my close-range
impressions of man-killing as an applied art.

I was not the only American appealing to our
Embassy for amelioration of my troubles about this time.
In fact there were so many others--hundreds and
hundreds of them--that the Ambassador and his small
staff ceased altogether to be diplomats and became
merely comforters of distracted compatriots plunged
suddenly into the abyss of terror and helplessness in
a strange land by the specter of war.  From early
morning till long past midnight Wilhelms Platz 7, the
dignified home maintained by the Gerards as
American headquarters in Germany, was besieged by a mob
of stranded or semi-stranded fellow citizens who
flocked to the Embassy like chicks running to cover
beneath the protecting wing of a mother hen.  Never
even in the history of Cook's was so frantic a conclave
of the personally conducted assembled.  They wanted
two things and wanted them at once--money and
facilities to get out of Germany with the least possible
delay.  That bespectacled school-marm from Paducah,
Kentucky, had not come to Berlin to eat war bread
and spend her spare time proving her identity at the
police station--she moaned in tearful accents.  That
aldermanic committee of Battle Creek, Michigan, was
not getting what it bargained for--study of Berlin's
sewage farms and municipal labor exchanges.  Its
main concern now was to reach Dutch or Scandinavian
territory, with the minimum of procrastination.  That
portly Chicago millionaire's wife yonder, when she
bought a letter of credit on the Dresdner Bank, had
not figured even on the remote possibility of its
refusing to hand her over all the money she might care to
draw.  The moment had come, she was vociferating,
to see what "American citizenship amounts to,
anyhow," and what she demanded was a special train to
warless frontiers, and then a ship to take her
"home."  These were just a few of the plaints and claims which
issued in a crescendo of insistence and panic from these
neurotic tourist folk, who, in tones often more
imperious than appealing, wanted to know what "Our
Government" intended to do with its war refugees and
refugettes cruelly trapped in Armageddonland.

Americans who come to Europe proverbially feel a
proprietary interest in their Embassies, Legations and
Consulates.  The Berlin Ambassador for years put in
much valuable time assuaging the grief and
disappointment of brother patriots who felt a God-given
right to gratify such trifling ambitions as an audience
with the Kaiser, an inspection of the German army
or minor favors like exploration of the German
educational system under the personal chaperonage
of the Minister for Culture.  Then, of course, there
was the ever-present "German-Americans," who,
having slipped away from their beloved Fatherland in
youth without performing military service, would risk
a visit to native haunts in later life, only to fall victim
to the German military police system which has a long
memory and a still longer arm for such transgressors.
On many such an occasion, even when, like a Chicago
man I know, the "German-American" stole back
under an assumed name, the paternal diplomatic
intervention of the United States has saved the "deserter"
from a felon's cell in his "Fatherland."

By the morning of August 4, the American panic
in Berlin began to assume truly disastrous dimensions.
The Embassy was literally jammed with fretting men,
and weepy women and children.  Every room
overflowed with them.  The cry was now for passports.  It
was coming from all parts of the country.  All
foreigners were suspect, English-speaking ones in
particular, and the German police were demanding in martial
tone that *Ausländer* should "legitimatize" themselves.

The railways were available now only for troops.
The Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd
had canceled all their west-bound sailings, and our
Consular officials in Hamburg and Bremen were
telegraphing the Berlin Embassy that they, too, were
stormed by throngs of Americans in various stages
of anxiety, fear and financial embarrassment.  From
Frankfort-on-the-Main came a similar tale of woe.  All
around that delightful city are famous German
watering places--Bad Nauheim, Homburg, Wiesbaden,
Langen-Schwalbach, Baden-Baden, Kissingen and the
like--and American "cure-guests," regardless of their
rheumatism, heart troubles, gout and other frailties
for which German waters are a panacea, forgot such
insignificant woes in the now crowning anguish to own
a passport which would designate them as peaceable
and peace-loving children of the Stars and Stripes.

The Embassy rapidly and patiently mastered the
situation.  Mrs. Gerard converted herself into the adopted
mother of every lachrymose American woman and
child squatted on her broad marble staircase.
Mrs. Gherardi, the wife of our Naval Attaché, and
Mrs. Ruddock, the wife of the Third Secretary, who were at
the time the only feminine members of the Embassy
family, resourcefully seconded the Ambassadress'
efforts to soothe the emotions of the sobbing sisters and
youngsters from Iowa and Maine, from Pennsylvania
and Texas, from Montana and Florida, and from
nearly all the other States of the Union, who refused
to view qualmless the prospect of remaining shut up
for Heaven knew how long in war-mad Germany,
already effectually isolated from the rest of the world
behind an impenetrable ring of steel.  As for the men
of the Embassy, from the Ambassador down to
"Wilhelm," the old German doorkeeper who has initiated
two generations of American diplomats into the
mysteries of their profession in Berlin, no faithful
servants of an ungrateful Republic ever came so valiantly
to the rescue of fellow taxpayers.  The Embassy
apartments, including the Ambassador's own sanctuary,
were turned into offices which looked for all the
world like a Census Bureau.  Every available space
for a desk was usurped by somebody taking applications
for passports or filling up the passports
themselves, to be turned over to Judge Gerard in an
unceasing stream for his signature and seal.  Uncle Sam
surely never raked in so many two-dollar fees at one
killing in all the history of his Berlin office.  Nor
did American citizens, I fancy, ever part with money
which they considered half so good an investment.

The Embassy itself, hopelessly understaffed for such
an emergency, was, of course, quite unequal to the
enormous strain suddenly imposed upon it, so volunteer
attachés and clerks were gladly pressed into service.
There, for instance, sat a Guggenheim copper magnate,
who probably never lifts a pen except to sign a
million-dollar check, at work with a mantel-piece as a desk,
recording the vital statistics of a Vermont
grocery-man who wanted a passport.  In another corner sat
Henry White, ex-Ambassador in Rome and Paris,
scribbling away at breakneck pace, in order that the
age, complexion and height of that trembling Vassar
graduate might be quickly and accurately inscribed in
an application for a Yankee parchment.  There, with
the arm of a chair as his desk, was Professor
Jeremiah W. Jenks, great authority on political economy,
currency and trusts, patiently extorting the story of his
life from the coroner of the Minnesota county who had
been caught in the German war maelstrom in the midst
of an investigation of municipal morgues.  What a vast
practical experience of inquests he might have reaped
had he remained in Europe!  And over there, looking out
on the Wilhelms Platz, with a window-sill as a
writing-board, the Titian-haired belle of Berlin's American
colony, in daintiest of midsummer frocks and saucy
turbans, who had never in years done anything more
strenuous than organize a tea-party, was in harness as
a volunteer in the impromptu army of Uncle Sam's
clerks, doing her bit for her country and country-folk.
It was all very typically and very delightfully
American, a composite of true Democracy in which one is
for all, and all for one.  I like to doubt if there are
any other people on earth who turn in and help one
another in a spirit of all-engulfing national
comradeship so readily, so unconventionally and so
good-naturedly as Americans.  That drama of companionship
in misery and adaptability to emergency conditions,
which held the boards at the American Embassy in
Berlin during the first week of the Great War, will
live long in the memory of those who witnessed it as
one of the striking impressions of a Brobdingnagian
moment.

Obviously things would have been different if the
crisis had not found two real Americans in command
of the Embassy in the persons of Mr. and Mrs. Gerard.
When the typical New Yorker whom President
Wilson sent to Berlin less than a year previous was first
presented to his compatriots at a little function at which
it was my honor to preside, the man whom political
detractors contemptuously referred to as "a Tammany
Judge" made a "keynote speech," which he meant to
be interpreted as his "policy" in Germany, as far as
Americans were concerned.  He said: "When the
time comes for me to retire from Berlin, if you will
call me the most American Ambassador who ever
represented you in Germany, you can call me after that
anything you please."

Two years--what years--have elapsed since "Jimmy"
Gerard made public avowal of his conception of what
United States diplomatic representatives abroad ought
to be--Americans, first, last and all the time.  As these
lines are written German-American official relations
seem on the verge of rupture and our embassy's
remaining days in Berlin appear to be calculable in
hours.  Whether it shall turn out that the *Arabic* insult
was after all swallowed as the *Lusitania* infamy was
stomached, or whether Judge Gerard is finally recalled
from Berlin as a protest extracted at length from the
most patient, reluctant and long-suffering Government
on record, he will richly have realized his ambition--to
be "the most American Ambassador" ever accredited
to the German court.  In my time in Berlin I knew
four American ambassadors.  Each one was a credit to
his nation.  But "Jimmy" Gerard was "the most American,"
and I count that, in a citizen of the United States
called to *represent* his country abroad, the superlative
quality.  The seductive atmosphere of a Court in
which adulation was obsequiously practised, especially
toward Americans, never turned the head of Judge
Gerard or his wife.  They had far more than the
share of hobnobbing with Royalty which falls to the
lot of diplomatic newcomers in Berlin.  Princes and
princesses came with unwonted freedom to Wilhelms
Platz 7.  They found the former Miss Daly, of
Anaconda, Montana, being a natural young American
woman, as much at ease in their gilded presence as she
was the day before when presiding over the tempestuous
deliberations of the American Woman's Club out
on Prager Platz.

To me the Gerards, apart from their personal charm,
unaffected dignity and joyous Americanism, always
were psychologically interesting because they typified
so splendidly that greatest of our national
traits--adaptability.  To be dropped into the vortex of
European political life, with its gaping pitfalls and brilliant
opportunities for mistakes, is not child's play even for
the most experienced of men and women.  France, for
example, regarded no name in its diplomatic register
less eminent than that of a Cambon fit to head its
mission to Berlin.  England kept at the Hohenzollern
court the most gifted ambassador on the Foreign
Office's active list--Sir Edward Goschen.  Unthinking
Americans, by which I mean those who underestimate
our inherent capacity to land on our feet, may have
had their misgivings when a mere Justice of the
Supreme Court of the State of New York and the
daughter of a Montana copper king were sent to represent
America among professional diplomats of the highest
European rank.  But "Jimmy" and "Molly" Gerard
made good.  It is the American way, and because it
is that, it is their way.  As for the Ambassador, he
has demonstrated, to my way of thinking, that a
graduate course in the university of American politics is
ideal training for diplomacy.  Intelligence, tact,
resourcefulness and courage, the rudiments of the
diplomatic career, are qualities which surely nothing can
develop in a man more thoroughly than the
hurly-burly, rough-and-tumble, give-and-take of an
American electioneering campaign.  It is amid its storms
and tribulations that a man learns to be something
more than an inhabited dress-suit.  It is there he
acquires the art of being human.  It is there that he
comes to appreciate the priceless value of loyalty.
United States Presidents do not err seriously when
they hunt for ambassadors among men who have been
through the preparatory school from which "Jimmy"
Gerard holds a *magnum cum laude*.

My personal observations of Judge Gerard's
ambassadorial methods are based for the most part on his
career before the war.  But he has not departed from
them during the war.  Bismarck laid it down as a
maxim that an ambassador should not be "too popular"
at the court to which he was accredited.  From all one
can gather, "Jimmy" Gerard has not laid himself open
to that charge in Berlin since August, 1914.  Nobody
who knows him ever suspected for a moment that he
would.  Toadying is not in his lexicon, and
aggressively pro-American ambassadors are condemned in
advance to be disliked in Germany.  They do not fit
into the Teutonic diplomatic scheme.  If they are
inspired by such unconventional aspirations as those to
which Judge Gerard gave utterance in his "keynote
speech" to the American Luncheon Club of Berlin, it
is morally certain that their usefulness--to
Germany--is limited.

.. _`Mrs. Gerard.`:

.. figure:: images/img-104.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Mrs. Gerard.

   Mrs. Gerard.

The American Ambassador had been acting for
Great Britain in the enemy's country barely thirty-six
hours, when Sir Edward Goschen, Great Britain's
retiring Ambassador in Berlin, in his official report on
the knightly treatment accorded him and his staff
during their last hours on German soil, wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

"I should also like to mention the great assistance
rendered to us all by my American colleague, Mr. Gerard,
and his staff.  Undeterred by the hooting and
hisses with which he was often greeted by the mob on
entering and leaving the Embassy, His Excellency
came repeatedly to see me, to ask how he could help
us and to make arrangements for the safety of stranded
British subjects.  He extricated many of these from
extremely difficult situations at some personal risk to
himself and his calmness and *savoir faire* and his
firmness in dealing with the Imperial authorities gave full
assurance that the protection of British subjects and
interests could not have been left in more efficient and
able hands."

.. vspace:: 2

Nobody who ever knew "Jimmy" Gerard--that is
the affectionate way in which old friends and even
acquaintances of brief duration almost invariably
speak of him--would expect him to be anything in the
world except "undeterred" by the cowardly onslaughts
of the Berlin barbarians.  An expert swimmer, clever
amateur boxer, crack shot, volunteer soldier and
veteran of New York politics, "Jimmy" Gerard never
knew the meaning of the word fear, and the unfailing
courage with which he has "stood up" to the Kaiser's
Government throughout the various crises of the war
has been in full keeping with his virile temperament.

It is sometimes said that our diplomatic system, or
such as it is, reduces American ambassadors and
ministers to the status of messenger-boys, who have little
to do but to carry back and forth between their offices
and the foreign ministries to which they are accredited
the communications and instructions which Washington
sends them.  There could, of course, be no more
obtuse misconception.  Berlin, the capital of *Macht-politik*,
is particularly a capital in which everything
depends on the manner in which a foreign
Government's views are expressed or its wishes conveyed.
It has not been my privilege to be behind the
innocuous von Jagow's screen when "Jimmy" Gerard
strolled across the Wilhelms Platz to the ramshackle
old *Auswärtiges Amt*, to tell the German Government
what Washington thought of this, that or the other
of her recurring acts of lawlessness, but I vow that
von Jagow has got to know Gerard for just what he
is--an American from the top of his extraordinarily
well-shaped head to the soles of his feet.  The war has
brought us many blessings.  Among them we may
count high the fact that at the capital of the enemy of
all mankind we had, ready to speak up and to stand
up for us, in gladness or vicissitude, a real man.

No story of our Berlin war Embassy would be
complete without a reference to the Ambassador's
lieutenants, who, inspired by his own example of unruffled
good nature and limitless patience, capably played
their own trying parts.  At Judge Gerard's right hand
was Joseph Clark Grew, First Secretary, Harvard '02,
who, having shot wild beasts in the jungles of Asia,
would naturally not quail before Germans, no matter
how stormy the conditions.  Grew is one of the
exceptional young men in our diplomatic service, because,
he has weathered its snares unspoiled.  A distinguished
secretarial career at such important posts as Cairo,
Mexico City, Vienna, Petrograd and Berlin, in the
course of which he frequently acted as Ambassador or
Minister in charge, has left him, at thirty-five, as
natural, human and American as no doubt many Harvard
men are while still beneath the democratizing influence
of the campus elms.  I mention the preservation of
these qualities in Grew because they have been known
to disappear in many of our worthy young fellow
countrymen, jumped precipitately from college into
representative positions abroad, and who thenceforth
refused to brush shoulders with anything beneath the
rank of royalty.

In Roland B. Harvey and Albert Billings Ruddock,
respectively Second and Third Secretaries, Judge
Gerard was also the fortunate possessor of a couple of
adjutants who, in the presence of emergency, showed
that hustle and *bonhomie*, besides being American
talents, are diplomatic traits of no mean order.  To
preserve calm during the passport stampede of the
first week of August, 1914, was to exhibit the *finesse*
of a Disraeli.  Harvey and Ruddock are types of the
younger generation of American diplomatists who go
in for the career with a view to devoting themselves to
its serious side and from among whom, some day,
we ought to evolve a professional service worthy of
the name.  Neither of them ever struck me as being
afflicted by such emotions as filled the breast of a
certain well-known young man when promoted from
a European first-secretaryship to one of our important
ministerships in South America.  "Well, old boy," I
asked him, "what do you think about going to ----?"
"Oh," he rejoined, "I suppose it's all right, but it's a
h-- of a way from Paris!"

I must not end this chapter, which I hope is
recognizable as a poor expression of gratitude to all
concerned for many kindnesses rendered, without a
mention of the youngest, but by no means the least
meritorious member, of the Berlin war Embassy
family--Lanier Winslow, the Ambassador's ever-ebullient
private secretary.  War sobered Winslow so rapidly that
he committed matrimony before it was six months old.
I can hear him now, in the midst of the passport panic,
still imitating Frank Tinney or humming *Get Out and
Get Under*, just as Nero might have done if Rome had
known what rag-time was.  At an hour when it was
most needed, Lanier Winslow was a paragon of good
humor, and altogether, by common consent, a thing of
beauty and a joy forever.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AUGUST FOURTH`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium

   AUGUST FOURTH

.. vspace:: 2

Germany's war Juggernaut by the morning of
Monday, August 3, was in full, but incredibly
noiseless, motion.  I always knew it was a
magnificently well greased machine, geared for the maximum
of silence, but I felt sure it could not swing into
action without some reverberating creaks.  Yet Berlin
externally had been far more feverishly agitated on
Spring Parade days at recurring ends of May than
it was now, with "enemies all around" and that "war
on two fronts," which most Germans used to talk
about as something, *Gott sei Dank*, they would never
live to see.  One's male friends of military age--it
was now the second day of mobilization--kept on
melting away from hour to hour, but amid a complete lack
of fuss and bustle.  It almost seemed as if the army
had orders to rush to the fighting-line in gum-shoes
and that everything on wheels had rubber tires.  As
the Fatherland for years had armed in silence, so she
was going to battle.  We saw no seventeen-inch guns
rumbling to the front.  Those were Germany's
best-concealed weapons.  A military attaché of one of the
chief belligerents, who lived in Berlin for four years
preceding the war, has since confessed that he never
even knew of the "Big Berthas'" existence!

Germany girding for Armageddon was distinctly a
disappointment.  I entirely agreed with a portly
dowager from the Middle West, who, between frettings
about when she could get a train to the Dutch frontier,
continually expressed her chagrin at such "a poor
show."  She imagined, like a good many of the rest of us,
that mobilization in Germany would at the very least
see the Supreme War Lord bolting madly up and down
*Unter den Linden*, plunging silver spurs into a
foaming white charger and brandishing a glistening sword
in martial gestures as Caruso does when he plays
Radames in the finale of the second act of Aida.
Verdi's Egyptian epic is the Kaiser's favorite opera, and
he ought to have remembered, we thought, how a
conquering hero should demean himself at such a
blood-stirring hour.  At least Berlin, we hoped, would rise
to the occasion, and thunder and rock with the pomp
and circumstance of war's alarums.

There was amazingly little of anything of that sort.
The Kaiser instead automobiled around town in a
prosaic six-cylinder Mercedes, as he long was wont to do,
just keeping some rather important professional
engagements with the Chief of the General Staff, the
Imperial Chancellor and the Secretary of the Navy.  As
he flitted by, the huge crowds lined up on the curbstone
stiffened into attitudes, clicked heels, doffed hats and
"*hoched*."  The atmosphere was *stimmungsvoller* than
usual, for German phlegm had vanished along with high
prices on the Bourse, but the paroxysm of electric
excitement which I always fancied would usher in a
German war was unaccountably missing.  When you
mentioned that phenomenon to German friends, their
bosoms swelled with visible pride.  They were
immeasurably flattered by your indirect compliment that
the Kaiser's war establishment was so perfect a mechanism
that it could clear for action almost imperceptibly.

I had now deserted my home in suburban Wilmersdorf,
which I nicknamed the "District of Columbia,"
for in and all around it Berlin's American colony was
domiciled, and taken a room for the opening scenes
of the war drama in the Hotel Adlon.  With its broad
fronts on the Linden and Pariser Platz, and the
French, British and Russian Embassies within a
stone's throw to the right and left, the Adlon was
an ideal vantage point.  If there were to be
"demonstrations," I could feel sure, at so strategic a point,
of being in the thick of them.  Events of the succeeding
thirty-six hours were to show that I did not reckon
without my host on that score.

From window and balcony overlooking the Linden
I could now see or hear at intervals detachments of
Berlin regiments, Uhlans or Infantry of the Guard,
or a battery of light artillery, swinging along to
railway stations to entrain for the front.  Occasionally
battalions of provincial regiments, distinguishable
because the men did not tower into space like Berlin's
guardsmen, crossed town en route from one train to
another.  The men seemed happier than I had ever
before seen German soldiers.  That was the only
difference, or at least the principal one.  The prospect
of soon becoming cannon-fodder was evidently far
from depressing.  Most of them carried flowers
entwined round the rifle barrel or protruding from its
mouth.  Here and there a bouquet dangled rakishly
from a helmet.  Now and then a flaxen-haired Prussian
girl would step into the street and press a posey
into some trooper's grimy hand.  Yet, except for the
fact that the soldiers were all in field gray, (I wonder
when the Kaiser's military tailors began making those
millions of gray uniforms!) with even their familiar
spiked headpiece masked in canvas of the same
hue, the Kaiser's fighting men marching off to
battle might have been carrying out a workaday
route-march.  Then, suddenly, a company or a whole
battalion would break into song, and the crowd,
trailing alongside the bass-drum of the band, just as in
peace times, would take up the refrain, and presently
half-a-mile of *Unter den Linden* was echoing with
*Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles*, and I knew that
the Fatherland was at war.

At the railway stations of Berlin and countless other
German towns and cities at that hour heart-rending
little tragedies were being enacted, as fathers, mothers,
wives, sisters and sweethearts bade a long farewell to
the beloved in gray.  Only rarely did some man in
uniform himself surrender to the emotions of the
moment.  These swarthy young Germans, with fifty or
sixty pounds of impedimenta strapped round them,
were endowed with Spartan stolidity now, and
smilingly buoyed up the drooping spirits of the kith and
kin they were leaving behind.  "*Es wird schon gut,
Mütterchen!  Es wird schon gut!*" (It will be all
right, mother dear!  It will be all right!)  Thus they
returned comfort for tears.  *"Nicht unterliegen!
Besser nicht zurückkehren!*" (Don't be beaten!  Better
not come back at all!) was the good-by greeting blown
with the final kisses as many a trainload of embryonic
heroes faded slowly from sight beneath the station's
gaping archway.  Germany was now indubitably
convinced that its war was war in a holy cause.  The
time had come for the Fatherland to rise to the
majesty of a great hour.  "*Auf wiedersehen!*" sang the
country to the army.  But if there was to be no
reunion, the army must go down fighting to the last
gasp for *unsere gerechte Sache*, manfully, tirelessly,
ruthlessly, till victory was enforced.  Such were the
inspiring thoughts amid which the boys in field gray
trooped off to die for Kaiser and Empire.

The outstanding event of August 3 was the
publication of the German Government's famous apologia
for the war, the so-called "White Paper" officially
described as "Memorandum and Documents in Relation
to the Outbreak of the War."  Early in the afternoon
a telephone message arrived for me at the Adlon to
the effect that if I would call at the Press Bureau of the
Foreign Office at five o'clock, *Legationsrat* Heilbron,
one of Hammann's lieutenants whom I had known for
many years, would be glad to deliver me an advance
copy for special transmission to London and New
York.  I lay great stress on the fact that up to
sun-down of August 3, 1914, I continued to be *persona
gratissima* with the Imperial German Government.  It
was true that one of the young Foreign Office cubs
told off to censor press cablegrams at the Main
Telegraph Office had, during the preceding three days,
expressed annoyance with what he considered my
eagerness to "go into details," but *Legationsrat*
Heilbron's invitation to fetch the "White Paper" was
gratifying evidence that my relations with the powers-that-be
were still "correct," even if not cordial.  I was
glad of that, because there was constantly in my mind
the desire to remain in Germany, whatever happened,
with a front-row seat for the big show.  At the
appointed hour I presented myself in Herr Heilbron's
room on the ground floor of the Wilhelmstrasse front
of the Foreign Office.  He greeted me with old-time
courtesy, though I found his demeanor perceptibly
depressed.  He handed me a copy of the *Denkschrift*,
and, when I begged him for a second one, he complied
with a gracious *bitte sehr*.

A London colleague had already intimated to me
that the Imperial Chancellor, desiring to place the
German case promptly and fully before the British and
American publics, would "do his best" with the
military authorities who were now in supreme control of
the postal telegraph and cable lines to induce them to
allow London and New York correspondents to file
exhaustive "stories" on the White Paper.  As I was
sure, however, that Reuter's Agency for England and
the Associated Press for America would be handling
the affair at great length, my treatment of it was
confined, as was usual under such circumstances, to
telegraphing a brief introductory summary.

What struck me instantly as the hall-marks of the
German publication were its treatment of the war as
an exclusively Russian-provoked Russo-German affair
and its brazenly *ex-parté* character--how *ex-parté* I
did not fully realize till I read England's White
Paper a week later.  Sir Edward Grey laid his cards on
the table, without marginal notes or comment of any
kind, and asked the world to pass judgment.  Doctor
von Bethmann Hollweg's White Paper began with a
lengthy plea of justification and ended with quotation
of such communications between the Kaiser's Government
and its ambassadors and between the German
Emperor and the Czar as would most plausibly
support the Fatherland's case for war.  It was manifestly
a biased and incomplete record.  It was in fact a
doctored record, and suggested that its authors had
Bismarck's mutilation of the Ems telegram in mind as a
precedent, in emulation of which no German
Government could possibly go wrong.

Although compiled to include events up to August
1, the German White Paper was silent as the grave
in regard to Belgium and the negotiations with the
Government of Great Britain.  Issued on the night of
August 3, when hundreds of thousands of German
troops were waiting at Aix-la-Chapelle for the great
assault on Liége--if, indeed, at that hour they were
not already across the Belgian frontier--this sacred
brief designed to establish the Fatherland's case at the
bar of world opinion had no single word to say on
what was destined to be almost the supreme issue of
the war.  It was the last word in Imperial German
deception.  If the German public had known that Sir
Edward Grey on July 30 had already "warned Prince
Lichnowsky that Germany must not count upon our
standing aside in all circumstances," I imagine its
bitterness a few nights later, when the fable of England's
"treacherous intervention" was sprung upon the
deluded Fatherland, might have been less barbaric in its
intensity.

Next to the omission of all reference to what Sir
Edward Grey called Germany's "infamous proposal"
for the purchase of British neutrality--a pledge not
to despoil France of European territory if England
would stand with folded arms while Germany violated
Belgium and ravished the French Colonial
Empire--the striking feature of the Berlin White Paper was the
admission of German-Austrian complicity in the
humiliation of Serbia.  The Foreign Office, as I have
previously explained, had zealously affirmed Germany's
entire detachment from Austria's programme for
avenging Serajevo.  What did the White Paper now
tell us?  That

.. vspace:: 2

"Austria had to admit that it would not be consistent
either with the dignity or the self-preservation of
the Monarchy to look on longer at the operations on
the other side of the border without taking action....
*We were able to assure our ally most heartily
of our agreement with her view of the situation, and
to assure her that any action she might consider it
necessary to take in order to put an end to the
movement in Servia directed against the existence of the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy would receive our
approval*.  We were fully aware, in this connection, that
warlike moves on the part of Austria-Hungary against
Servia would bring Russia into the question, and
might draw us into a war in accordance with our
duties as an ally."

.. vspace:: 2

The historic and ineffaceable fact is that Austria--wabbly,
invertebrate Austria, which would even to-day,
but for Germany, lay prostrate and vanquished--never
made a solitary move in the whole plot to coerce
Serbia without the full concurrence of the big brother at
Berlin.  It would be an insult to the intelligence of
German diplomacy, stupid as it is, to imagine that the
Kaiser's Government sat mute, unconsulted and
nonchalant, while Austria worked out a scheme certain,
as the Germans themselves admit in their White Paper,
to plunge Europe into war.

It was my privilege on arriving in the United States
on August 22, to furnish the *New York Times* with
the first copy of the German White Paper to reach the
American public.  In preparing a prefatory note to
accompany the verbatim translation published in next
day's paper, I selected the paragraph above quoted as
*primâ-facie* evidence that the German claim of
non-collusion with Austria is subterfuge--to give it the
longer and less unparliamentary term.

The German White Paper was prepared formally
for the information of the Reichstag, which was
summoned to meet on Tuesday, August 4 of imperishable
memory, for the purpose of voting $325,000,000 of
initial war credits.  Paris was not won in the expected
six weeks, and the Reichstag has voted $7,500,000,000
of war credits up to this writing (September 1, 1915),
with melancholy promise of still more to come.  The
twenty-four hours preceding the war sitting had not
been eventless.  Monsieur Sverbieff and the staff of
the Russian Embassy were the victims of gross insults
from the mob in *Unter den Linden*, as they left their
headquarters in automobiles for the railway station.
Mounted police were present to "keep order," but their
"vigilance" did not deter German men and youths from
spitting in the faces of the Czar's representatives,
belaboring them with walking-sticks and umbrellas, and
offering rowdy indignities to the women of the
ambassadorial party.  In front of the French Embassy
menacing crowds stood throughout the day and night,
waiting for a chance to exhibit German patriotism at
Monsieur Cambon's expense.  When Señor Polê de
Bernábe, the Spanish Ambassador, who was calling to
arrange to take over the representation of France
during the war, made his appearance, the mob mistook him
for Cambon and was just prevented in the nick of time
from assaulting the Spaniard.  How the French
Embassy finally got away from Germany, under
circumstances which would have shamed a Fiji Island
government, was later related for the benefit of posterity
in the French *Yellow Book*.  When I read it months
later, I remembered my first German teacher in
Berlin, a noblewoman, once telling me, when I asked her
how to say "gentleman" in German: "There is no such
thing as a 'gentleman' in the German language."  That
was paraphrased to me by another German on a later
occasion, when, discussing the ability of German
science, so well demonstrated during this war, to devise
a substitute for almost anything, he remarked: "The
only thing we can't make is a gentleman, because we
never had a proper analysis of the necessary
ingredients."  The Germans, in their communicative
moments, always used to acknowledge that Bismarck was
right when he called them "a nation of
house-servants."  It is impressively exemplified on their stage,
which boasts the finest character actors imaginable;
but when a German player essays to portray the
gentleman, he is grotesque.  He gropes helplessly in a
strange and unexplored realm.

On the day before the war session of the Reichstag,
the Kaiser, more conscious than ever now of his
partnership with Deity, ordained Wednesday, August 5, as
a day of universal prayer for the success of German
arms.  Soon after its proclamation, William II,
thunderously acclaimed, appeared in *Unter den Linden*
intermittently, en route to conference with high officers
of state.  He was clad, like every German soldier one
now saw, in field-gray, and ready, one heard, to leave
for the front at a moment's notice, to take up his post,
assigned him by Hohenzollern warrior traditions, on
the battlefield in the midst of his loyal legions.
Mobilization was now in full swing, and more and more
troops were in evidence, crossing town to railway
stations from which they were to be transported east or
west, as the Staff's emergencies required.  A week
before, all these soldiers were in Prussian blue.  They
were gray now, from head to foot, millions of them.
Obviously the clothing department of the army had
not been taken by "surprise" by the cruel war "forced"
on pacific Germany.  Three million uniforms can not
be turned out in a whole summer--even in Germany.
I thought of this, as gray streams, far into the evening,
kept pouring through Berlin, and I thought what a
marvelously happy selection that peculiar shade of
drab-gray, of almost dust-like invisibility from afar,
was for field purposes.  To shoot at lines no more
colorful than that, it seemed to me, would be like
banging away at the horizon itself....

History, I suppose, will date Armageddon from
August 1, when the German army and navy were
mobilized, or perhaps from August 2, when Germany
claims that Russia and France fired the first miscreant
shots.  But the red-letter day of the World Massacre's
opening week was beyond all question Tuesday,
August 4, which began with the war sitting of the
Reichstag and ended with England's declaration of war on
Germany.  It was destined to be especially big with
import for me--of vital import, as events hanging over
my unsuspecting head were speedily to reveal.

At midday, two hours before the session of the
Reichstag in its own chamber, Parliament was
"opened" by the Kaiser personally in the celebrated
White Hall of the Royal Castle.  I had applied for
admission after the few available press tickets were
already exhausted, but it was not difficult for me to
visualize the scene.  I had been in the White Hall
on several memorable occasions in the past--during
the visit of King Edward VII in February, 1909, at
a brilliant State banquet and at the ball which
followed; at the wedding of the Emperor's daughter, "the
sunshine of my House," Princess Victoria Luise, and
Duke Ernest August of Brunswick, in May, 1913;
and a month later during the Silver Jubilee celebration
of the Kaiser's reign, when our own Mr. Carnegie
showered plaudits on the Prince of the world's peace.
Tower, of *The World* and *Daily News*, was lucky
enough to secure a ticket to the Castle ceremonial, and
he was bubbling over with excitement at having been
privileged to participate in so memorable a function.
My old friend, Günther Thomas, late of the
*Newyorker-Staatszeitung*, now joyous in the prospect of
joining the German Press Bureau's war staff, came
back from the Castle almost pitying me for not
having been there.  "Wile, I tell you," I can hear him
saying now, "it was beautiful, simply beautiful!  You
missed it!  It was enough to make one cry!"  Thomas
lived in New York seventeen years, but he returned
to Germany a more devout Prussian than ever, as a
man ought to be whose father fell gloriously at
Königgrätz.

The description furnished by my English and
Prussian colleagues evidently did not exaggerate the
splendor and impressiveness of the scene at the White Hall.
The Kaiser, in field-general's gray, entered, escorting
the Empress.  He was solemn, but not anxious-looking.
Around the marble-pillared chamber, where only
fifteen months before I had seen the Czar and George
V of England tripping the minuet with German
princesses as the Kaiser's honored guests, were grouped
the first men of the Empire.  In the places of distinction,
closest to the canopied throne, each according to
his Court rank, stood the Imperial Chancellor, General
von Moltke, Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz and a score
of other eminent officers of the civil, naval and
military governments.  Among the foreign ambassadors
only the representatives of Russia and France were
missing from their old-time places.  Mr. Gerard,
modest and retiring as always, amid the glitter of gold
lace and brass buttons flashing on all sides, cut a more
than ever self-effacing figure in his diplomatic
uniform--the plain evening dress of an American gentleman.

The Kaiser read his War Speech, which he held in
his right hand, while the left firmly gripped his
sword-hilt.  Beginning in a quiet tone, His Majesty's voice
appreciably rose in intensity and volume as he
approached the kernel of his message which told how
"with a heavy heart I have been compelled to mobilize
my army against a neighbor with whom it has fought
side by side on so many fields of battle."  The Imperial
Russian Government, William II went on to say,
"yielding to the pressure of an insatiable nationalism,
has taken sides with a State which by encouraging
criminal attacks has brought on the evil of war."  That
France, also, the Kaiser continued, "placed herself on
the side of our enemies could not surprise us.  Too
often have our efforts to arrive at friendlier relations
with the French Republic come in collision with old
hopes and ancient malice."  And when the Kaiser had
ended, with an invitation to "the leaders of the
different parties of the Reichstag" (there were no Socialists
present) "to come forward and lay their hands in mine
as a pledge," the White Hall reverberated with
applause which must have seemed almost indecorous in
so august an apartment, but which, no doubt, rang
true.  It was then, I suppose, that Thomas felt like
weeping, and so should I, perhaps, had I been there.
The Kaiser, his handshaking-bee over, strode from the
scene amid an awesome silence, and the statesmen, the
generals and the admirals went their respective ways.
All was now in readiness for the real Reichstag
session, in which words of deathless significance were
to fall from the Chancellor's lips.

We were accustomed to sardine-box conditions in
the always overcrowded press gallery of the Reichstag
on "great days," but to-day we were piled on top of
one another in closer formation even than a Prussian
infantry platoon in the charge.  Familiar faces were
missing.  Comert, of *Le Temps*, Caro, of *Le Matin*,
and Bonnefon, of *Le Figaro*, were not there.  They
had escaped, we were glad to hear, by one of the very
last trains across the French frontier.  Löwenton (a
brother of Madame Nazimoff), Grossmann, Markoff
and Melnikoff, our long-time Russian colleagues, were
absent, too.  Had they gained Wirballen in time, we
wondered, or were they languishing in Spandau?

Doctor Paul Goldmann, *doyén* of our Berlin corps,
was in his accustomed seat, beaming consciously, as
became, at such an hour, the correspondent-in-chief of
the great allied Vienna *Neue Freie Presse*.  The
British and American contingents were on hand in force.
Never had we waited for a *Kanzlerrede* in such electric
expectancy.  "Copy" in plenty, such as none of us had
ever telegraphed before, was about to be made.
Goldmann, a Foreign Office favorite, as well as the
all-around most popular foreign journalist in Berlin, may
have had an advance hint what was coming, as he
frequently did, but to the vast majority of us--British,
American, Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Swiss, Spanish
and Danish, sandwiched there in the *Pressloge* so
closely that we could hear, but not move--I am certain
that the momentous words and extraordinary scenes
about to ensue came as a staggering revelation.

Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg, who is flattered
when told that he looks like Abraham Lincoln--the
resemblance ends there--began speaking at three-fifteen
o'clock.  Gaunt and fatigued, he tugged nervously at
the portfolio of documents on the desk in front of him
during the brief introductory remarks of the President
of the House, the patriarchal, white-bearded Doctor
Kaempf.  The Chancellor's manner gave no indication
that before he resumed his seat he would rise to
heights of oratorical fire of which no one ever thought
that "incarnation of passionate doctrinarianism"
capable.  What he said is known to all the world now;
how, in Bismarckian accents, he thundered that "we
are in a state of self-defense and necessity knows no
law!"  How he confessed that "our troops, which have
already occupied Luxemburg, may perhaps already
have set foot on Belgian territory."  How he
acknowledged, in a succeeding phrase, to Germany's
eternal guilt, that "that violates international
law."  How he proclaimed the amazing doctrine that,
confronted by such emergencies as Germany now was,
she had but one duty--"to hack her way through, even
though--I say it quite frankly--we are doing wrong!"  Our
heads, I think, fairly swam as the terrible
portent of these words sank into our consciousness.  "Our
troops may perhaps already have set foot on Belgian
soil."  That meant one thing, with absolute certainty.
It denoted war with England.  Trifles have a habit at
such moments of lodging themselves firmly in one's
mind; and I remember distinctly how, when I heard
Bethmann Hollweg fling that challenge forth, I leaned
over impulsively to my Swedish friend, Siosteen, of
the *Goteborg Tidningen*, and whispered: "That settles
it.  England's in it now, too."  Siosteen nods an
excited assent.  It is in the midst of one of the
frequent intervals in which the House, floor and
galleries alike, is now venting its impassioned approval
of the Chancellor's words.  I had heard Bülow and
Bebel and Bethmann Hollweg himself, times innumerable,
set the Reichstag rocking with fervid demonstrations
of approval or hostility, but never has it throbbed
with such life as to-day.  It is the incarnation of the
inflamed war spirit of the land.  The more defiant the
Chancellor's diction, the more fervid the applause it
evokes.  "*Sehr richtig!  Sehr richtig!*" the House
shrieks back at him in chorus as he details, step by
step, how Germany has been "forced" to draw her
terrible sword to beat back the "Russian mobilization
menace," how she has tried and failed to bargain with
England and Belgium, how she has kept the dogs of
war chained to the last, and only released them now
when destruction, imminent and certain, is upon her.

All eyes in the Press Gallery are riveted on the
broad left arc of the floor usurped by the one hundred
and eleven Social Democratic deputies of the House
of three hundred and ninety-seven members.  For
the first time in German history their cheers are
mingling with those of other parties in support of a
Government policy.  That, after the Belgian revelation,
is beyond all question the dominating feature of a
scene tremendous with meaning in countless respects.
There is nothing perfunctory about the "Reds'"
enthusiasm; that is plain.  It is real, spontaneous,
universal.  No man of them keeps his seat.  All are on
their feet, succumbing to the engulfing magnitude
of the moment.  That, it instantly occurs to us, means
much to Germany at such an hour.  It means that
the hope which more than one of the Fatherland's
prospective foes in years gone by has fondly
cherished, of Socialist revolt in the hour of Germany's
peril, was illusory hope.  The Chancellor knows what
it means.  "Our army is in the field!" he declares,
trembling with emotion.  "Our fleet is ready for
battle!  The whole German nation stands behind them!"  As
one man, the entire Reichstag now rises, shouting
its approval of these historic words in tones of
frenzied exaltation.  For two full minutes pandemonium
reigns unchecked.  Bethmann Hollweg is turning to
the Social Democrats.  His fist is clenched and he
brandishes it in their direction--not in anger this time,
but in triumph--and, as if he were proclaiming the
proud sentiment for all the world to hear, he exclaims,
at the top of his voice, "Yea, the whole nation!"  Thus
was Armageddon born.  Germany, all present knew,
would be at war before another sun had gone down,
not only with Russia and France, but with England,
and, of course, with Belgium, too.

"Supposing the Belgians resist?" I asked Schmidt,
of the *B. Z. am Mittag*, a German colleague whom I
once christened Berlin's "star" reporter, as we
wandered, thinking hard, back to *Unter den Linden*.

"Resist?" he replied, half pitying the feeble-mindedness
which prompted such a question.  "We shall
simply spill them into the ocean."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WAR REACHES ME`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium

   THE WAR REACHES ME

.. vspace:: 2

"We are not barbarians, my dear Wile!"
exclaimed Günther Thomas, when we met in the
Adlon after the Reichstag sitting, in reply to my query
about the safety of correspondents of English
newspapers, now that Germany was about to annex Great
Britain as an enemy in addition to Russia and France.
I had found Thomas during ten years of acquaintance
the best-informed German journalist I ever knew.  His
long residence in Park Row had grafted a "news nose"
on him, which, coupled with a profound knowledge
of the history and present-day undercurrents of his
own country, made him an ideal and valuable
colleague.  I treasure my relations with him in grateful
recollection.  One required occasionally to dilute both
his news and views with a strong solution of
skepticism, for Thomas was both a Prussian patriot and
representative of Mr. Ridder's *New-Yorker Staatszeitung*.
But nine times out of ten his counsel and
information were like Cæsar's wife.  His assurance to me
on the evening of August 4, 1914, that his countrymen
"were not barbarians" was the most misleading piece
of news he ever supplied me.

The imminence of hostilities with England revived
irresistibly in my mind the qualms which had filled the
Germans for a week previous on this very point.
"What will the English do?" was the question they
constantly flung at any one they thought likely to be
able to answer it intelligently.  It was the thing which
gave themselves the most anxious heart-searching.
The "war on two fronts," the purely Continental
affair with the Dual Alliance, filled the average German
with no concern.  The Kaiser's military machine had
been constructed to deal with France and Russia
combined, and no German ever for a moment doubted its
ability to do so.  Events of the past year, I think it
may fairly be said, have justified that confidence, for
I suppose no expert anywhere in the world doubts
but that for the presence of British sea power on
France and Russia's side, the German eagle would in
all probability now be screaming in triumph over
Paris and Petrograd.  But with the British "in,"
dozens of Germans confessed, as my own ears can bear
testimony, their case was "hopeless."  Few of them
were persuaded that Germany could, in Bismarck's
picturesque phrase, "deal with the British Navy in
Paris."  While the prospect of having to fight France and
Russia did not disturb the Germans, the possibility of
having to battle with Britain simultaneously filled
them with undisguised alarm.  They would not admit
it now, but in the fading hours of July, 1914, and the
opening days of August, it was a nightmare which
pressed down so heavily upon their consciousness that
they never spoke of it except in accents of dread.  The
Hate cult had not yet toppled their reason.  Lissauer's
demoniacal ballad was still unwritten.  In those
anguished moments they talked of England, when not in
terms of outright fear, as the "brother nation" of
kindred blood and ideals with whom war was unthinkable
because it would be nothing short of "civil
war."  Doctor Hecksher, a well-known National Liberal
member of the Reichstag and *Stimmungsmacher*
(henchman) of the Foreign Office, busily assured
English newspaper correspondents of the "horror"
with which the mere idea of conflict with England
filled the German soul.  I thought it queer that one of
my last dispatches to London, before Anglo-German
telegraphic communication snapped, containing Doctor
Hecksher's views and mentioning him by name, was
ruthlessly censored in Berlin and returned to me as
untransmissible.  That meant one of two things--that
Doctor Hecksher was wrong in attributing to
Germany overweening desires of peace with England, or
that it was unwise to let me indicate that Teuton knees
were quaking at the prospect of war with her.
Certainly lachrymose expressions of hope that England
would not feel called upon to "intervene" in Germany's
"just quarrel" with her neighbors were common to the
point of universality in Berlin on the eve of the clash.
They were born of inherent conviction that German
aspirations of imposing Hohenzollern hegemony on
the Continent must and would be wrecked by England's
adherence to her century-old policy of opposing
so vital a disturbance in the balance of European power.

Uppermost in my mind just now was how to
transmit at least the vital passages of the Chancellor's
"Necessity knows no law speech" to *The Daily Mail*.
A merely informative bulletin about it to the editor
had just been brought back from the Main Telegraph
Office by my faithful young German secretary, Arthur
Schrape, with the message that "no more dispatches to
England are being accepted."  That was about six
o'clock P.M., at least three hours before Berlin or the
world generally had any knowledge that England and
Germany were actually at grips.  Communication with
the United States, Schrape had been told, was still
open, so the most natural thing in the world was to
attempt to get Bethmann Hollweg's crucial statements
to London by way of New York.  Then followed a
decision on my part which was to prove my undoing--I
committed the diabolical and treasonable crime of
calling up my friend and colleague, Mackenzie, the
able correspondent of the *London Times* (like my own
paper, *The Daily Mail*, the property of Lord
Northcliffe), and discussing with him the feasibility of
cabling the New York representatives of our respective
papers to relay to London the news which we were
unable to send directly from Berlin.  We were
telephoning in German, of course, as every one for three
days past had been required to do, and we realized
that practically every conversation, especially between
highly suspicious characters like long-accredited Berlin
newspaper correspondents, was being overheard by
some spy with an ear glued to a receiver.  Knowing all
this perfectly well, we talked with entire freedom of our
nefarious scheme for undermining the safety of the
German Empire.  Finally it was agreed that Mackenzie
should come to my rooms in the Adlon and arrange with
me there the text of a cablegram to New York which
should bottle up the German fleet, encircle the Crown
Prince's army and generally wreck the Kaiser's plans
for subjugating Europe, even before the ink on the
General Staff's plans was dry.  We agreed that the
surest way of striking this blow for England was to
cable to New York a message whose veiled language
would disclose to even the most stupid eye that it
concealed a plot of heinous proportions.  It was decided
that we should concoct in cable language a cablegram
reading like this:

.. vspace:: 2

"Chancellor just delivered importantest speech
Reichstag.  As communication England unlonger
possible suggest your cabling Newyorks news."

.. vspace:: 2

Mackenzie, accompanied by his assistant, Jelf, now a
volunteer-officer in Kitchener's army, arrived at the
Adlon; we canvassed the New York suggestion in
detail--amid such secrecy that Schrape, a very
keen-eared German of twenty-two and a patriot, who is also
serving his Kaiser and Empire in field-gray, was
permitted to participate in our deliberations.  Then we
came to the most treacherous decision of all, viz., not
to carry out our grandiose project for confounding
the German War Party's plot.  But we had gone far
enough.  We were discovered.  Our machinations,
though we knew it not, were seen through, our guns
were spiked, and all that remained was to put us, as
soon as possible, where we could do no further harm.
Any number of Frenchmen and Russians were already
in the same place.

Carelessly leaving behind me my typewriting-machine,
fifty-pfennig map of the North Sea, copies of
my preceding week's cablegrams, scissors, paste-pot,
carbon-paper, the latest Berlin newspapers, and other
telltale emblems of my infamy, I went to the American
Embassy to discuss the latest and obviously greatest
turn of the war kaleidoscope with Judge Gerard.
There were a thousand and one questions to level at
him.  Was it true that Sir Edward Goschen had
already asked him to take charge of Great Britain's
interests?  What would panic-stricken American war
refugees do now, with British warships blockading the
German coasts?  Would it any longer be safe in
Berlin for our people to talk their own language in public?
Would the United States Government be making any
declaration of neutrality, or something of that sort, to
the German Government?  Was the Embassy still in
direct communication with Washington?  Could it
facilitate the transmission of our news-cablegrams to
New York or Chicago?  These were the things the
journalistic brethren *en masse* were anxious to
know--and I recall vividly that the Ambassador and his
staff, despite a week of worries unprecedented, were
still smiling and managing to reply to every question,
however abstract or unanswerable, with invincible
equanimity.  I have since heard that there were fellow
citizens who found Gerard, Grew, Harvey and
Ruddock "inattentive."  I suppose they were the patriots
who couldn't understand why local checks on the First
National Bank of Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania,
"weren't good" at the Embassy, and who were
"peeved" because the Ambassador couldn't tell them
why Uncle Sam hadn't already started a fleet of
dreadnoughts and liners-*de-luxe* to Hamburg and
Bremen to rescue his stranded tourist family.  Or one of
the complainants, who was "going to write to Bryan"
about our "inefficient diplomatic service," may have
been that plutocratic dame from Boston who
demanded that Gerard should at least be able to
commandeer "a special train" for the Americans, even if
every military line in all Germany was at that hour
choked with troop-transports.  And yet we Yankees
rank in effete Europe as a cool-headed and common-sense race!

What dominated my thoughts, of course, was
whether, after all, I was now to be allowed to remain
in Germany.  My desire to do so was never stronger--to
sit on the edge of history in the making at such a
moment.  Judge Gerard resolved my doubts.  I should
"cheer up" and hope for the best.  I tarried for a
moment longer, to chat over the day's overwhelming
developments with Mrs. Gerard, with whom I had not
had my usual daily cup of tea and war conference.
We wondered how long it would be before a formal
declaration of war between England and Germany
would be declared.  I spoke of my pleasurable
anticipation at being permitted to live through the mighty
days ahead of us in Berlin with herself and the
Ambassador.  They would be experiences worthy of
transmission to grandchildren.  We agreed we should be
privileged mortals, in a way, to be vouchsafed so
tremendous an opportunity.  I commented on
Mrs. Gerard's amazing lack of fatigue after four days and
nights of trials and tribulations with terror-stricken
compatriots.  She spoke of the lively satisfaction it
had given her to be of service of so homely and
homespun a character, and remarked that young Mrs. Ruddock
had been "a perfect brick" through it all, an
*aide-de-camp* whom a field-marshal might have envied....

Eight o'clock.  Dusk had just fallen as I quitted the
Embassy.  A trio of servants clustered at the entrance
was examining in the dim light a *Tageblatt* "Extra"
which, they said, was just out.  I fairly snatched at it.
This is what it said:

::

   +------------------------------------------------+
   |                                                |
   |  ENGLAND BREAKS OFF DIPLOMATIC                 |
   |  RELATIONS WITH GERMANY                        |
   |                                                |
   |  The English Ambassador in Berlin, Sir         |
   |  Edward Goschen, appeared this evening in      |
   |  the German Foreign Office and demanded his    |
   |  passports.  That denotes, in all probability, |
   |  war with England!                             |
   |                                                |
   +------------------------------------------------+

I ought not to have been surprised, yet I was shocked.
So England now, at last and really, was "in it."  The
realization was almost numbing.  I stood
reading and reading the *Extrablatt*, over and over again.
"Joe" Grew came hurrying up in his automobile.  He,
too, had the *Tageblatt* in his hand.  He was hastening
to tell the Ambassador the news.  It was true, Grew
said, beyond any doubt.  Ye Gods!  What next?  The
world's coming to an end, one thought, was about all
there was left.  And that seemed nearer at hand than
any of us ever felt it before.

.. _`Berlin Mob Attacking British Embassy on the night of Aug. 4, 1914. (Drawn for the Illustrated London News from a description by the author.)`:

.. figure:: images/img-134.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Berlin Mob Attacking British Embassy on the night of Aug. 4, 1914. (Drawn for the Illustrated London News from a description by the author.)

   Berlin Mob Attacking British Embassy on the night of Aug. 4, 1914. (Drawn for the Illustrated London News from a description by the author.)

I started now for the English Embassy, across the
Wilhelms Platz and down the Wilhelmstrasse four or
five blocks to the north.  From afar I heard the rumble
of a mob, not a singing cheering mob such as had been
turning Berlin into bedlam for a week before, but a
mob obviously bent on more serious business.  I
reached the Behrenstrasse, two hundred feet away
from the English Embassy.  Though quite dark, I
could see plainly what was happening.  The Embassy
was besieged by a shouting throng, yelling so savagely
that its words were not distinguishable.  They were
not chanting *Rule, Britannia!*  I was sure of that.
It was imprecations, inarticulate but ferocious beyond
description, which they were muttering.  I saw things
hurtling toward the windows.  From the crash of
glass which presently ensued, I knew they were hitting
their mark.  The fusillade increased in violence.
When there would be a particularly loud crash, it
would be followed by a fiendish roar of glee.  The
street was crammed from curb to curb.  Many women
were among the demonstrators.  A mounted policeman
or two could be seen making no very vigorous effort to
interfere with the riot.  It was no place for an
Englishman, or anybody who, being smooth-shaven, was
usually mistaken for one in Berlin.  I did not dream of
trying to run the blockade.  The rear, or Wilhelmstrasse,
entrance of the Adlon adjoins the Embassy.
It would be easy to gain access to the hotel that way.
I tried the door.  It was locked.  I rang.  One of the
light-blue uniformed page-boys came, peered through
the glass, recognized me and fled without letting me
in.  I rang again.  No one came.  Wilhelmstrasse now
was roaring with the mob's rage.  Ambassador
Goschen's subsequent report on this classic manifestation
of *Kultur* described how he and his staff, seated
in the front drawing-room of the Embassy, narrowly
escaped being stoned to death by missiles which now
flew thick and fast through every paneless window of
the building.

.. _`Extra Edition of *Berliner Tageblatt* Announcing War With England`:

.. figure:: images/img-135.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Extra Edition of *Berliner Tageblatt* Announcing War With England

   Extra Edition of *Berliner Tageblatt* Announcing War With England

I hailed a passing horse-cab and told the driver to
make for the Adlon by the circuitous route of the
Voss-strasse, Königgrätzer-strasse and Brandenburg
Gate.  Ten minutes later I reached the hotel.  I stepped
to the desk and asked for Herr Adlon, Sr., or Louis
Adlon, his son; said the Wilhelmstrasse mob might
soon decide to hold an overflow meeting and attack
the hotel premises, and that certain precautionary
measures might be useful.  The lobby of the hotel, I
noticed, was rapidly filling up with American war
refugees, of whom there was to be a meeting.  I
recognized a dozen or more anxious compatriots whom I
had seen encamped at the Embassy during the
preceding two or three days.  The Ambassador was
expected, they said, and they were hoping and praying
to hear from him that the Government had at last
effected adequate rescue arrangements.  The frock-coated
menial at the hotel desk, only a few hours previous
servility itself, was unusually curt when I asked
where the Adlons were.  I did not think of it at the
time, but his rudeness assumed its proper importance
in the scheme of things as they later developed.  I
stopped to chat with Ambassador Gerard, who had just
strolled in.  Then I met another acquaintance, Count
von Oppersdorff, the urbane Silesian Roman Catholic
political leader, a familiar and welcome figure on our
Berlin golf links.  "So England has come in,"
remarked the Count.  "Yes," I rejoined, "you hardly
expected her to keep out, did you?"  "Well," said
Oppersdorff, with a meaningful look in his mild blue
eye, "there will be many surprises--many surprises."  That
was a war prophecy which has come true.

I dashed up to my room to write a dispatch to *The
Times* in New York and *The Tribune* in Chicago,
which should tell briefly of the outbreak of war between
England and Germany, and of the extraordinary
scenes in front of His Britannic Majesty's embassy.
A *Lokal-Anzeiger* "extra" was now available, with this
"cooked" summary of the events which had
precipitated the climacteric decision:

::

   +----------------------------------------------------+
   |                                                    |
   |  ENGLAND HAS DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY!              |
   |                                                    |
   |  OFFICIAL REPORT.                                  |
   |                                                    |
   |  This afternoon, shortly after the speech of       |
   |  the Imperial Chancellor, in which the offense     |
   |  against international law involved in our         |
   |  setting foot on Belgian territory was frankly     |
   |  acknowledged and the will of the German Empire    |
   |  to make good the consequences was affirmed,       |
   |  the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen,       |
   |  appeared in the Reichstag to convey to            |
   |  Foreign Secretary von Jagow a communication       |
   |  from his Government.  In this communication       |
   |  the German Government was asked to make an        |
   |  immediate reply to the question whether it could  |
   |  give the assurance that no violation of Belgian   |
   |  neutrality would take place.  The Foreign         |
   |  Secretary forthwith replied that this was not     |
   |  possible, and again explained the reasons which   |
   |  compel Germany to secure herself against an       |
   |  attack by the French army across Belgian soil.    |
   |  Shortly after seven o'clock the British           |
   |  Ambassador appeared at the Foreign Office to      |
   |  declare war and demand his passports.             |
   |                                                    |
   |  We are informed that the German Government        |
   |  has placed military necessities before all        |
   |  other considerations, notwithstanding that it     |
   |  had, in consequence thereof, to reckon that       |
   |  either ground or pretext for intervention would   |
   |  be given to the English Government.               |
   |                                                    |
   +----------------------------------------------------+

.. vspace:: 2

It was this news--reiterating by the printed word
what the Chancellor had unblushingly announced in the
Reichstag: that military necessities had taken
precedence of "all other considerations," including
honor--which aroused the ferocity of the mob and incited it,
amid mad maledictions on "perfidious Albion," to vent
its fury by attempting to wreck the English Embassy.
This German "official report," moreover, besides
distorting the facts so as to place the onus for the
outbreak of hostilities exclusively upon England,
deliberately misstated the object of Sir Edward Goschen's
visit to the Foreign Office.  As we know from his
famous dispatch on the last phase, he did not "appear"
there "to declare war."  England's declaration of war,
as a matter of historical record, was not made until
eleven P.M., or midnight Berlin time.  The assault on
the Embassy by *Kultur's* knife-throwing, stone-hurling
and window-breaking cohorts was in full progress by
nine o'clock.  It began almost immediately after Sir
Edward Goschen's return from his celebrated farewell
interview with the Imperial Chancellor--the torrid
quarter of an hour in which von Bethmann Hollweg,
incapable of concealing Germany's rage over the
wrecking of her war scheme, blackened the Teutonic
escutcheon for all time by branding the Belgian treaty
of neutrality as a "scrap of paper."  Of all egregious
words which have fallen from the lips of German
"diplomats," von Bethmann Hollweg's immortal
indiscretions of that day will live longest, to his own and
his country's ineffaceable shame.

While at work on my dispatches in my hotel room--it
was now about nine o'clock--I could hear *Unter
den Linden* below my windows roaring with mob fury
against Britain.  "*Krämer-volk!*" (Peddler nation!)
"*Rassen-Verrat!*" (Race treachery!) "*Nieder mit
England!*" (Down with England!) "*Tod den
Engländer!*" (Death to the English!) were the shouts
which burst forth in mad chorus.  I have never hunted
beasts in the jungle.  Never have my ears been
smitten with the snarl and growl of wild animals at bay.
I never heard the horizon ring with the tumult of
howling dervishes plunging fanatically to the attack.
But the populace of Berlin seemed to me at that
moment to be giving a vivid composite imitation of them
all.  Certainly no civilized community on earth ever
surrendered so completely to all-obsessing brute fury
as the war mob which thirsted for British blood in
"Athens-on-the-Spree" on the night of August 4, 1914.
It gave vent to all the animal passions and breathed the
murder instinct said to be inherent in the average
human when unreasoning rage temporarily supplants
sanity.  If it had caught sight of or could have laid hands
on Sir Edward Goschen, or any one else identifiable
as an Engländer, it would undoubtedly have torn him
limb from limb.  The Germans may not be the modern
personification of the Huns, but the savagery to which
their Imperial capital ruthlessly resigned itself on the
threshold of war with England justifies the belief that
they have inherited some of the characteristics of
Attila's fiends.  Next morning's Berlin papers explained
in all seriousness, on police authority, that the mob
"infuriated" because persons in the English Embassy
had thrown "beggars' pennies" from the windows--a
ludicrous falsehood.

Half an hour later I came down-stairs to motor to
the Main Telegraph Office with my American cables.
No sooner had I stepped to the threshold of the hotel
than three policemen grabbed me--one pinioning my
right arm, another my left, and the third gripping me
by the back of the neck.  All around the hotel entrance
stood gesticulating Germans yelling, like Comanche
Indians, "*Englischer Spion!  Nach Spandau mit ihm!*"
(English spy!  To Spandau with him!)  In far less
time than it takes me to tell it, my captors, who had
now drawn their sabers to "protect" me, as they
explained, from the murderous intentions of the mob,
tossed me into the rear seat of an open taxicab
waiting at the curb.  They allowed sufficient time to
elapse for the mob, which now encircled the cab
shouting "*Englischer Hund!*" (English dog!) "*Schiesst
den Spion!*" (Shoot the spy!) and other cheery
greetings, to cool its passions on my hapless head and
body with fisticuffs and canes, while a misdirected
upper-cut from a youth, aimed squarely at my jaw, did
nothing but knock my hat into the bottom of the car
and send my eye-glasses splintered and spinning to
the same destination.  The police, still covering me
with their sabers, shoved me to the floor of the car
and gave orders to the driver to make post-haste
for the Mittel-strasse police station, half a dozen blocks
away.  The power of speech having temporarily
returned--I wonder if my readers will regard it a
humiliating confession if I acknowledge that cold chills
were now chasing up and down my spine?--I
ventured to ask the policemen to whom or to what I was
indebted for this "striking" token of their solicitude.

"You know perfectly well why you're here," replied
the giant who was gripping me by the right arm as if
I might be contemplating escape from the lower
regions of the taxi by falling through or flying away.
"The mob heard the Adlon was full of English spies,
and they were waiting for you to come out.  They'd
have killed you on the spot if we hadn't been there
to rescue you."  That was, of course, simply an
absurd lie, as fast-crowding events of the succeeding
night were to demonstrate.  I was arrested because
I had been denounced, in all formality, as a spy.
If the German authorities are inclined to assert the
contrary, I refer them, without permission, to the
document reproduced opposite this page--the
official and original denunciation obligingly slipped by
mistake into my handbag of personal belongings at
the Police-Presidency later in the night, when, on the
demand of the American Ambassador, I was precipitately
released from custody.  Doctor Otto Sprenger,
of Bremen, was one of the police spies stationed either
in the Hotel Adlon, or at a wire therewith connected,
to overhear conversations, and who, in the hour of
his country's extremities, struck a herculean blow for
Kaiser and Empire by catching Mackenzie (Kingsley
is as near as he could get the name) and myself in our
telephonic plot to frustrate Germany's war plans.

I was still remonstrating with the police about the
absurdity of my arrest when the taxi pulled up in front
of Mittel-strasse station.  Evidently news of our
impending arrival had preceded us, for another gang of
shouting patriots was assembled in front of the
station and proceeded to bestow upon me the same sort
of a welcome as I received at the hands of the
mob in Unter den Linden.  Still "protecting" me with
their drawn sabers, my guardians contrived to push
and drag me into the station-house and up one flight
of stairs to headquarters before the crowd had done
anything more serious than crack me over the head
and shoulders half a dozen times.  I was then led into
the back room of the station, where, as I soon saw,
pickpockets and other criminals are taken to be
stripped and searched, and was ordered to sit down
in the midst of a group of twenty policemen, who
eyed me with glances mingling contempt and murderous intent.

.. _`Facsimile of Original Denunciation of the Author as an "English Spy"`:

.. figure:: images/img-143.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Facsimile of Original Denunciation of the Author as an "English Spy"

   Facsimile of Original Denunciation of the Author as an "English Spy"

I had partially recovered my equilibrium after
my somewhat exciting experiences of the previous
ten minutes and found myself able to talk
dispassionately to a courteous young lieutenant of police
who was in charge of the station.  I told him I was
not only an American, but a long-time resident of
Berlin, with a home of my own in Wilmersdorf,
and that if he would communicate with his superior,
Doctor Henninger, chief of the political police, who
had known me for years, he would soon be able to
convince himself that a grotesque mistake had been
made in arresting me as an "English spy."  The
lieutenant, who, I should think, was the only man in all
Berlin who had not yet entirely lost his reason, asked
me politely for my papers and other credentials.  I
handed him my American passport, newly-issued at the
Embassy a few days before, a visiting-card bearing
my Berlin home address, one or two copies of my most
recent news telegrams to London and New York,
which I happened to have with me, my correspondent's
identification card stamped by the Berlin police
department, and finally a letter which I had been
carrying with me during the war crisis for precisely some
such emergency--a communication sent me from the
Imperial yacht in the summer of 1913, acknowledging
in gracious terms a copy of *Men Around the Kaiser*,
which William II had deigned to accept at my hands.
The police lieutenant almost clicked heels and came
to the salute when he saw that his prisoner was the
possessor of so priceless a document.  He asked me
to "calm" myself and await developments.  "*Es wird
schon gut sein.*"  Which in real language means that
"everything will be all right."

As their superior officer had not lopped off my head
on sight, and even condescended to hold courteous
converse with the "spy," the group of policemen in
whose midst I found myself now warmed up to me
perceptibly.

"You are an American, eh?" ejaculated one of
them.  "I wonder if you know my brother in
Minnesota?  His name is Paul Richter."

I was genuinely sorry I had never met Herr
Richter--probably he did not live in the Red River Valley,
which was the only part of Minnesota I knew, I
explained.  I knew some Richters in my native county
of La Porte, Indiana, but they had never claimed the
honor, to my knowledge, of having a brother in the
Kaiser's police.  While *Schutzmann* Richter and I
were doing our best to discover that the world is small,
noise of fresh commotion, such as had greeted my own
arrival at the station, ascended from the street.
Apparently a fresh "bag" had come in.  A second later,
of all people on earth, who should be pushed into the
room, with three policemen at his neck and arms, but
my very disheveled friend, Tower.  He was hatless,
his collar and tie were awry, every hair of his
Goethe-like blond head was on end, and he cut altogether the
figure of a very much perturbed young man.  There
were no mirrors about, so I can not say with certainty
how I myself looked, but I am sure I could have
easily been mistaken for Tower's twin at that moment.
Partners in misery and anxiety we certainly were.
Tower, it appeared, was denounced to the spy-hunters
at the Adlon by a chauffeur he had engaged
to drive him a day or two before--the man who
piloted the machine which was hired out to Adlon guests
at fancy rates per hour.  Presently the chauffeur
himself bounded into the room, shouting like a madman.
"Now we've got him--the damned English cur!" he
snarled, shaking his fist, first in Tower's face, and
then, recognizing me, in mine, with an oath and a
"You, too, pig-dog!" The chauffeur now ranted his
reasons for denouncing both Tower and me.  "I'm an
old African soldier!" he yelled.  "I know these
contemptible *Engländer*.  This Tower (he called it
Toever, which was the way Germans used phonetically to
pronounce a former American ambassador's name) is
the notorious *Times* correspondent!"  Tower
impetuously denied this soft impeachment, and pointed out
that instead of being the Thunderer's representative,
he was the correspondent of the *Daily News*, "the only
Germanophile English newspaper."  Tower himself
was never Germanophile, but it was grasping at a
legitimate straw so to describe his London paper.  I
could not conscientiously identify *The Daily Mail* as
*deutschfreundlich*, or, I regretfully mused, it might be
the means of saving my neck.

Now there was more noise from the lower
regions.  Whom had they nabbed this time.  Astonished
as I was to see Tower marched in, I fairly gasped
when the newest batch of prisoners was shoved
into the room, for it was headed by my young
secretary, Schrape, and included Mrs. Hensel, a
gray-haired German-American lady and an old Berlin
friend of my family, and Miles Bouton, of the local
staff of the Associated Press.  Schrape and Mrs. Hensel
had been denounced at the Adlon as my accomplices
in espionage--Schrape for obvious reasons, and
Mrs. Hensel because she had called to see me at the
hotel a few minutes after my arrest, undoubtedly, of
course, to bring me illicit information or receive her
"orders."  She had come, as a matter of fact, as
countless acquaintances of mine had been doing throughout
the week, to ask for advice or assistance in the midst
of the topsy-turvy conditions into which life in Berlin
had been so suddenly plunged.  Schrape was
remarkably cool.  So was Bouton, who insisted upon
expressing himself with such freedom about the indignities
heaped upon him that I momentarily expected to
witness his decapitation.  Mrs. Hensel, poor soul, was
frightened speechless and between her tears could only
incoherently make me understand that she had no
sooner asked for my name at the Adlon desk than the
clerks handed her over to the police.  Bouton seemed
to owe his arrest to the fact that he was in Tower's
company in the Adlon lobby, attending the meeting of
American war refugees.  Tower had been savagely
cracked over the head by an Adlon waiter armed with
a tray while being hustled out of the hotel by the
police.  Mrs. Bouton, tearfully protesting against her
husband's arrest, had herself been threatened with
arrest or something worse if she did not instantly "hold
her mouth."  Just what part the Adlon staff of clerks,
porters, waiters and page-boys played in our arrest
was not made clear to me until the next day; of which
more in the succeeding chapter.

As soon as the "gang of spies," as the policemen in
the room now pleasantly called us, was complete,
Tower, Schrape and Bouton were lined up against the
wall and ordered to raise their hands above their heads,
while their clothes were searched for concealed
weapons or incriminating espionage evidence.  While my
fellow prisoners (except Mrs. Hensel) were
undergoing examination, a typical young Berlin thug,
evidently a thief, was brought in, and took his place
adjacent to my colleagues, also to be searched.  The
room was now resounding with encouraging shouts
from overwrought policemen that "the English dogs
ought to be hanged."  Others suggested that
"Spandau," the spy-shooting gallery, was a more appropriate
place for us than the gallows.  For some God-willed
or other mysterious reason I was not searched.  That
gave me only temporary relief, for we were presently
informed that we would be taken to the Police-Presidency
(central station) for the night and "dealt with
there."  That meant searching of everybody, I felt
morally sure, and it was then that the tongue of me
began cleaving to the roof of my mouth, while my
throat parched with terror.  For in a leather card-case
in my inside pocket I carried a telegraph code, utterly
innocuous in itself--a make-shift affair got up during
the preceding forty-eight hours and of which I posted
a duplicate to London, with a view to explaining to my
editor in cipher my movements and whereabouts if I
had suddenly to leave Berlin.  It was a quite harmless
string of phrases reading like this:

.. vspace:: 2

"My wife's condition has become critical, and
physicians recommend immediate departure if catastrophe
is to be avoided."

.. vspace:: 2

All this was, of course, in German, and meant (as
the code explained) that I was proceeding to the Hotel
Angleterre in Copenhagen.  Another phrase
substituted "boy's" for "wife's" and meant that I was
leaving for the Hotel Amstel in Amsterdam, etc., etc.  It
dawned instantly upon me that if the Berlin political
police, at such a witching hour, discovered on a
suspected spy a telegraphic code of so "incriminating"
a character, he could hardly look forward to anything
beyond the regulation thrill at sunrise.  I might have
been able to explain in prosaic peace-times, I
soliloquized, that many newspaper correspondents use
private codes in communicating with their editors, but
to convince a Berlin police official at that moment that
my code was of innocent import struck me as the
quintessence of physical impossibility.

I was undergoing, I think, all the emotions of fear
and trembling when our quintette of prisoners was
now marched down to the street and piled into taxis for
transportation to the *Polizei-Präsidium* in
Alexander-Platz, two miles across town.  An enormous throng
filled the Mittel-strasse, snarling with rage.  The
sight of us maddened them into a fiendish scream.
Tower and I were pushed into the first car, which
happened to be the Adlon machine he had hired and
was doubtless still paying for, and which was driven
by his infuriated chauffeur.  The "covering" sabers
of the police, one each of whom guarded Tower
and myself, respectively in the front and back seats,
did not prevent the mob from belaboring us once
more with fists and sticks, to the accompaniment of
unprintable epithets and curses.  My mind, however,
was occupied completely with how to get rid of that
code nestling in my inside pocket.  Nothing short of
entire insensibility could have deflected my thoughts
from that all-absorbing issue.  I was thinking hard
and quickly.

Tower's chauffeur, proud to be serving the Kaiser
on so historic an occasion, did not drive us, as he
would naturally and ordinarily have done, through the
darkened side streets leading from Mittel-strasse to
Alexander-Platz, but decided to drag us in triumph
like the victims chained to Nero's chariots, down the
brilliantly illuminated *Unter den Linden*, which,
though it was now nearly eleven o'clock, was packed
with war demonstrators.  Crossing to the more crowded
southern side, at a point near the Hotel Bristol, the
driver threw on his top-speed and whirled us down
the glittering boulevard at breakneck pace.  As for
himself, with a policeman at his side, and two behind
him pinioning Tower and myself, he was frantic with
super-patriotic joy.  Now steering with his left hand,
he waved his right madly through space at the gaping
curb crowds, and yelled, so that they might know
what it all meant: "English spies!  Now we've got
'em!  Now we've got 'em!  Hurrah!  Hurrah!"  It
was a great moment in that illustrious Kraftwagenführer's
career.  Nothing in his greasy past had ever
approached it in tremendousness.  He saw the Iron
Cross dangling in certain outlines before his ecstatic
vision--the reward for valor in the hour of his
Fatherland's need.

I was still brooding over that code, but even
while being paraded past the Berliners, I was actively
at work on a scheme for its removal.  Necessity is,
indeed, the mother of invention, and to this hour
I do not fully comprehend how I came to find the
courage or ingenuity to do what I was now successfully
accomplishing.  We had reached the Opera, were
approaching the Castle, and Alexander-Platz was less
than five minutes away.  The need for quick work
was growing more urgent from second to second.  My
policeman held me firmly by the right arm.  My left
was entirely free.  With it I was able easily to reach
the right-hand inside pocket of my coat, wherein the
card-case containing the code was lodged.  I contrived
to finger my way into the case without attracting the
attention of my jailer, who, Allah be praised, was still
too fascinated by the plaudits of the crowds to be
more than mildly interested in me.  I could "feel" the
code now.  It was of flimsy tissue paper and could
be easily torn into shreds.  A sufficiently long interval
had elapsed since my last visit to the manicure to make
my finger-nails highly effective for the purpose, and
by degrees which seemed infinitely slow I managed to
crumple and dessicate the "guilty" document and by
"palming" and working the bits into the spaces
between my fingers the whole thing was effectually
destroyed.  I withdrew my hand, stuck it into the outside
left-hand pocket of my coat to withdraw a handkerchief,
blew my nose and, while in that unforbidden
act, let I don't know how many hundreds of tissue
paper particles fly back of me into the wind of Berlin's
bristling night air.  I was saved.  They could search
me now to their hearts' content.  I found that,
somehow or other, the power of speech had suddenly
returned, and a moment later I was saying cheerily to
my *Schutzmann* friend, "Well, we're here now."

The details of what happened in the big room of
the Police-Presidency into which we were now ushered--my
friend Simons, of the *Amsterdam Telegraaf*, and
Nevinson, special correspondent of *The Daily News*,
who were found in Tower's room at the Adlon and
arrested on that "evidence," had arrived there
before us--are brief and unessential.  What had been
taking place during the preceding two hours is vastly
more to the point.  Ambassador Gerard, who was at
the Adlon when we were arrested, seems to have
cleared for action in his typically shirt-sleeves
diplomatic fashion.  He dispatched First Secretary Grew
to the Foreign Office to demand our instantaneous
release.  Grew informed Under-Secretary Zimmermann
that if Germany continued to treat American citizens
and newspaper correspondents in accordance with the
practises of the Middle Ages (Conger was still
languishing in jail at Gumbinnen) the Fatherland was
dangerously likely to lose the esteem of the only first-class
Power in the world which seemed still to be on
speaking terms with her.  Herr Zimmermann, who
understands plain English when it is spoken to him, was
apologetic in the extreme.  He told Grew that
immediate steps would be taken to liberate me and my
friends and that the Foreign Office "regretted" that
such indignities should have been heaped upon
innocent persons.  Mr. Gerard evidently determined to take
no chances, for the first secretary was dispatched to
the Police-Presidency with the embassy automobile,
and with instructions to demand our delivery in the
flesh and stay there till it was made.  Meantime the
Foreign Office had sent urgent telephonic instructions
to the police to let us out.  We were asked to fill up
certain identification forms and exhibit some more
papers, and then, in accents of courteous explanation,
were assured that an "error" had unfortunately been
made.  We should "not hesitate, if anybody molested
us again," to call up Police Headquarters, and matters
would be speedily set right.  It was not probable, we
were assured, that we would have any more trouble.
If we desired, a police escort was at our service, so
that we might return to the hotel or to the Embassy in
certain safety.

We had just been bowed out of the place of our
brief detention when the familiar outlines of "Joe"
Grew loomed into view, down the corridor, and with
him "Fritz," the German "life-guard" of the Embassy.
It is not customary for American men to kiss each
other, but I confess here to having been momentarily
inspired with a strong temptation to lavish some form
of osculatory gratitude upon Grew.  Certainly I felt
that there was nothing quite so good on God's
footstool just then as to be an American citizen.  When
Grew insisted on packing all five of us--Tower,
Mrs. Hensel, Bouton, Schrape and myself--into the car and
driving us back to the Embassy (it was now the
romantic hour of one A.M.) behind the protecting folds
of the Stars and Stripes flapping defiantly at the
windshield, I vowed a solemn, silent oath--to aspire in
such days as might still be left to me for an
opportunity some day to reciprocate in kind the service the
Ambassador and Grew had that night rendered me,
the supreme service men can render a fellow
man--to save his life.

They were to be called upon, though I did not then
know it, to rescue me once again before either they or
I were twenty-four hours older.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE LAST FAREWELL`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium

   THE LAST FAREWELL

.. vspace:: 2

Such sleep as I enjoyed in what remained of the
night between August 4 and 5 was secured, for
the first time in a week, beneath my own roof.  I had
finished with the "hospitality" of the Hotel Adlon for
all time to come.  After a brief visit at the Embassy,
to assure the Ambassador of my everlasting gratitude
for having thrown out the life-line, and seeing
Mrs. Hensel safely started for her home in Charlottenburg
under trusted escort, I betook myself to Wilmersdorf,
where our faithful little German governess, Anna
Kranz, had been holding the fort all summer during
the absence of my family in the United States.  I
telephoned Fräulein from the Embassy a summary of the
night's events, fearing that police minions might be
paying me a domiciliary visit and cause the poor girl
unnecessary alarm.  I told her Schrape was coming home
with me for the night and that as neither of us had
had a bite since the preceding noon, we could do full
justice to anything, however frugal, which might at
that romantic hour still be discoverable in the larder.
It was a wide-eyed, then tearful and always
sympathetic Thuringian damsel, who listened to our story
over bread and cheese at the romantic hour of
two-thirty A.M.  I can hear her now interrupting with a
characteristic and condoling "*Aber, Herr Wile!*"

Having dispatched Schrape to the Adlon early next
day to pay my bill and fetch the belongings I had had
so abruptly to leave behind me there the night before,
I proceeded to town.  At the Embassy was a host of
friends anxious for news of me.  The most absurd
rumors, it seemed, were in circulation.  There was a
detailed version of my last moments in front of a
firing-squad at Spandau, and somebody "who had a
friend at the Police Presidency" had told somebody
else that I was in shackles which would probably not
be removed till the war was over--if then.  Still
another tale related circumstantially of how I had been
"hurried" from Berlin at the dead of night, under
military guard, to the Dutch frontier, across which,
by this time, I was unceremoniously "expelled."

When I was able to gain the ear of the Ambassador--the
American war-refugee panic was now at
tempestuous zenith, with the Embassy like a place
besieged--I represented to him that I feared my hopes
of remaining in Germany, after what had happened,
were slender in the extreme.  Scouts had brought in
the intelligence, I informed him, that a miniature mob
of evident purpose was waiting in front of the
Equitable Building, where *The Daily Mail* office was, now and
then knowingly pointing to our big gilt window-sign,
in order that passers-by might understand why traffic
was being blocked in front of No. 59 Friedrichstrasse.
If the crowd waited long enough, it probably saw at
work the sign men whom I had ordered to take down
the red rag.  Discretion is ever the better part of
valor, and I felt no compelling desire to superintend
the job in person.

The Ambassador thought I was unduly disturbed.
He was convinced that my arrest was purely an
unfortunate blunder, due to a combination of officious
patriotism and excessive zeal, and meant nothing.  I
was inclined to agree with him.  Berlin and the
Berliners had suddenly lost their minds, and nothing
which occurs when a community of men are in a state
of mental aberration ought in reason to be charged
against them.  I had obviously fallen victim to the
mass *dementia* which robbed Germans of their senses
when their lingering fears of war with England
became terrifying actuality.  I certainly did not
overestimate the importance of the episode.

I now ran across von Wiegand of the *United Press*
(as he then was) and Swing, of the *Chicago Daily
News*.  Being Americans, like myself, they had just
taken the precaution of applying to the Foreign Office
for credentials which would protect them from such
delicate attentions as the police had shown me.  They
suggested that I should see *Legationsrat* Heilbron and
get an *Ausweiskarte*.  Swing was in jubilant mood.
He had a scheme under promising way to accompany
Major Langhorne, our military attaché, to the front
as a "secretary."  My heart pumped with envy.  Von
Wiegand had not yet worked out his forthcoming
campaign for interviewing the German Empire and the
Vatican, but all of us felt sure that his German noble
origin, plus his nose for news and excellent official
connections, would land Karl Heinrich on his feet,
as far as reporting the war was concerned, if any one
was going to be favored at all.  The Anglo-American
newspaper fraternity was already a rather decimated
body.  Conger, of the Associated Press, was still
jailed at Gumbinnen.  Wilcox, of *The Daily
Telegraph*, had been fortunate enough, only a few days
previous, to get to Russia.  Ford, of *The Morning Post*,
had not waited for the crash and left for England on
one of the last peace-time trains.  Tower, my night's
partner in woe, had slept in the porter's basement
of the American Embassy and was now a refugee
in the British Embassy, where, I understood, all the
other purely English correspondents were being
rounded up during the day, to accompany Sir Edward
Goschen and his staff out of Germany next morning
on the safe-conduct train provided by the German
government.  Mackenzie, of *The Times*, with whom I had
plotted by telephone, was still unarrested, for some
miraculous reason; I had not yet seen the original
"denunciation" of our espionage operations, from which
I later knew that he had only been identified as
"Kingsley."  He can blame that circumstance, no
doubt, for having been denied the privilege of my own
experiences.

At five o'clock, the customary hour for newspaper
men to visit the Foreign Office, I went to call on
*Legationsrat* Heilbron.  He had not yet come in, so I sent
my card to his colleague, *Legationsrat* Esternaux, with
whom I had enjoyed professional acquaintance ever
since the hour of my arrival in Germany, thirteen years
previous to the week.  I assured Esternaux that I
cherished no particular animosity toward the police
authorities for my silly arrest, being convinced that a
grotesque mistake alone was responsible.  Mildly
apologetic, he acquiesced in this view.

"You were a victim," Esternaux then began, "of
our just and universal rage over the treacherous and
treasonable action of England in stabbing us in the
back.  Never, as long as they live, will Germans
forgive the perfidy of the British Government in
betraying the common blood in favor of uncivilized
Pan-Slavism.  It is the most criminal faithlessness in the
world's history--this taking advantage of our
difficulties to vent long pent-up spite against the merely
dangerous German commercial rival."  Herr Esternaux
did not mention Belgium, though the flow of
his righteous indignation was increasing from phrase
to phrase.  "Race treason!  That is what has fired the
German soul to its depths!  That is what caused last
night's unseemly demonstrations.  Nobody condones
mob fury less than the German Government, but it is
explained, if not justified, by what has happened.
Of one thing the world may be sure--with whatever
bitterness we make war on our Russian and French
foes, it will be nothing--it will be child's-play--compared
to the spirit of revengeful rancor and holy
wrath in which we shall fight the English race-traitors.
That was the temper of the Berlin mob last night.  It
is the temper in which we are going to war with Great
Britain.  It is the temper in which we shall wage the
struggle with her to the bitter end.  Make no mistake
about that."  I had listened, on the authoritative
premises of the Imperial German Government, to perhaps
the first official proclamation of the hate and frightfulness
programme so far uttered.  *Gott strafe England*!
How graphically succeeding events were to bear it out!

After *Legationsrat* Esternaux had fired this
high-explosive, he ushered me out, and I knocked on
*Legationsrat* Heilbron's door, fifteen yards farther down
the passageway.  Fur-mittens and ear-muffs are not
*de rigueur* in northern Germany in midsummer, but I
should have worn them that afternoon of August 5,
for the reception awaiting me at Heilbron's hands was
of arctic frigidity.  It was a vastly changed Heilbron
from the obliging functionary who had pressed upon
me, forty-eight hours previous, copies of the German
White Paper, in order that I might spread the official
truth about "how the Fatherland had worked to
prevent the war" broadcast in England and the United
States.  It was also a strangely less courteous
*Legationsrat* than the one (Esternaux) whose presence I
had just quitted.

"*Herr Legationsrat*," I began, "I have come to ask
you for an *Ausweiskarte*.  You know, I suppose, of my
little experience last night.  I am quite willing to take
my chances with the mob, but I ought to have something
to protect me from the excesses of the police."

"Mobs are mobs," he rejoined.  "I can do nothing
for you."

"That is strange," I interposed.  "Surely you know
that the American Ambassador has arranged for my
remaining in Germany?"

"I know nothing about that whatever," said Heilbron.

"Well, *Legationsrat* Esternaux does," I retorted,
"because he told me so not five minutes ago, and he
said you would issue the necessary credentials."

Heilbron, who like all German bureaucrats has the
backbone of a crushed worm in the presence of
superior authority, or the mere suggestion of it, now
reached for his telephone-receiver and asked to be
connected with somebody in the Foreign Office.  He
repeated the object of my call to whomever was at the
other end of the line, nodded in assent to something
apparently said to him, then turned to me:

"It is just as I thought.  The Foreign Office can do
nothing for you.  If you want credentials, you must
apply to the police."

"But, *Herr Legationsrat*," I persisted, "there can
be no objection to your giving me something which will
insure me ordinary safety at such a time as this.  After
all, I'm an American."

With a shrug of the shoulders and outflung arms, a
German gesture expressing indifference or helplessness,
or both, Heilbron observed, sardonically: "For
us you are a *Daily Mail* man--nothing else.  You are
known everywhere as such.  Certainly if you remain
here, your position will undoubtedly be a precarious one."

It was plain that the ethics which impelled Von
Bethmann Hollweg to tear up the Belgian "scrap of
paper"--brazen disregard of pledges--were now being
pursued in my very insignificant case.  The German
Foreign Secretary had given a formal undertaking, as I
understood it, as to the inviolability of my personal
and professional status as an American newspaper
man.  Not five minutes before, I had been assured
by an official of the German Foreign Office in the
Foreign Office that the latter was fully aware of
the arrangements which Mr. Gerard had effected
in my favor.  And now another official calmly
denied its existence, and, moreover, declared in
substance that a United States passport calling upon the
friendly German Government "to permit Frederic
William Wile safely and freely to pass, and, in case
of need, to give him all lawful aid and protection,"
was not worth the parchment on which it was
engraved.  International law was being refashioned in
Berlin in a hurry.

Once again I was compelled to flee to the American
Ambassador for protection--reluctantly enough, for I
had already usurped far more of his time than one
citizen is entitled to.  I told him that the German
Foreign Office was trying to convert me into a man
without a country; not only that, but that its cheerful
intimation as to my "position" being "undoubtedly
precarious" rang clearly ominous in my ears.  The
Ambassador shared that view.  He was of the opinion,
when he saw me earlier in the day, that my alarm
was unwarranted.  From what other American
newspaper men had meantime reported, my fears seemed
to be justified.  He agreed that it was best that I should
go--but how?  The town was already choked with
Americans waiting to "go."  If it were impossible to
move any of them across the frontier, what possible
chance was there of exporting me?  There was, of
course, just one chance that I could think of--to leave
next day with the British Embassy.  The Ambassador
suggested that I should ask Sir Edward Goschen if he
would take me, along with the purely British
correspondents, who, I learned, were going in his train.

So now, the United States having obviously
exhausted its powers on my behalf, I threw myself on the
mercies of His Britannic Majesty.  I found Sir Edward
Goschen unhesitatingly responsive to my request, on
the important condition that the German authorities
would permit a non-Englishman to accompany a
safe-conduct party of British subjects of highly official
character!  Once again the gates leading out of
Germany seemed barred to me, for my status at the
German Foreign Office, as the afternoon had established,
was not exactly that of a *persona grata* who had but
to ask a favor to have it granted.  But, by an act
of Providence, as it then and always since has seemed
to me, Ambassador Gerard strolled into the lobby of
the British Embassy while I was in the midst of
conversation with Sir Edward Goschen.  The British
Ambassador repeated the conditions on which he would
gladly rescue me--the assent of the German
Government--whereupon Mr. Gerard quietly remarked that
he would "look after that."  He had little notion, I
suppose, of the herculean effort which would be
necessary to give effect to his words.

It was now past six o'clock.  The British Embassy
train was timed to leave Berlin at seven next morning,
Thursday, August 6.  If anything was going to be
done for me, all concerned realized that it would have
to be done soon.  "Go home, pack up all you can jam
into two suit-cases, and turn up at the American
Embassy at nine o'clock," said Gerard.

No home was ever deserted, I am sure, more
reluctantly or so precipitately as my little *ménage* in
Wilmersdorf.  It seemed a woefully inglorious ending
to thirteen very happy and fruitful years in Berlin.  I
thanked Heaven that my wife and little boy were not
there to be evicted with me.  A woman's attachment
to the things which have spelled home--the books, the
pictures, the thousand and one household trinkets,
enshrined with priceless value to those who have
accumulated them--is far stronger than a man's.  The wrench
of separation would have been correspondingly harder
to bear.  In the midst of such reveries, sandwiched
between selecting the most essential contents for the two
suit-cases to which I was limited, I had a caller.

"*Herr Direktor* Kretschmar, of the Hotel Adlon,
has come to see you," announced *Fräulein*.

Kretschmar is probably known to more American
travelers to Europe than any other hotel man on
the Continent.  The Adlon had been Yankee headquarters
in Berlin ever since its opening in the autumn
of 1907.  Old man Adlon, its genial founder and
proprietor, he of the arc-light face at midnight, after a
liberal evening's libations o'er the flowing bowl, used
to be fond of assuring people that "*mein lieber Freund
Wile*" had "made" the Adlon.  If telling people that
the Adlon was the best hotel in Berlin, and reporting in
my American dispatches, as necessity required, that
Governor Herrick, Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Schwab, Doctor
David Jayne Hill, Vice-President Fairbanks,
Theodore P. Shonts, John Hays Hammond, Otto H. Kahn
or some other famous fellow citizen was lodged in the
marble and bronze caravansary at the head of *Unter
den Linden*--if this "made" the Adlon--I plead guilty
to Herr Adlon's charge.  I shall never do it again.  I
divined at once the object of the curly-haired
Kretschmar's visit.  Having graduated, I believe, like many
eminent German hotel keepers, from the humble ranks
of hall-porters and head waiters, he was a past master
in obsequious servility.  Many a time I had seen him
bow and scrape like a grinning flunky as he welcomed
the arriving or sped the parting guest at the Adlon,
but never was he so cringing a Kretschmar as he stood
before me now.  He got down to business without delay.

There had been a "terrible mistake" at the hotel the
night before.  He was there to offer the "deepest
regret" of both the elder and junior *Herren Adlon* that
their "best friend" should have been the victim of
"such an outrage" on their premises.  They had
dismissed no less than ten members of the hotel staff for
complicity in my arrest.  The Adlon hoped, from the
bottom of its unoffending heart, that I would "forgive
and forget."  Kretschmar, at this point in his *peccavi*,
almost broke down.  He was in tears, and, if I had
let him, he would probably have gone down on his
knees.  If I had known what I was told next day as
to his own connection with my experience at the
Adlon, he would not only have gone down on his knees,
but down the stairs of my flat-building as well.
Whether it was he who incited the page-boys,
desk-clerks, elevator-men, chambermaids and waiters to
regard me as an "English spy" I can not say, but, in
light of the experience which a colleague, Alexander
Muirhead, a London newspaper-photographer, had in
the Adlon shortly after my arrest, there is at least
ground to fear that Kretschmar may have been
something more than an innocent bystander.

"When I asked for you at the desk," Muirhead told
me, "a supercilious clerk, eying me fiercely, referred
me to the manager, whereupon I was escorted into
Kretschmar's room.  'I've come to see my friend
Wile,' I explained.  'Your friend Wile's a spy!' snarled
Kretschmar, who seemed beside himself with fury.
'And he's now where he ought to be!  As for you, *mein
Herr*, stand there against the wall, hold up your arms,
and be searched for weapons.  For all we know, you're
a spy, too!'  The mere thought of your name appeared
to fill Kretschmar with incontrollable rage.  Having
satisfied himself that I had nothing more explosive
about me than some undeveloped films, he allowed me
to go my way amid incoherent mutterings and
imprecations about that '---- of a ---- spy, Wile.'  I was,
of course, completely mystified by this extraordinary
episode, as I was at that time entirely ignorant of your
fate."

Muirhead is a plain-spoken Scotchman, as well as
one of Europe's bravest and most famous "camera
men," and although the lachrymose Kretschmar
indignantly repudiates the occurrence, I hope he will not
mind if I prefer to believe Muirhead.  The manager of
the Adlon still keeps my memory green.  Periodically
during the war, whenever some German paper has
outdone itself in dignifying me with vile abuse,
Kretschmar has faithfully marked it in blue pencil and sent it
to me by two routes--Switzerland and Holland--to
make sure that it reached me.  As I have not taken the
trouble to acknowledge these little tokens of his
abiding interest, I hope he may learn from these pages that
they have been duly received and fill not the least
conspicuous niche in my chamber of German war horrors.

A weepy good-by scene with *Fräulein*, a parting,
lingering look around my beloved *Arbeitszimmer*--so
soon to be ransacked by the German police--an
undying vow from the little woman to guard our Lares
and Penates as if they were her own last earthly
possessions, and all was at an end, so far as my habitat
in Berlin was concerned.  It has not been my
privilege to say farewell to fireside and dear ones and then
leave for the front in field-gray or khaki, but no
soldier-man anywhere in this war has torn himself away
from home ties more sorrowfully than I turned my
back in the gathering dusk of August 5, 1914, on dear
old Helmstedter-strasse.  Instinctively I felt that I
should never see it again, and my heart was heavy.

.. vspace:: 2

"What's Baron von Stumm got against you?" asked
Second Secretary Harvey, smilingly, at the American
Embassy, when I arrived, bag and baggage, at nine
o'clock.  "He says you're not an American."  Stumm
was the chief of the Anglo-American section of the
German Foreign Office.  He knew perfectly well that
I am an American.  He had entertained me at his own
table in May, 1910, when he gave a luncheon-party in
honor of the American newspaper correspondents
stationed in Berlin and those traveling with Mr. Roosevelt
on the occasion of the Colonel's visit to the Kaiser.
Stumm had "nothing against me" in June, I explained
to Harvey, because of his own sweet volition he
distinguished me with a call at my hotel during Kiel
Regatta.  I could not imagine what had suddenly come
over the scion of the humble Westphalian blacksmith's
house, which was one of the first of the *nouveau riche*
German industrial tribes to be ennobled.  I could only
think that, like the Berlin police, *Legationsrat*
Heilbron, *Herr Direktor* Kretschmar and nearly all other
Germans, Stumm had temporarily gone mad.  If I
was "not an American," it had taken the Imperial
German Foreign Office thirteen years to make the
discovery.  Some day I am going to send Stumm a
Christmas card.  It will be embellished with a gilded
birth-certificate attested by the clerk of the County of La
Porte, Indiana.

No one supplied me with the details of the final
negotiations which were necessary to induce the
German Government graciously to consent to permit
me to leave Germany alive.  I have since learned
that my pass was not secured without some extremely
forcible remonstrances and representations.  Stumm
had denounced me as a "scoundrel" and in other
knightly terms.  Why the German Foreign Office so
ardently desired to prevent my departure, after having
earlier in the same day declined to promise me
immunity from physical harm, is a mystery which I trust
it may some day elucidate.  To fathom it is beyond
my own feeble powers of divination, and in this
narrative of farewell tribulations in the Fatherland, I
have confined myself strictly to facts.  I have
resolutely not yielded to the temptation to surmise.  But as
the official Genesis of Armageddon is not likely to
honor me with mention, I have presumed to set forth
my own diminutive part in it with perhaps a tiring
superfluity of detail.  I have the more eagerly
ventured to do so because grotesque versions of the
"terms" on which I, an American citizen, if you please,
"secured permission to leave Germany," have been,
and still are, for all I know, in circulation in Berlin.
They are believed--and that is the one saddening
thought they inspire in me--by people who were once
my friends, among them Americans who place
bread-and-butter business necessities and social
expediency in Germany above the elementary dictates of
gratitude and personal loyalty, which are traits one
encounters even in a *Dachshund*.  It is these
insufferable lickers of German bootheels who "have heard"
that I "gave my word of honor" to seal my lips forever
"about Germany," to "go back to the United States at
once" (perhaps as press-agent to Dernburg, who was
also leaving Germany), to "renounce all connection
with English journalism," and other pledges of equally
imbecilic character.  The only "broken pledge" which
the rumor-mongers did not foist upon me was an
outright agreement to join Germany's army of kept
journalists.  I should have been better off, financially no
doubt, if I had enlisted in that immaculate service,
which is one of the best paid in the world.

.. vspace:: 2

My permit to leave Germany, Harvey said, would
be issued during the night and be handed me next
morning at the British Embassy.  Meantime, evidently
to make assurance doubly sure, Ambassador Gerard
gave me in his own handwriting an attest that I was
leaving the country with Sir Edward Goschen.  He
affixed to it the great seal of the Embassy, handed me
the note with a merry "Good luck," I wrung his hand
in a last grip of gratitude and good-by, and we parted
company.

.. _`Ambassador Gerard's Note`:

.. figure:: images/img-169.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Ambassador Gerard's Note

   Ambassador Gerard's Note

Meantime I had opened negotiations with the
Embassy porter to pass the night on a cot in his lodge,
where Tower had bunked after our arrest, and
arranged with him to call me at four-thirty, so that I could
be at the British Embassy well before six o'clock.  While
I was chatting in the hallway, Mrs. Gerard came along.
"Where are you going to sleep to-night?" she inquired,
solicitously.  I told her.  She would not hear of my
lodging plans in the porter's basement.  There were
half-a-dozen bedrooms in the Embassy, and I must
use one of them.  Then she hustled away, in the most
motherly fashion, to prepare for me what turned out
to be a *suite-de-luxe*.  My last night in Germany was
slept on "American soil."  It was not the most restful
night I have spent in my life, but it lingers as the
sweetest memory I cherish among a myriad of recollections
which crowded thick one upon another in that
great wild week in Berlin.  "And do you like your
breakfast eggs boiled three or four minutes?" was the
cheery "Good night" and *Auf Wiedersehen* I had from
"Molly" Gerard.

At least one German, in addition to my secretary
and governess, who were models of devotion to the
last, took the trouble to show me a parting mark of
esteem.  He was a colleague, Paul R. Krause, of the
*Lokal-Anzeiger* staff, a son-in-law of Field Marshal
von der Goltz, and one of the best of fellows.  Krause
lived abroad so long--his life has been spent mostly
in Turkey, South Africa and South America--that he
will perhaps not mind my saying that he always struck
me as effectually de-Germanized.  At any rate, having
heard of my plight, he came to the Embassy late at
night to offer me not only fraternal sympathy, but
physical assistance in the form of readiness to become
my "body-guard," if I really considered myself in
personal danger!  He could hardly be made to believe
that Heilbron had been "such an ass," when I told of
my parting interview in the Foreign Office.  Krause
and I exchanged *Auf Wiedersehen* in the "American
bar" of the Hotel Kaiserhof, round the corner from
the Embassy, where I noticed Doctor Dernburg,
August Stein, of the *Frankfurter Zeitung*, and Doctor
Fuchs, of the Deutsche Bank, gathered dolefully round
a beer-table, and amazed, no doubt, to find Krause in
such doubtful company.

I did not seek my downy couch in the Embassy until
I had had a farewell promenade and visit with two
very dear newspaper pals, Swing, of the *Chicago Daily
News*, and Feibelman, of the *New York Tribune* and
*London Express*.  Feibelman was still in the throes of
the anxiety from which I was about to be relieved, as
the Foreign Office had also refused him credentials
owing to his connection with an English journal.  He
sincerely envied my good fortune in being able to escape
with the British Ambassador.  I was glad to hear a
week later that he too had eventually contrived, with
the American Embassy's assistance, to reach Holland,
where he has done excellent work for his paper during
the war.  Swing, Feibelman and I, arm-locked, walked
the silent streets around and about the Embassy until
long past midnight, speculating as to what the
red-clotted future had in store for each of us, embittered at
Fate for so ruthlessly disrupting friendships of
affectionate intimacy, and wondering, when all was over,
if it ever would be, whether Berlin or Kamchatka
would be the scene of our next reunion....

Something told me that even a twelfth-hour attempt
might be made to hamper my get-away, so, as a
"positively last farewell" favor I asked "Joe" Grew, my
rescuer from the police, to escort me to the train.
Though it meant his tumbling out of bed at the
unromantic hour of five, his breezy "Sure, I will" set my
mind completely at rest.  He arrived at the appointed
minute.  The sight of the Stars and Stripes flapping at
the front of his car was a reassuring little picture.
They had meant much to me during the preceding
forty-eight hours.  At the British Embassy, which
looked more like a baggage-room or express-office
struck by lightning, with the floors littered
indiscriminately with hastily-packed boxes of documents and
records, trunks, suit-cases, golf-bags and batches of
clothing hastily slung or strapped into or around
traveling-rugs--and all the other indescribable
impedimenta of a suddenly-retreating army or an evicted
family--I found my German pass awaiting me.  It had
been delivered to Godfrey Thomas, one of Sir Edward
Goschen's able young attachés, all of whom, like the
Ambassador himself, had given so characteristic an
exhibition of British imperturbability during the final
hours of crisis.  The pass described me as "the English
newspaper correspondent, Wile."  It is reproduced
opposite this page.  I treasure it with the same pride
which probably inspires a reprieved man to cherish the
document which cheats the hangman.

.. _`Facsimile of the Pass`:

.. figure:: images/img-173.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Facsimile of the Pass

   Facsimile of the Pass

There was no guard of honor to bid Sir Edward
Goschen and his staff Godspeed from the Wilhelmstrasse.
No single German was so poor as to do them
reverence except a couple of sleepy policemen and
half-a-dozen blear-eyed, early-rising Berliners on their
way to work.  None of them had yet learned to say
*Gott strafe England*, so the lonely cavalcade of
luggage-laden taxis, which were hauling Great Britain's
official representatives on the first stage of their
journey out of the enemy's capital, proceeded on its way
without molestation or demonstration.

The very day the Kaiser's ambassador to England,
Prince Lichnowsky, was accorded a departure from
London amid honors customarily reserved for a ruling
sovereign.  Great Britain's ambassador to Germany
was leaving like a thief in the night, the Imperial
Government having requested him, when shaking the dust
of Berlin from his miscreant feet, to slink to the
railway station as inconspicuously as possible and long
before the righteous metropolis waked.  Otherwise, it
was solicitously suggested, *Kultur*, giving vent to the
holy venom which now filled the Teutonic soul, might
feel constrained to stone the Ambassador afresh.
Thus, I, too, chaperoned by Grew, sneaked out of Berlin.

My old German teacher was right.  She said there
was no word for "gentleman" in the Kaiser's language.
The fashion in which his people went to war with
England proved it.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`SAFE CONDUCT`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium

   SAFE CONDUCT

.. vspace:: 2

Lehrter Bahnhof, the gateway through which
so many American tourists have passed out
of Berlin en route to Hamburg or Bremen
steamers, was not *en fête* in honor of the departing
*Engländer*.  My memory traveled back irresistibly to the
last time the British Embassy in force was assembled
there--to greet King George and Queen Mary when
they arrived to visit the German Court in May, 1913.
The rafters rang on that occasion with the blare of a
Prussian Guards band thundering *God Save the King*,
cousins George and William embraced fondly and
kissed, and the station was swathed in the
entwined colors of Germany and England.  It was a
different and forbidding aspect which the old brick
and steel barn of a train-shed presented this muggy
August morning.  At every entrance sentries in gray
and policemen with Brownings at the belt stood guard,
for railways and stations were now as integral a part
of the war-machine as fortresses and guns.  Inside,
infantrymen in gray from head to foot--all Germany
had now grown gray--carrying rifles with fixed
bayonets patrolled the platforms, searching each
Englishman, as he came along, with glances mingling
watchfulness and contempt.

Our band of pilgrims, who were to be some forty
or fifty in all, arrived in detachments, having, as Sir
Edward Goschen himself officially described it, "been
smuggled away from the Embassy in taxicabs by side
streets."  The Ambassador himself was one of the last
to turn up.  No Imperial emissary came to wish him a
happy journey and *Auf Wiedersehen*, though the
Foreign Secretary deputized young Count Wedel to say
good-by in his name.  The Kaiser's farewell greeting
to Sir Edward was conveyed the day before, when the
All-Highest sent an adjutant with majestic regrets
for the sacking of the Embassy premises on the
night the war broke out.  Of markedly less apologetic
tenor was the adjutant's message that William II,
"now that Great Britain had taken sides with other
nations against her old allies of Waterloo, must at once
divest himself of the titles of British Field Marshal
and British Admiral."  The uniforms, orders and
decorations conferred on him by Perfidious Albion had
desecrated the exalted person of the supreme
Hohenzollern for the last time.  In the memorable dispatch
in which he so dispassionately narrated his final hours
in Berlin, Sir Edward Goschen sufficiently indicated
the true character of the Kaiser's *adieu* by mentioning
that "the message lost none of its acerbity by the
manner of its delivery."  As a Prussian officer was firing it
at the official incarnation of Great Britain, it is not
difficult to imagine the mien and tone of the proud
functionary on whom had been conferred the historic
distinction of breathing Hate in the face of the foe at
that cataclysmic hour.

I shall always hold it a privilege to have been in
contact with Sir Edward Goschen during the days which
preceded the war and in the hours of its beginning.
He was throughout an object-lesson in imperturbability.
In the midst of his holidays in England when
the crisis arose, having left Kiel early in July with the
British squadron, he returned hurriedly to his post in
Berlin just before the match was applied to the
powder-barrel.  I recall distinctly the invincible state of his
good humor when I visited him at the Embassy on
July 31, only an hour or two before the Kaiser
declared Germany to be in "a state of war."

"Wile," he remarked, fastening upon me a gaze
which very successfully simulated vexation, "what did
you mean by libeling me in that dispatch of yours
from Kiel on the Kaiser's visit to our flagship?  You
had the effrontery to suggest that I was lolling about
the quarter-deck in a tweed suit.  I would have you
understand that my costume afloat is always the
regulation navy-blue!"

I pleaded color-blindness.  I said that from our
perch behind the thirteen-and-one-half-inch gun
turret for'd, it looked to me as if His Excellency had
actually worn tweed.

"Well, I didn't," he insisted, "and you caused me to
be twitted not a little in London for my apparent
ignorance of battleship etiquette."

Sir Edward Goschen, unlike other British Ambassadors
I knew in Berlin, was never at any moment of
his career there under any delusions as to the *leitmotif*
of German policy toward Great Britain.  No Teutonic
wool was ever pulled over his eyes.  During the week
of tension which ended with war, he bore himself with
tact and firmness characteristic of the highest
diplomatic traditions.  Though never surrendering a
position in the trying negotiations with the Kaiser's
Government, the Ambassador did not cease, up to the hour
when he asked for his passports, to labor for such
peace as would be consistent with British interests.  It
is not customary in the British service, I believe, to
send a diplomatic official back to a country with which
England has meantime been at war, but Sir Edward
Goschen could return to Berlin with his head high,
enjoying not only, I am sure, the limitless confidence
of his own Government, but the unalloyed respect of
Germany, as well.

Our party having been politely herded into the royal
waiting-room of the station, a couple of silk-hatted
and frock-coated young Foreign Office officials now
buzzed busily about us, checking off our respective
names and identities on their duplicate lists, lest no
unauthorized *Engländer* should escape through the ring
of steel drawn tight around Germany's frontiers.  Our
safe-conduct train had now pulled in.  We found
ourselves a somewhat indiscriminate collection of
refugees.  Besides Sir Edward Goschen, there was, of
course, the full embassy family of secretaries, attachés,
clerks, the wives of one or two of them, and one
bonnie group of babes with their blue-and-white
"nannies."  Sir Horace Rumbold, the Counselor of
the Embassy, who had conducted the initial
negotiations with Germany, monocled and unruffled, was as
calm as if he were starting off for a week-end in the
country.  Captain Henderson, the Naval Attaché, and
a prince of sailormen, had no inkling of the undying
discomfiture soon to be his, as an ingloriously
interned captive in neutral Holland, for his first
assignment from the Admiralty was to command a
detachment of the ill-starred naval expedition to Antwerp.
Colonel Russell, the Military Attaché, was quitting
German soil with emotions a little different from
those of the rest of us, for he had seen the light
of day at Potsdam in 1874, while his late father,
Lord Ampthill, was British Ambassador to Germany.
It was only a few weeks previous that the
colonel's own Berlin-born son had been christened
"William" under the august Godfatherhood of the
Kaiser, who sent the babe a golden cup emblazoned
with the Hohenzollern arms.  With us, too, were
Messrs. Gurney, Rattigan, Monck, Thomas and Astell,
Sir Edward Goschen's able staff of secretaries and
young attachés, who had all "sat tight," in their British
way, so splendidly during the preceding forty-eight
hours.  The official party also included the British
Minister to Saxony, Mr. Grant-Duff, and Lady
Grant-Duff, whose windows in Dresden had been broken, too,
and Messrs. Charlton and Turner of the Berlin and
Leipzig consulates, respectively.

The journalist-refugees consisted of Mackenzie and
Jelf of *The Times*, Tower and Nevinson of *The Daily
News*, Long of *The Westminster Gazette*, Lawrence
of Reuter's Agency, Byles of *The Standard*, Dudley
Ward, of the *Manchester Guardian* and his newly-wed
German wife, and Muirhead, the "camera man" of *The
Daily Chronicle*.  Poor Jelf, who enlisted within a
week after his arrival in England, was killed in action
during the great offensive fighting in Artois, in
September, 1915.  Among the others whom Sir Edward
Goschen had rescued from the maws of Hate was a
little Australian woman, Mrs. Gunderson, trapped in
Germany with her husband at the outbreak of war.
They had journeyed around the world on their
honeymoon to enable him to participate in an international
chess match at Mannheim.  He has been stalemated
ever since at the British concentration camp at
Ruhleben--Berlin.  Then there was an estimable old English
couple who had spent a night in jail on the charge of
being "spies" prowling about the German countryside
in their touring-car.  They were not bemoaning the
loss of their automobile in the presence of their own
escape and that of their chauffeur.  One of the luckiest
of our traveling companions was Captain Deedes, a
British army officer who was passing through
Germany on his way home from service in Turkey, and
just gained the precincts of the British Embassy
before being nabbed by the police.  We shuddered to
think of the fate of Captain Holland of the British
navy, also en route from Constantinople, who had not
been so fortunate, and was now locked up at Spandau.
I was the sole and lonely American member of the
caravan.

The Germans provided Sir Edward Goschen with
a "corridor train" of first-class cars, including
"saloon carriages," which are a combination of parlor
and sleeping cars, for himself and his immediate
entourage, and for Baron Beyens, the Belgian Minister
to Berlin, and his staff, who, appropriately enough,
were conducted to the frontier along with the
British.  Baron Beyens has contributed to the genesis of
the war not the least noteworthy evidence of
Germany's felonious designs on European liberties and
peace.  As has been revealed by a Belgian Grey Book,
the Baron was able to report to his government as early
as July 26 that "the German General Staff regarded
war as inevitable and near, and expected success on
account of Germany's superiority in heavy guns and the
unpreparedness of Russia."  Baron Beyens also
described his final and dramatic conversation with the
German Foreign Secretary, who "announced with
pain" Germany's determination to violate Belgian
neutrality, and asked to be allowed to occupy Liége.  The
request was refused, Herr von Jagow admitting to the
Minister that no other answer was possible.  The
Belgians had another "answer" up their sleeve, though
von Jagow knew it not.  It was the shambles into
which the flower of the German Guard plunged at
Liége a week later.

.. _`Berlin newspaper refugees on S. S. St. Petersburg. From left to right, standing: Muirhead; Wile; Jelf; Lawrence; Nevinson; Captain Deedes; Dudley Ward.  Seated, Mackenzie.`:

.. figure:: images/img-180.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Berlin newspaper refugees on S. S. St. Petersburg. From left to right, standing: Muirhead; Wile; Jelf; Lawrence; Nevinson; Captain Deedes; Dudley Ward.  Seated, Mackenzie.

   Berlin newspaper refugees on S. S. St. Petersburg. From left to right, standing: Muirhead; Wile; Jelf; Lawrence; Nevinson; Captain Deedes; Dudley Ward.  Seated, Mackenzie.

Lieutenant-Colonel von Buttlar, a dapper little
gray-haired Prussian officer with a Kaiser mustache and
a heel-clicking manner, presently approached Sir
Edward Goschen, saluted, introduced himself as the
military chaperon of the party, and invited us to troop
into the train.  An armed guard, a strapping infantryman
with glistening bayonet affixed to his shouldered
rifle, was already aboard.  He turned out, as did the
lieutenant-colonel himself, to be a very harmless
warden.  When the *Oberstleutnant*, gloved and helmeted
as if on dress parade, was not snoozing or reading
during the journey, he merely hovered about,
mother-like, to see that his charges were comfortable, as
well as not up to mischief.  In addition to the
ordinary train-crew, we were shepherded by seven or
eight plain-clothes Prussian detectives, whom even the
ruse of regulation railway-caps could not disguise.  You
can tell a German "secret policeman," as he is
idiomatically called, at least a mile off.  He is the last word
in palpability.

Our destination, we learned, was the Hook of
Holland, where either a Great Eastern steamer or a
British cruiser would pick us up.  We were to travel via
Hanover-Osnabrück to Amsterdam and thence to the
sea.  Mackenzie, Jelf and I, having preempted a
compartment, settled down at the windows for a last long
look at Berlin as the train now tugged slowly out of the
station, a few minutes past eight o'clock.  Speaking
for myself, I am quite sure that railway trucks never
rattled with such sweet melody as those beneath us
were producing, for with every chug they were bringing
us nearer to liberty.  I remember a distinct feeling
of consciousness that I should not consider myself an
utterly freed felon until German territory was actually
no longer under my feet.  It was an indescribably
gratifying sensation, all sufficient for the moment, to
realize that Berlin at least was fading into oblivion.
Whether any of my British colleagues were throbbing
with similar emotions, I never knew.  It is un-English,
I believe, to reveal emotions even if one is battling with
them.  Whatever thoughts were in their minds, I
myself was obsessed with a distinct desire, at that
moment, to blot Berlin from my mind for all eternity.
Perhaps, as I thus soliloquized, I was giving way
unconsciously to a passing spell of that unreasoning
malice which infested hate-maddened Berlin.  I
suppose I ought to have shed briny tears, as we skirted
Spandau and sped across the dreary plain of the Mark
of Brandenburg, and familiar landmarks passed from
view.  Certainly in the long ago, I had firmly made up
my mind that when my time to leave Germany came
I should go away with genuine regret.  Life in the
Fatherland had meant much to me and mine.  Although
I never adopted it, like Lord Haldane, as my
"spiritual home," a man can not spend thirteen years
of middle life in the same community, however alien
to its spirit and institutions, without forming
deep-rooted attachments.  But the circumstances which
precipitated me out of Germany conspired, I fear, to
quench old-time affection.  So, ungrateful as it may
appear, my handkerchief was not brought into play
and my eyes were uncommonly dry as the sand-wastes
of Brandenburg vanished from our vision....

It was evident that we were in for a tedious
journey and that our trek across Western Germany was to
be agony long drawn out.  Berlin to Hanover, the first
leg of the trip, was one I had accomplished times
innumerable under three hours, and even a *Bummelzug*
hardly took longer.  It was to take us nearly three
times as long to-day.  Mobilization was technically
complete, but every railway track in the country,
especially if it fed the great trunk-line to the west along
which we were traveling, was still choked with troop
trains.  In consequence, though ours was a "special,"
we had to halt, back up, sidetrack and perform every
other gyration of which a train is capable, whenever
we came up with battalions en route toward one of the
three frontiers on which German blood was now being
spilled.  At every station we encountered trainloads
of men in gray, singing, cheering and laughing as if
bound for a picnic instead of slaughter.  It was always
they who had the right of way, for it was soon borne
in upon us that the meanest detachment of reservists
bulked larger in Germany's eye just then than "the
whole bally British diplomatic service put together,"
as Jelf irreverently expressed it.  Never at any time
were we doing anything dizzier than twenty miles an
hour, and we figured that if we reached Hanover by
dinner-time, we should be fortunate.  As to London,
which we used to reach twenty hours after leaving
Berlin, it became painfully obvious that it would be
nearer forty this trip.

But there was much to see, and to think and talk
about.  As we were being held up everywhere along
the line by seemingly the entire male population of the
Empire in uniform, it was not surprising, for one
thing, to find the fields on either side of us as denuded
of men as if Adam had never lived.  None but women
was discoverable at work on this eve of harvest,
excepting here and there an old man, while children, too,
were being pressed into service.  At bridges, culverts
and crossings, instead of the customary railway
guards, who used to stand at salute with a flag as a
train whirled past, there were now soldiers with
rifles.  No restrictions were placed upon our
reconnoitering the adjacent country as long as we were in
motion; but Lieutenant-Colonel von Buttlar, always
heel-clicking and saluting beforehand, intimated to
*Mein Herren* that the curtains of their compartment-windows
must be drawn as the train approached or
halted at stations.  There was no suspicion, he begged
to assure us, that we might attempt to practise
espionage about troop movements.  On the contrary, the
suggestion was a precaution recommended in our own
interests.  Unfortunately, quoth the apologetic colonel,
it had not been feasible to conceal the identity of our
train.  Western Germany was bursting with patriotic
frenzy, and it was just within the range of possibilities
that their exuberance might beat itself into disagreeable
"demonstrations."  Therefore, discretion was
obviously our cue.

But what we could not see at Nauen, Rathenow,
Stendal, Gardelegen, Obisfelde and Lehrte, we could
hear, for all the inhabitants of every hamlet and town
in Central Germany appeared to have orders from
somewhere to assemble at their railway-stations and
sing themselves red in the face for Kaiser and
Empire.  Manifestly the Supreme War Lord had not only
called up his armed legions, but mobilized the
country's *Singvereine* besides, and man, woman and child
of them were now in the trenches with their throats
bared to the foe.  I suppose they were chanting *Die
Wacht am Rhein* and *Deutschland, Deutschland über
Alles* in other parts of Germany, too, but I have
often thought that the country's most vociferous and
tireless choral artists were concentrated on that day
on the strategic line of the British safe-conduct train's
route.  If the Great General Staff at Berlin, with that
incomparable attention to detail which is one of its
vaunted accomplishments, schemed to send us out of
Germany convinced, by the evidence of our own ears,
that the Kaiser's people were sallying forth to war
like Wagnerian heroes with music and triumphant
cheers on their lips, the plan succeeded.  My own
indelible recollection of that farewell ride across
Germany, at any rate, is the memory of song.  For many
days and nights afterward, *Die Wacht am Rhein*
and *Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles*, would ring
and ring through my head.  At the time it all seemed
beautifully spontaneous, for the Germans are a
singing folk, who put soul into their anthems, but
reflection makes me wonder if that continuous song-service
which so mercilessly accompanied us from Berlin to
the Netherlands was not a stage-managed extravaganza
with a motive.  The Germans are a thorough race,
and in war they overlook no opportunity.

It was only at times that the singing was anything
else than merely monotonous--the periodical occasions
when, if we halted longer than usual at a station, the
singers would line up alongside the train so closely
that they could fairly shout in our ears.  Then there
would be a note of ill-mannered defiance in their song.
At Hanover we happened to be drawn up in the station
at the very moment when the British Ambassador and
the Belgian Minister were in the dining-car, and there
was a particularly vehement vocal endurance competition
outside of the window at which they were sitting.
But from my own table on the opposite side of the car
I observed that Sir Edward Goschen was not visibly
diverted from his *Wiener-Schnitzel*, for, while the
*Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles* was doing its
worst, he remarked, cheerily, to his Belgian colleague:
"Rather fine singing, isn't it?"

Next to the songs which knew no ending the most
conspicuous manifestation of *Furor Teutonicus* was
the chalking of troop-trains with exuberant inscriptions
symbolical of expected great German victories to come.
"Special to St. Petersburg" was a prime favorite.
"Excursion to Paris" was extremely popular.  That,
we know, is exactly what the War Party expected the
campaign to be.  "Through Train to Moscow" ran a
particularly sanguine sentiment and "Death to the
Blood-Czar," a more sanguinary one.  Then there
would be rude caricatures of Nicholas II or President
Poincaré either at the end of a noose or of the boot of
an equally rudely-cartooned Kaiser.  And, of course,
there were plenty of jests at Great Britain.  "We'll
soon be chewing roast-beef in London" was the way
one artist epitomized his hopes.  "Special Train to the
Peddler-City"--a shaft at London, the home of the
"shopkeeper nation" which "organized war against
Germany" in order to "crush an unpleasant commercial
rival."  "Death to our enviers!" was the language
in which another Anglophobe thought found expression.
Beneath the British Ambassador's car-windows,
I was told, some one had chalked a John Bull drooping
ignominiously from the gallows, with "Race-Traitor"
for an epitaph!

The night was fitful for us all.  Curled up on the
seats of our compartments, such attempts at sleep as
we ventured were effectually defeated by *Deutschland,
Deutschland über Alles* and *Die Wacht am
Rhein*.  All through the night they were hurled at us.
At every town, regardless of the hour, the choristers
were on the job.  We welcomed our arrival at Bentheim,
the final station in Prussia, at seven next morning, not
half so eagerly because it was the last of Germany as
because it was the last of *Deutschland, Deutschland
über Alles* and *Die Wacht am Rhein*.  For any sins we
ever committed in the Fatherland, we felt we had been
richly chastised.  I understood now why General
Sherman once crossed the Atlantic to escape
*Marching through Georgia*--only to be bombarded with it
beneath his windows before breakfast by an Irish band
in Queenstown before he had been in Europe twelve
hours.  I am morally certain that when old Tecumseh
said that "War is hell," he was thinking about
*Marching through Georgia*.  That is what *Deutschland,
Deutschland über Alles* made me think about Armageddon.

None of us experienced any special difficulty in
restraining our emotions when Lieutenant-Colonel von
Buttlar and our other German chaperons handed us over
at Bentheim to a Dutch train crew awaiting our arrival
there with a Dutch locomotive.  The colonel clicked
and bowed his farewell respects to Sir Edward
Goschen and Baron Beyens, accepted their appreciations
of his courtesy and helpfulness, saluted for the
last time, and then formally transferred us to Queen
Wilhelmina's tender mercies.  The hour of our
liberation was at hand.  And for the first time in a week a
score of Englishmen and at least one American
thought out aloud their opinions about Germany and
all her works.  What some of us said about the
Hohenzollerns has been put by Colonel Watterson in far more
immortal diction than my poor pen could epitomize it.

.. _`Sir Edward Goschen, late British Ambassador in Berlin, boarding S. S. St. Petersburg, en route to London, August 7th, 1914.`:

.. figure:: images/img-188.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Sir Edward Goschen, late British Ambassador in Berlin, boarding S. S. St. Petersburg, en route to London, August 7th, 1914.

   Sir Edward Goschen, late British Ambassador in Berlin, boarding S. S. St. Petersburg, en route to London, August 7th, 1914.

At Rozendaal, the first station in Holland, there was
a wild scramble from the newspaper coach for the
railway telegraph-office.  All of us had reams of
"copy" to release, after having been muzzled for five
days.  German money, we were distressed to observe,
was already at a discount in the Netherlands, and those
of us who did not hand in Dutch or British gold had
to put our "stuff" on the wire after more fortunate
colleagues had beaten us to it with legal tender.  A
couple of hours later found us at Amsterdam, where
representatives of the British Legation at The Hague
and the local Consulate-General were on hand to greet
Sir Edward Goschen's party and furnish us with the
first news of actual war operations which we had had.
Fighting at sea had begun.  England had drawn first
blood.  The German mine-layer *Konigin Luise*, within
eighteen hours of the declaration of hostilities, *i.e.*, on
Wednesday, August 5, was overtaken by the British
destroyer *Lance* and sunk in six minutes.  There was
reason to fear that a fleet of enemy mine-layers,
masquerading as fishing-boats and in other pacific
disguises, had been occupied for the better part of a week
strewing mines through an area reaching from a point
off Harwich--which we were soon to approach--along
the east coast far up into Scottish waters.  On
the next day, Thursday, August 6, the British light
cruiser *Amphion* struck a mine planted by the *Konigin
Luise* and went down with heavy loss of life.
Much more cheering was the news that gallant
Belgium was giving the Germans a welcome they had not
bargained for.  The Meuse was being gloriously
defended.  Liége was menaced, but still untaken.
Germans had been mown down by the regiment--if
reports could be believed--and we devoured them
eagerly.  No news is ever so welcome as that which
one longs to hear--even before it is confirmed.

The Hook was ready for us, we were told.  The
Great Eastern steamer *St. Petersburg* was there
awaiting our arrival, having the night before landed
Prince Lichnowsky and the other members of the
German Embassy in London.  The Kaiser's emissary had
passed to the ship through a British guard of honor,
while shore batteries fired an ambassador's salute.
How like Sir Edward Goschen's slinking departure
from Berlin, we thought!  Shortly after two o'clock
the *St. Petersburg* lifted anchor and amid typical
North Sea weather, raw, rainy and misty, got under
way.  Few thought of German submarines at that
time, but the Berlin Government, we pondered, had
not guaranteed Sir Edward Goschen "safe conduct"
through an indiscriminately sown field of floating
mines.  Quite obviously, we had now to pass through
a zone bristling with uncertainty, to put it mildly.  But
we had not steamed far into the open sea before the
sight of a British torpedo-boat flotilla on patrol
convinced us that we were in a well-shepherded course.
Then we had our first ocular demonstration of
Jellicoe's unremitting vigilance, for the crescent of
destroyers far forward now began rapidly to close in
upon us.  Our identity was apparently not known to
them, and they were taking no chances.  "They sent a
shot across our bow yesterday, with the Germans on
board," explained the skipper of the *St. Petersburg* to
Captain Henderson, the Naval Attaché, who was with
him on the bridge.  Captain Henderson was not
disturbed by the possibility of our getting an innocuous
three-pounder in our wireless rigging or some other
harmless token of the destroyers' solicitude, but he
*was* concerned lest so innocent a craft should cause
British destroyer captains to burn up valuable oil fuel
needlessly at such an hour.  So the next I saw of
Henderson he was wig-wagging mysterious messages with
signal-flags from the bridge of the *St. Petersburg*,
which told the destroyers, I suppose, that we weren't
in the slightest respect worthy of their attention or
shell.  They wig-wagged something back which must
have pleased Henderson, for presently he clambered
down smilingly from the upper regions, and said:
"*That's* all right!"

Harwich hove into view at what should have been
sundown.  By six o'clock we were at the pier, boarded
by the naval authorities of the port and the
customs-men.  Sir Edward Goschen's party, after the
Ambassador himself had vouched for the identity of each
and every one of us, was disembarked without formalities,
and at six-forty-five P.M. of Friday, August 7, we
found ourselves treading British soil.  There were
policemen, soldiers, reporters and photographers on the
dock, but no formal welcoming delegation for the
Ambassador.  Somebody whispered to him that a
special train would convey him and his refugees to
London, and to it he took his way as undemonstratively as
if he were a Cook's tourist back from a "tripper's"
jaunt to the Continent.  I remarked to Tower that I was
afraid Americans would have made a real fuss over
Goschen if he were *our* Ambassador home from the
enemy's country; whereupon *The Daily News* man
ejaculated something which was to ring in my ears for
a year or more, whenever I presumed to comment on
that strange phenomenon with which it is now my task
to deal--England and the English in war-time: "Wile,
you Americans can not understand the English
character."  Tower was right.

An American is general manager of the Great
Eastern Railway.  I strongly suspect that he must
have had an alien hand in even the semblance of a
"demonstration" of greeting which Sir Edward
Goschen encountered when our train pulled into
Liverpool Street Station a little after eleven o'clock.
I did not wait to watch it, nor even to claim my
baggage, for there was a hungry first edition waiting for
my "story" at *The Daily Mail* office, and to Carmelite
House I flew in the first taxi into which I could leap.
By midnight Beattie, the night editor, was tearing
"copy" from my hands as fast as an Underwood could
reel it off, and it was rapidly approaching breakfast-time
when I called it a night's work and went to bed--in
England at last.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium

   COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES

.. vspace:: 2

More than once during the last phase of our
exciting journey to England, across the
mine-strewn waters between the Hook and Harwich, I
reflected that I seemed doomed to take up my residence
on British soil in war-time.  It was in the spring of
1900, in the anxious days between Ladysmith and
Mafeking, when the tide of victory was still running
in favor of the Boers, that I first arrived in London,
and my lot was cast there for the succeeding year and
a half of the South African struggle.  I felt certain
that the feverish interest with which even the sluggish
British temperament had followed every detail of a
campaign ten thousand miles away, and which
engrossed only a fraction of the Empire's strength,
would pale into tepid insignificance compared to the
concern which would be generated by a tremendous
European war only a channel-crossing distant.  But I
had time for only one breakfast and one morning's
papers before I realized that John Bull had donned,
even for Armageddon, the garment in which his bosom
swells the proudest--the armor of invincible inexcitability.

Actually the only wrought-up people in the British
Isles during the first week of the war appeared to
be the frantic American tourist refugees, who, of
course, heavily outnumbered their brothers and sisters
in wretchedness whom I had left behind in Germany.
If it had not been for the frantic transatlantic sob
and worry fraternity storming the steamship and
express companies' offices in Cockspur Street and the
Haymarket on the morning of Saturday, August 8,
when I went out to look for the war in London, no one
could possibly have made me believe that such a thing
existed.  Such portions of the community as had not
started for the links, the ocean, the river or the
country "as usual" were demeaning themselves as
self-respecting, imperturbable Britons customarily do on
the edge of a "week-end."  The seaside holiday season
was at its zenith.  The immortal "Twelfth," when
grouse-shooting begins, was approaching.  Everybody
who was anybody was "out of town," and stayed
there.  It was only those fussy, fretting Americans
who insisted upon losing their equilibrium and
converting the most placid metropolis in the universe into
a bedlam of unseemly agitation and alarm.  It was
"extraordinary," Englishmen said, how they resolutely
declined to take a lesson from the composite stolidity
of Britain, preferring to give their emotions
unrestrained rein and to keep the cables hot in imperious
demands for ships, gold and other panaceas for the
scared and stranded.  Which reminds me to say that
traditional British hospitality to the stranger within
the gate was never showered more graciously on
American friends than in that trying hour.

The British had worried a whole week about the
war already.  That was a departure and a concession
of no mean magnitude, for it is their boast and pride
that they *never* "worry."  Having, however, yielded
to such un-British instincts in the earliest hours of the
crisis, they pulled themselves together and swore a
solemn resolve, come what may, not soon again to
succumb to indecorous habits which the world associated
exclusively with the explosive French or the irresponsibly
impulsive "Yankees."  I felt instinctively that an
effectual rebuke was being administered to me personally
by the writer of the following newspaper review
of London after three days of war:

.. vspace:: 2

"A new metal has come into the London crowd out
of the crucible of these last few days.  The froth and
fume of flag-wagging have evaporated; so, too, have
lifted bone-quaking mists of dread and suspense.
Exultation and depression are alike unhealthy.  It is good
that we are now free from them.

"The faces in the street are the barometers of the
souls that men hide.  It does one's heart good to walk
London and to behold that very notable rise--apparent
to every one and swift in its example--of the mercury
of the people.  The great war took all our comprehensions
unawares.  Although it has boded for years, it
walked at last like an unbelievable spectre into a warm
and lighted room.  What wonder that we were shaken?
What wonder at a creeping ague of the spirit in front
of the unknown?

"The dizziness has gone.  The trial before us, black
as it is, is not so black as our anticipation of it.  We
have already surprised ourselves no less than we have
confounded our enemies by our rally and our
readiness.  The financial situation is saved, the banks
re-open, the food supplies are safeguarded, and prices
controlled.

"A tremendous accession of calmness and reliance
has come to the nation by the appointment of Lord
Kitchener to the War Office.  The news that the Army
is in his hands, a rock of a man, has swept through
London like a vivifying breeze.

"London is swinging back to as much of its normal
life as possible.  She has found herself.  She is bravely
being the usual London--the great city serene."

.. vspace:: 2

Far more profitable, obviously, than hunting war
excitement was examination of the causes which
accounted for its absence, and to that I forthwith
devoted myself.  In the first place, there was the navy,
"England's All in All."  By a fortuitous circumstance,
for which, with all his faults, the Empire must render
imperishable gratitude to its young half-American
First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, the
Fleet was instantly at its "war stations," fully
mobilized, and in a state of battle-readiness and general
efficiency unparalleled in British history.  War
maneuvers on an unapproached scale had been in
progress for the preceding fortnight or three weeks.  Only
the merest word of command was wanting to convert
the Grand Fleet into the battering-ram and shield, to
constitute which in the hour of emergency it had been
created.  "Ringed by her leaden seas," which were
held, moreover, by a "supreme" armada, there seemed
every justification for equanimity, for the United
Kingdom has no frontiers which an invading army can
violate as long as Britannia rules the waves.

The domestic political situation, more menacingly
turbulent than at any time within the memory of living
Englishmen, had been resolved with miraculous
rapidity and completeness.  "Revolution" in Ulster, on
which the Germans had so fondly banked, vanished as
effectually as if it had never raised its head.  "We will
ourselves defend the coasts of Ireland," declared John
Redmond in the House of Commons in a speech which
will never die, "and I say to the Government that they
may to-morrow withdraw every one of their troops
from Ireland."  Mrs. Pankhurst, freshly released from
a periodical hunger-striking sojourn in Brixton jail,
announced that the suffragettes had stacked arms and
now knew only womankind's duty to England.  That
sent another Berlin dream careening into oblivion.
"His Majesty's Loyal Opposition" proclaimed in
Parliament through the mouth of the Conservative leader,
Bonar Law, that the Government's political opponents
were prepared to accord it "unhesitating support."  In
the Government itself the "Potsdam Party," as that
relentless iconoclast, Leo Maxse, long termed the
coterie which was for peace with Germany at almost any
price, was either weeded out or suppressed.  Lord
Morley, the Lord President of the Council; "Honest
John" Burns, still true to convictions, President of the
Local Government Board, and Charles P. Trevelyan,
Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education,
unobtrusively retired from Mr. Asquith's official
family in consequence of their inability to sanction the
war.  They have played their parts meantime with
honorable consistency--by maintaining an hermetical
silence on questions of the war.  And finally, though
primarily in popular judgment, Lord Haldane, the
graduate of Göttingen, the translator of Schopenhauer
and the admirer of German *Geist*, was driven by
scandalized public opinion from the War Office, whither
he had just come as an "assistant" to the Prime
Minister, whose cabinet portfolio was the Secretaryship for
War.  Most of England sighed with thankful relief
when the able Scotch lawyer and philosopher whom
contemporary history accuses of responsibility for
Britain's military unpreparedness, beat an ignominious
retreat back to his regular post, the wool-sack,
which, as Lord Chancellor, he by general consent
conspicuously adorned.  The country's relief became
enthusiastic assurance when the lawyer, Asquith,
himself retired from the War Office, to make way for the
soldier, Kitchener, who was recalled by telegram the
day before from Dover, just as he was about to board
ship for Cairo, to resume his duties as the ruler of
Egypt.  With the "Potsdam Party" banished or made
harmless, the Cabinet was now regarded as
satisfactorily purged.  The public heard with boundless
gratification that the "strong men" of the Government--Grey,
Lloyd-George and Churchill--had been
uncompromisingly for war from the start as the only
recourse compatible with British honor, to say nothing
of the elementary dictates of self-preservation.  It was
at length possible for Mr. Asquith to assure the
country that he presided over an administration of whose
unity of view and determination there was no shadow
of a doubt--a Government which was resolved, as Sir
Edward Grey's great speech in the House of Commons
on August 3 set forth, to accomplish three cardinal
purposes:

.. vspace:: 2

1. To protect the defenseless French coast against
attack by the German navy;

2. To defend the integrity of Belgium; and

3. To put forth all Britain's strength and not run
away from the obligations of honor and interest.

.. vspace:: 2

When the events of the Great War, and perhaps the
chief actors in it themselves, have passed away, some
British historian will almost certainly arise to tell the
world the story--the "inside story"--of how Mr. Asquith's
cabinet, through three days and nights of
doubts, uncertainties, trials and tribulations, crossed
the Rubicon to the shore of unanimity on the subject
of British participation.  There were moments, beyond
all question, when that issue hung perilously in the
balance.  The French Government's frantic eleventh-hour
appeals for a decision in Downing Street are
mute evidence of the vacillation which prevailed--a
species of tentativeness which has never been missing
from the British conduct of the purely diplomatic
affairs of the war.  The ministerial debates during which
the die was cast in favor of war will make immortal
reading, even if only a digest of them is all that is
vouchsafed posterity.  The "strong men" of the
Government, if report is reliable, were called upon to fight
valiantly and ceaselessly to avoid England's "running
away from the obligations of honor and interest."  The
tense interval which ensued while they were battering
down the trenches of skepticism, chicken-heartedness
and nonchalance among their Cabinet colleagues caused
a delay which might easily have proved of fatal import;
for the decision to throw the strength of the British
army, as well as the navy, into the scales was under
discussion, and it is conceivable that the Expeditionary
Force, which it was eventually determined to send,
might have been kept back for weeks, or even
altogether, instead of the mere days its dispatch was
actually retarded.  Disaster incalculable would almost
inevitably have resulted in that event.

The indispensable and all-governing preliminary
measures for war in respect of domestic politics, the
Government and the naval and military administration
having thus been taken, equally radical precautions
were invoked to put the nation's economic house in
order.  The Stock Exchange, following the lead of
New York, Paris and Berlin, had shut down as early
as July 31, in order that mere insensate panic on the
part of the speculative and investing world might not
degenerate into irretrievable rout.  War having
descended with irresistible suddenness during the
"week-end" preceding the traditional August Bank Holiday
(Monday, the 3rd), a meeting of great financiers in
the Bank of England on the holiday itself decided to
prolong it, as far as banks and bankers were concerned,
for three days, *i.e.*, until Friday, the 7th, in what
turned out to be the well-grounded hope that public
excitement would meantime subside and prevent
"runs" ruinous alike to banks and depositors.  A
moratorium was established.  The Bank discount-rate,
which had already vaulted from four to eight per cent.,
was now raised to ten, an unheard-of figure, which
effectually curbed the lust of persons anxious to profit
from war abnormalities or otherwise indulge in
operations not consistent with the gravity of the hour.

.. _`Germans Anxious to Fly from England. Remarkable scenes were witnessed outside the American Consulate, thousands of Germans clamoring for passage back to Germany.`:

.. figure:: images/img-200.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Germans Anxious to Fly from England. Remarkable scenes were witnessed outside the American Consulate, thousands of Germans clamoring for passage back to Germany.

   Germans Anxious to Fly from England. Remarkable scenes were witnessed outside the American Consulate, thousands of Germans clamoring for passage back to Germany.

It was mainly these things--wholesome, substantial
proofs that their rulers had grappled with the situation
with bold initiative that inspired the people of
London with reassurance, which, diluted with the stoicism
of the British character, became calm confidence
Gibraltar-like in its inflexibility.  She had "the men,"
England was saying; she had "the ships," and,
Parliament having voted an initial war fund of one hundred
million pounds as unconcernedly as if it were a
thousand-pounds grant for a new switch-track at Woolwich
arsenal, she unmistakably had "the money," too.

But even more self-comforting, if possible, than this
iron trust in her own inexhaustible resources was
England's conviction in the invincibility of her Allies.
Was not even little Belgium holding back the flower
of the German army before Liége?  Even in the
unlikely event of Liége's fall, would not the impregnable
fortress of Namur provide Krupp guns with a still
tougher nut to crack?  Those were, alas! the hours in
which the existence of the forty-two-centimeter siege
gun was not even mooted in ostrich England.  France?
The Germans would find a vastly different antagonist
awaiting them this time in the Ardennes, the Vosges
passes and along the Meuse and the Sambre.  There
was a "New France," a France of *élan* and iron.  It
was the virile Republic of Poincaré, Delcassé, Joffre,
Bleriot, Pegoud and Carpentier, with which the
Prussian hosts must this time measure lances, not the
degenerate Empire of the third Napoleon, which
crumbled at Sedan and Metz and surrendered Paris.
Russia?  "Can't you just hear the steam-roller rumbling
across East Prussia and thundering at the gates of
Berlin?" a great English peer asked me, in all seriousness,
during my first week in London.  "Isn't the tread
of the Czar's countless millions, pounding remorselessly
toward the west, almost audible?" he persisted.
Millions of Englishmen were thinking and saying
the same thing.  As for the German army, almost
as many of them were convinced that that
"over-organized, peace-stale" military establishment, which
was a magnificent spectacle on parade, but lacked
leaders experienced in modern campaigning, would crash
to pieces not only against "superior numbers" but
against Allied troops and commanders who had been
fighting great wars this past quarter of a century
in Africa and Asia.  London's feelings toward
Germany seemed, indeed, almost compassionate.  Many
people, otherwise sane, talked about the war being over
by Christmas.  The Kaiser's navy would come out
and be smashed, they calculated, and such work as had
not already been accomplished by the Allied armies
within the Fatherland's eastern and western frontiers
would soon be completed by "internal collapse,"
industrial stagnation, national impoverishment and
universal starvation.  Poor Germany!  She had brought it
on herself.  Her end, after a peace soon to be dictated
in Berlin, would manifestly be speedy and annihilating.
The Social Democrats, it was true, were bamboozled
into support of the war by fictitious assurances
that the sword had been "forced" into Germany's
unwilling and blameless hand, but the scales would
presently fall from their eyes, and then woe betide
whatever remained of the Hohenzollerns' ravished,
defenseless realm!  Street-hawkers in the Strand were
selling blatant copies--a penny each--of *The Kaiser's
Last Will and Testament*.  Would William II be sent
to St. Helena, like the other Napoleon, or be interned
in some more accessible point in the British Empire, to
pass the remaining days of his humiliation and
remorse?  And the "Crown Prince" with him, of course.
These were the reveries of Britain in the early days of
August, 1914.  Nothing disturbed them except the
creaking and the rumbling of the Russian steam-roller.
Those being dulcet reverberations, John Bull paused
eagerly in the midst of his musings to let them lull him
into a still deeper siesta of optimism....

Serene and imperturbable as the vast majority of
Englishmen were, the responsible leaders of the nation
were under no delusions as to the magnitude of the
task now confronting them.  To the country's intense
astonishment, though Lord Roberts had been dinning
it in their ears incessantly for at least five years
previous, England found itself in a state of practical
impotence as far as effective participation in modern
large-scale military operations was concerned.  In the
same five minutes during which Parliament voted one
hundred million pounds as a first war credit, it also
sanctioned an increase of the British army by five
hundred thousand men.  At that moment the Home
military establishment, which was immediately
mobilized as "The British Army Expeditionary Force"
when England decided to enter the war with her
soldiers as well as her sailors, consisted of eight divisions
of all arms--roundly, one hundred fifty thousand men.
An organization of another half-million troops,
officered and equipped for a great Continental campaign,
could not be stamped out of the ground.  Its production,
even in a country with the glorious military
traditions of England, was manifestly fraught with
stupendous difficulties.  There was no mistrust of British
patriotism; but when men recalled the futility of Lord
Roberts' efforts to implant in England's conscience the
necessity of some form of National Service--how he
not only failed, but was ridiculed and vilified for
pursuing his sagacious crusade in the face of merciless
rebuff--and when inherent British repugnance to
"soldiering" and even to wearing uniforms was
remembered, there were widespread misgivings.

Prussian militarism long filled me with abhorrence.
I had learned to detest it not as an institution, but for
its numerous disgusting manifestations, principally
the arrogance of its gilded popinjays and the brutal
and overweening contempt in which their traditions
and training taught them to hold mere civilian
microbes.  Yet in those frantic hours when hopelessly
unready military England was compelled to patch up
an army for battle against the world's most scientific
war-machine, I pondered what a blessing a little
"militarism" would have been for the British democracy.
I had seen Germany trooping off to war, singing,
cheering and flower-garnished; and I knew that her
debonair demeanor was due less to lust for the
fray--the great mass of the nation was animated by no such
sentiment as that--than to the realization, which
sprang from immutable facts and numbers, that her
citizen army was equal to almost any emergencies it
would be called upon to meet.  Germany was a nation
in arms.  England was a nation in difficulties.  How
grotesquely unprepared to play a commensurate part
in a military war, compared to her Continental allies
and foes, this table showing the size of the various
armies indicates:

::

                                Peace footing    War footing    Guns

   Great Britain ...............    234,000         380,000    1,000
   Austria-Hungary .............    500,000       2,200,000    2,500
   France (including Algeria) ..    790,000       4,000,000    4,200
   Germany .....................    850,000       6,000,000    5,500
   Russia ......................  1,700,000       7,000,000    6,000

.. vspace:: 2

Lord Kitchener was obviously the man of the hour.
An organizer primarily, rather than a strategist,
tactician or field-marshal, his appointment to the War
Secretaryship demonstrated that whoever was responsible
for it--men say it was Lord Northcliffe--recognized
instantly the all-overshadowing requirement: a
recruiting sergeant.  Joffre, the French Commander-in-Chief,
would necessarily retain the supreme direction
of the Allied forces operating against the German
front in France and Belgium.  England's part was to
send him men.  And the one to find, drill and equip
them was unmistakably Kitchener of Khartum, South
Africa, India and Egypt, the "organizer" of victory
against the fuzzy-wuzzies and the Boers, the
disciplinarian who had galvanized the Indian army into new
life, and the administrator who was licking Egypt into
Imperial shape.  There would be time enough for the
war itself to produce another Wellington or Roberts.
What was needed now was men, rifles and guns,
cartridges, shells and uniforms, war-planes, motor-lorries
and hospital-trains and all the other innumerable
impedimenta of modern man-killing.  The summoning to
the task of the big bluff soldier who first saw the light
in County Kerry, who was looked upon as the incarnation
of initiative and relentless efficiency, and who had
proved his right so to be considered, was elementary
and inevitable.  It was work for a "sergeant-major"
and a "drill-sergeant" rather than for a Napoleonic
genius; and when England learned that "K.," as he is
affectionately known in the army, was on the
prodigious job, England took heart.  She responded with a
will to his first appeal for men.  The hoardings of the
Kingdom were plastered with it on the morning of
August 8.  It read as follows:

::

   +------------------------------------------------------------------+
   |                                                                  |
   |                     YOUR KING AND COUNTRY                        |
   |                          NEED YOU.                               |
   |                                                                  |
   |                        A CALL TO ARMS                            |
   |                                                                  |
   |  An addition of 100,000 men to his Majesty's Regular Army        |
   |  is immediately necessary in the present grave National          |
   |  Emergency.                                                      |
   |                                                                  |
   |  Lord Kitchener is confident that this appeal will be at once    |
   |  responded to by all those who have the safety of our            |
   |  Empire at heart.                                                |
   |                                                                  |
   |                      TERMS OF SERVICE                            |
   |                                                                  |
   |  General Service for a period of 3 years or until the war is     |
   |  concluded.                                                      |
   |                                                                  |
   |            Age of Enlistment between 19 and 30.                  |
   |                                                                  |
   |                        HOW TO JOIN                               |
   |                                                                  |
   |  Full information can be obtained at any Post Office in the      |
   |  Kingdom or at any Military depot.                               |
   |                                                                  |
   |                      GOD SAVE THE KING!                          |
   |                                                                  |
   +------------------------------------------------------------------+

.. vspace:: 2

In the past England's volunteer army had been
maintained by a recruiting system which produced, on
the average, about thirty-five thousand new men a
year.  They did not come easily, even in halcyon peace
times, and the gaily-caparisoned recruiting-sergeant in
Trafalgar Square, who would buttonhole a hundred
likely "Tommies" in a day, earned well his fee if he
succeeded in inducing ten of them to "take the shilling."  It
remained to be seen if "the present grave National
Emergency" would find dormant in Britain military
talent and inclination hitherto undreamt of.  In the
opening flush of the excitement and enthusiasm which
the war engendered, Lord Kitchener's hopes were
satisfactorily realized.  Recruiting-offices in numerous
districts were literally stormed.  The response from
the middle, "upper-middle" and upper classes was
particularly buoyant.  Duke, peer, aristocrat, nobleman,
"nut," banker, lawyer, doctor, merchant, teacher and
clerk came forward splendidly.  But artisan, docker and
miner lagged.  The lower class revealed an inclination
to continue to throng the public-houses rather than the
recruiting-offices.  It seemed evident at the outset that
it was not they who were bent on saving England.
They gave disquieting indication that their sort of
patriotism was primarily individual self-preservation, that
for them, love of country began at home.  A waking-up
process in their unenlightened ranks was destined to
come to pass, thanks mainly to "separation allowances"
for missus and the kids, but it was never to attain the
dimensions of a rousing which extorted from their
atrophied intelligence even an approximate appreciation
of their obligations or their country's peril.
Britain's war is being waged, as it will be won--speaking
broadly--by the patriotism and blood of the
excoriated upper ten thousand.  The struggle had been in
progress for more than a year, at a cost of nearly
five hundred thousand British casualties, when it
was still necessary for Lloyd-George to remind
working-class England, in as unqualified language as a
politician dare speak to the nation's electoral masters, that
it was not doing its full duty.

While Britain at large still hugged the delusion of
easy victory, in grotesque underestimation of the
enemy's power, and while Kitchener's recruit-finding
machinery was being put in vigorous motion, the War
Office, in co-operation with the navy, was accomplishing
as magnificent a piece of military work as army
annals hold--the silent landing of the British
Expeditionary Force of one hundred and sixty thousand men,
with its full complement of horses, guns and stores, on
the shores of France.  That feat will live as
immortal disproof of the charge popular in the United
States that "hustle" is a word which is conspicuously
missing from the British lexicon.  Compared to
it, our "hustle" in landing an army in Cuba in 1898
was the quintessence of procrastination and muddle.
The British railways had been taken over by the
Government coincident with the arrival of war, an
"Executive Committee" consisting of the General Managers
of the main companies having been established more
than a year previous as an advisory council for such an
emergency as had now supervened.  Embarkation of
the Expeditionary Force commenced on the night of
August 7th.  Admiral Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of
the Grand Fleet, assured Lord Kitchener that the
channel passage was as safe as the Thames itself.  The
British public, receiving its first lesson in relentless
censorship of war news, was kept so effectually in the
dark as to the dispatch of the largest army which ever
left English shores that it knew nothing whatever of
it till the host was at its destination, with breasts bared
to the foe.  The landing of Sir John French's legions
on the soil of France was accomplished, complete in
every detail, by August 17th.

British railways, when the record of that marvel of
transportation is compiled, will share the honors with
the ironclads of Britain's navy and the liners of her
mercantile marine.  Southampton being the main port
of departure, the performance of the London and
Southwestern Railway, which has carried so many
thousand Americans in pacific days from Waterloo
Station to the ship's side, is a case in point.  I heard
Sir H. A. Walker, the "Southwestern's" general
manager make before the American Luncheon Club in
London the first announcement of the railways' part
in England's military mobilization.  With his
subsequent permission, I was privileged to give the British
public its first information on that subject.  The
L. & S. W. had been assigned the task of making ready for
dispatch to Southampton within sixty hours three
hundred and fifty trains of thirty cars each.  It did the
trick in forty-five hours.  During the first three weeks
of war there were dispatched to and unloaded at the
ships' sides seventy-three of such trains every fourteen
hours.  They arrived from the four quarters of the
kingdom, and none of them was late.  "I come from
the land of 'big railway stunts,'" said Henry
W. Thornton, the American general manager of the Great
Eastern railway when Sir H. A. Walker had told this
convincing story of British "hustle."  "We think we
are 'pulling off' some feat when we handle
G.A.R. encampments and national conventions, but what
British railways accomplished in the ten days between
August 7 and 17 last may fairly be claimed as a
unique record in railway history."  What Mr. Thornton
modestly failed to add was that he himself, as a
colleague presently bore testimony, had played a
conspicuous rôle in the drama of British military
mobilization.  Certain inanimate things, almost as well known
to Americans as Mr. Thornton, played big parts, too.
The palatial *Mauretania*, with her *suites de-luxe*
battered into cargo-room for Tommy Atkins, and her big
new sister, *Aquitania*, with only a maiden crossing or
two to her credit, similarly knocked to pieces, made
incessant trips back and forth between Southampton and
other channel ports to Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais and
Dunkirk, landing in France on each occasion no less
than five thousand British fighting-men, ready for
death and glory.

Each mother's son of them carried with him this
little personal message from Lord Kitchener:

.. vspace:: 2

"You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to
help our French comrades against the invasion of a
common enemy.  You have to perform a task which
will need your courage, your energy, your patience.

"Remember that the honour of the British army
depends on your individual conduct.  It will be your
duty, not only to set an example of discipline and
perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the most
friendly relations with those whom you are helping in
this struggle.  The operations in which you are
engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly
country, and you can do your own country no better
service than in showing yourself in France and
Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.

"Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind.
Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property,
and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act.  You
are sure to meet with a welcome, and to be trusted;
your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust.
Your duty can not be done unless your health is sound.
So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses.
In this new experience you may find temptations in
wine and women.  You must entirely resist both
temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect
courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   "Do your duty bravely.
   "Fear God.
   "Honour the King.
   \      "KITCHENER, Field-Marshal."

.. vspace:: 2

I remained in England only a week after my arrival
from Germany.  Part of the time had been pleasantly
spent editing a special "American edition" of
*The Times* for Lord Northcliffe, who placed the
full machinery of his journalistic organization at the
disposal of the "Yankee War Refugees."  He was
only prevented from extending them the hospitality of
Sutton Place, his lovely estate in Surrey, now a
hospital, for a "week-end" outing by the inability of the
railways to guarantee the necessary special train
facilities.  To my astonishment but unalloyed delight Lord
Northcliffe "ordered" me to take a month's vacation in
the United States.  He thought my family and
kinsmen would like to have a look at an "English spy,"
fresh from Germany, before the earmarks of his
nefarious trade had entirely evaporated, and so, having
obtained the last bunk left on that veteran Cunard
hulk, *S.S. Campania*, which had brought my wife and
me to Europe on our honeymoon voyage, I sailed
away from Liverpool on Saturday, August 15th,
along with twelve hundred or fifteen hundred other
sardines packed in an eighteen-knot steel box.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium

   PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM

.. vspace:: 2

Somewhere in E. W. Hornung's *Raffles*,
there is this homely bit of epigrammatic philosophy:

"Money lost, little lost.  Honor lost, much lost.
Pluckiest, all lost!"

The aphorism was paraphrased by my fellow war
refugees in the *Campania*, tucked away in couples,
trios, quintettes and baker's dozens into cabins which
the Cunarder's designers back in the dim mid-Victorian
past built for a half or a third as many passengers.

They made it read like this:

"Baggage lost, all lost!"

Now and then some particularly sentimental soul
would spare a humanitarian thought for the minor
horrors of the calamity which had fallen upon Europe
and civilization.  But his heart would not throb for
long when somebody would break in upon his maudlin
reflections with a really harrowing tale of trunks left
behind in Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne, in Carlsbad,
Lucerne or Ostend, at the Gare du Nord in Paris, or
the quayside in Boulogne or Calais; or of suit-cases
and "innovations" lost, strayed or stolen in the
maelstrom of military traffic in Germany, Belgium or
France; or of Packards, Peerlesses, Studebakers or
Overlands summarily abandoned somewhere in the
war zone.  What were Europe's travails to these
genuine disasters?  It was all right for the war-mad
Continent to deck itself in battle-paint if sanguinarily
inclined, but ruthlessly and without notice to break up
Americans' traveling plans, knock Cook tours into a
cocked hat, interrupt "cures," and on top of that, if
you please, actually to play ducks and drakes with the
personal effects of free-born American citizens--all
because, forsooth, eight or ten million troops required
the right of way and insisted upon getting it--that was
manifestly the last word in inconsiderateness.
Incidentally, of course, it denoted how hopelessly
inefficient Europe was, anyway, in the presence of a sudden
emergency.  Why, the general manager of a cross-town
transfer company in New York would have
tackled the job without turning a hair.  Bah!  It
served Americans right--quoth a promenade-deck
psychologist.  Year in and year out they'd been
lavishing "good United States dollars" on Europe, and this
was her gratitude to her best paying guests.  There
was no dissent from the view, which prevailed from
rudder to bow, that it was the ragged edge of what
Bostonians call "the limit."  "See America first!"
ceasing to be mere admonition, was burnt there and
then into the hearts of our baggage-bereft ship's
company with all the force of a fervid national aspiration.
"Never again!" was the way my Chicago millionairess
deck-chair neighbor, who looted the Rue de la Paix
annually, sententiously epitomized not only her
aggrieved sentiments, but those of nearly everybody else.
All swore a virtuous vow henceforth to practise the
stay-at-home habit and for the rest of eternity let
man-killing Europe wallow in its savagery.

The story of the exodus which the Second Book of
Moses records will probably outlive the flight of the
children of Columbia across the Atlantic in the
summer of 1914.  But that hegira will outrank its Egyptian
prototype in one gleaming respect--its atmosphere of
indomitable good humor, once the Campanians
surmounted the initial stage of "grouch," groaning and
gnashing of teeth.

Bank presidents and college professors willing to be
buffeted across the ocean in the steerage; society
women who bunked contentedly on sofas in the "ladies'
saloon" of the stuffy second cabin; Pittsburgh
plutocrats game enough to sleep six in a stateroom built
for four; pampered folk with French *chefs* at home,
who sat uncomplainingly through the interminable and
usually refrigerated "second serving" in the
*Campania's* old-fashioned dining-room; corporation
lawyers with incomes the size of a King's civil list, who
considered themselves lucky to have captured the
hammocks of the fourth engineer or the hospital attendant
in the odoriferous hold; all these compatriots,
grinning and bearing, proved that after all we are the most
adaptable people on earth.  After each and all of us had
exchanged tales of woe--everybody had one, even
Doctor Ella Flagg Young, the septuagenarian Superintendent
of Chicago's public schools, who was chased out of
the war-zone across Scandinavia into England--and
swapped stories of arrest or less thrilling
inconveniences, and abused the incompetent authorities of
the belligerent governments to our hearts' content,
with a slap now and then, to vary the monotony, at our
own United States--the *Campania's* passengers soon
shook down to what turned out to be as jolly a
crossing as any of us, I dare say, ever had.  Between thrills
about imaginary "German cruisers" and equally
fantastic "rumbling of naval artillery," and our amusing
discomforts, the week passed almost before we knew
it, and more quickly than some of us even wished.
There was, of course, that irrepressible Illinois State
Senator who circulated a petition to "censure" the
Cunard line for not sending us all home in the
*Aquitania*, even though the British Government had
requisitioned her for transport work; but a much more
popular note was struck by my young friend, Miss
Marjorie Rice, a typical New York belle, who collected
a couple of hundred dollars with which to present
Captain Anderson with a souvenir of our gratitude for
having so gallantly brought us through invisible
dangers.  German cruisers were still roaming in the
Atlantic, and, though we traveled at night with masked
lights and took various other precautions like an
occasional zigzag course, one never could tell, though I
think most of us banished all thought of peril once we
heard that British ironclads were keeping a lane of
safety for Uncle Sam's fretting sons and daughters
all the way from Fastnet to the Fire Island lightship.
Asked by the ship's officers to tell "How the Germans
Went to War" at the last-night-out concert, to which
the Cunard Line with British reverence for tradition
still religiously adheres, I could confidently interpret
the sentiment of every American aboard in voicing
deep thankfulness for the fact that Britannia ruled the
waves.  Going back with us to the United States was
a batch of three or four young Germans, evidently of
university education, because their jowls were
embellished with saber-cuts.  They had been stopped in
England on their way home to fight, but were
graciously permitted to return whence they came.
Timorous friends beseeched me to beware of "saying too
much" about the Germans in the hearing of these
would-be soldiers of the Kaiser; but I escaped
molestation and even heard next day that I had been "most
fair."

Not till many days after we landed in New York
did I know that two very eminent representatives of
Allied Powers were sandwiched among the *Campania's*
home-fleeing American passengers--Sir Cecil
Spring-Rice, British Ambassador at Washington, and his
colleague of France, the cultured Monsieur Jusserand.
They had crossed in impenetrable incognito.  Not only
were their names missing from the passenger-list, but
if they had ever promenaded or eaten or smoked,
they must have done it in solitary enjoyment of
their own exclusive society, as nobody during seven
whole days and nights ever heard of them or saw them,
or, what is vastly more miraculous aboard-ship, ever
even talked about them.  American newspapermen
afloat in a liner like to flatter themselves that nothing
with even the remotest odor of news ever escapes their
insatiable quest.  I had myself bored with strenuous
pertinacity into every news-well in the *Campania*, and
there were many.  But Spring-Rice and Jusserand
eluded me as thoroughly as if they had been
contraband stored away in the hold, or stokers who only
come to life out of the black hole of Calcutta once or
twice a trip, when everybody with a white face is tight
asleep.  Bernstorff came in two days later like a brass
band.  The British and French Ambassadors broke
into the United States, apparently, in felt-slippers
through a back door on a dark night.  The manner of
the respective arrivals of the German and the Allied
Ambassadors was to be characteristic of their conduct
in the country throughout the war.

On Monday, August 24, I was lunching at the Ritz-Carlton
Hotel.  Bernstorff had landed that forenoon in
the Dutch liner, *Noordam*.  To my astonishment, the
Ambassador, whom I had noticed lunching a few
tables away with James Speyer, arose and advanced
across the restaurant to where I was sitting.
Bernstorff and I were old acquaintances.  I liked him.
Most newspapermen did.  Through long residence
in Washington, he had acquired an almost Rooseveltian
art in dealing with us.  I used to see him regularly
during his periodical official visits to Berlin, having
known him professionally from the days he was
Councillor of the German Embassy in London during the
Boer War.  Few Americans are aware that Count
Bernstorff was born in England while his father was
serving as Prussian Minister to the Court of St. James.
History was destined to repeat itself in the case of the
son, who not only adopted the career of his father, but
when he became an ambassador to a neutral country
during one of Germany's wars was called upon to
occupy himself just as the elder Count Bernstorff had
done in London in 1870-71.  The father put in most
of his time in England in a vain endeavor to persuade
Queen Victoria's Government to place an embargo on
shipment of British arms and ammunition to the
French.  He failed as lamentably in that effort as his
son and heir was destined to do in the United States
under almost identical circumstances forty-four years later.

Smiling his most persuasive diplomatic grimace,
Count Bernstorff went straight to the object of his
luncheon-table call on me.

"Wile," he began, "you've gone back on us!  I can
see your hand at work in the attitude the *New York
Times* has taken up."

I could not imagine at what the genial Count was
driving.  Perhaps he had read in the preceding day's
*Times* my long account of the beginnings of the war as
I observed them in Berlin, or my introduction to *The
Times'* exclusive publication of the German White
Paper, printed that day.

"Your Excellency flatters me," I ventured to rejoin.
"I have only been in the country since Saturday night,
and my activities at *The Times* office have been limited
to the very prosaic duty of handing in several wads of
'copy' written aboard-ship."

But Bernstorff knew better.  I had poisoned the
atmosphere of Times Square against Germany's holy
cause.  He insisted upon thrusting upon me some
occult influence over Mr. Ochs, *The Times'* able proprietor,
and Mr. Miller, its brilliant editor, and said he
was going to see somebody or other at *The Times* later
in the day and "fix things up."  Judging by the rivers
of interviews which thenceforth flowed in an
unceasing torrent from the Ambassador's headquarters in the
Ritz-Carlton, he must have seen not only some *Times*
men, but nearly all the journalists in Greater New
York.  How satisfactorily he "fixed things up" with
the great newspaper which has proved to be the Allies'
most consistent and effective supporter in the United
States could be judged from next morning's edition,
which was about as anti-Bernstorffian as could be
imagined.  The Imperial German Press-Agent's palaver
about his ability to "fix things up" was bombast, pure
and unalloyed.  There was never the slightest
possibility that he could "fix" anything in the *New York
Times* office or in any American newspaper office
where self-respect, journalistic honor and rugged
independence are enthroned.  There are American
newspapers which lay no claim to these virtues, and their
names are undoubtedly, and long have been, carefully
card-indexed at 1435 Massachusetts Avenue,
Washington, D.C.  Some of their owners have decorations
bestowed by the Kaiser.

It proved to be a rare stroke of Fate which took me
to the Ritz-Carlton, for I was destined to be an
eyewitness of the assemblage of the Kaiser's Great
General Staff for the Germanization of American public
opinion on the war.  Doctor Dernburg had arrived in
the *Noordam* with Count Bernstorff, and along with
them came Captain Boy-Ed, the Naval Attaché at
Washington.  I knew personally, from Berlin days, both
the ex-Colonial Secretary and the sailor.  Dernburg,
before he was pitchforked into Government office from
the comparatively humble station of a bank director in
1906, was the most approachable of men.  His
command of the American language was remarkable--an
inheritance from his youth, part of which was spent
as a volunteer clerk in a Wall Street bank.  I never
forgot my first call on him in Germany.  I assumed
him to be a Jew, as his father was.  Some Semitic
question of public interest was the news of the
moment, and I regarded Dernburg an ideal man to
interview.  With a smile I recall how, insistently
disavowing his origin, he told me I had come to "the wrong
address."  Later I watched his tempestuous career as
administrator of the barren sand-wastes known as
German colonies, saw him give electioneering in the
Fatherland a new phase with his shirt-sleeves
campaigning methods, and observed his meteoric rise to
Imperial grace and political power, so soon to be
followed by his equally precipitate fall from those dizzy
heights.  Dernburg's lack of manners and tact was
commonly said in Berlin to have led to his official
demise after less than four years of Cabinet glory.  No
one ever questioned his eminent ability.  But his
reputation as a banker rested on cold-blooded ruthlessness,
and when he attempted to carry those methods into a
bureaucratic government department, he struck snags
which wrecked his bark.  Neither he nor I supposed
on August 24, 1914, when we chatted in the
palm-court of the Ritz-Carlton, that his attempt to
transplant Berlin ruthlessness into the United States would
eventually prove his undoing there, too.

Captain Boy-Ed, as subsequent history was also to
show, was bent on practising in America the tactics
which won him renown and promotion in Germany.
Prior to coming to Washington as Count Bernstorff's
Naval Attaché--the Kaiser had decided that the United
States navy was attaining dimensions which required
watching by a shrewd observer--the captain was von
Tirpitz' right-hand man at the Imperial Admiralty in
Berlin.  He had charge of the so-called News
Division, nominally entrusted with the duty of informing
the German public of "routine naval intelligence, such
as accidents, transfers of ships and officers, etc., etc.,"
as I once heard von Tirpitz persuasively and naïvely
describe the functions of the *Nachrichten-Abteilung*
during a periodical plea to the Reichstag for more
dreadnoughts.  Boy-Ed, the son of a Turkish father
and a German mother, devoted himself chiefly in the
years between 1906 and 1912 to conducting von
Tirpitz' astute propaganda for naval expansion.  It was
the era in which the Kaiser's fleet was being converted
by leaps and bounds from a navy of obsolete
thirteen-thousand-ton ships of the *Deutschland* and
*Braunschweig* class into an armada of dreadnoughts and
battle cruisers of the eighteen-thousand to
twenty-four-thousand-ton "all-big-gun" *Ost-Friesland* and
*Seydlitz* class.  German public opinion required to be
carefully manipulated in order to secure parliamentary
sanction for "supplementary" appropriations which
rose by stealthy degrees from $60,000,000 to
$115,000,000 a year.  Boy-Ed was assigned the responsible
duty of organizing and carrying out the necessary
campaign of education, and right well and thoroughly
he did it.  The shoals of pamphlets, books, newspaper-articles,
public-lectures, Navy League speeches and
other "educational" matter with which the Fatherland
was flooded--always with "England, the Foe" as the
*leitmotif*,--were to a large extent the child of
Boy-Ed's resourceful brain.  He did not write them all, of
course, but he was their inspirer-in-chief.  I account
him one of the real creators of the modern German
navy, second only to von Tirpitz himself.  It was
"the chief's" idea, but Boy-Ed made its materialization
a practical possibility.

Knowing his methods, no revelations of his pernicious
activities in the United States ever surprised me.
He was only up to his old tricks, altering them to suit
the American climate and character, but adhering
always to certain basic principles which had stood him
in such good stead in the Fatherland.  It would be
ungrateful of me not to acknowledge numerous
professional courtesies received at Boy-Ed's hands when he
was misleading the press of Germany and the world at
the News-Division in Leipziger-Platz, Berlin.  He
nearly had me arrested at the Imperial dockyard in
Wilhelmshaven in March, 1907, for gaining access,
despite thoroughgoing preventive measures, to the launch
of Germany's first dreadnought, the *Nassau*, but
during his career at the Admiralty he more than made up
for that by enabling me, in the columns of *The Daily
Mail*, to be the medium of a formal discussion between
von Tirpitz and the British naval authorities on the
endlessly controversial question of Anglo-German sea
rivalry.  For the best "copy" it was ever my good
fortune to send across the North Sea, my unwithering
gratitude is due and is hereby expressed to the shifty
chieftain of Germany's war-time "intelligence service"
in the United States.

Who else besides Bernstorff, Dernburg, Boy-Ed and
Speyer attended the opening council of war of the
German field-marshals in the United States that
broiling August day at the Ritz-Carlton, I never learned
with certainty.  Dernburg assured me that as far as
he was concerned, purely humanitarian business had
brought him to our generous shores; he had come to
collect funds for the German Red Cross, and he once
wrote me a letter on paper emblazoned with that worthy
organization's innocuous trade-mark.  I suspect that
before the day was over, Professor Münsterberg
of Harvard, Poet Viereck of *The Fatherland*, and
Herman Ridder paid their respects to the
propaganda-chieftains, and received their orders; and probably
Julius P. Mayer, the New York manager of the
Hamburg-American Line, and Claussen, his expert
"publicity manager," left their cards, too.  Evidently
James Speyer thought his sequestered and palatial
home at Rhinebeck-on-the-Hudson, far from the
madding sleuths of the New York press, was a more ideal
retreat for so momentous a pow-wow, for it was to
that idyllic refuge that Count Bernstorff told me he was
immediately repairing.  Purely diplomatic affairs at
Washington could obviously wait on the more
transcendent business the Imperial German Ambassador
now had in hand; and before he quit the banks of the
Hudson for the shores of the Potomac, the Fatherland's
marvelous attack on the natural sympathies of
the American Republic in the great war was launched
with all the force, skill and impudence of a German
assault on the frontier of a foe.

New York was clearly more feverishly interested in
the war than London.  Nowhere in Fleet Street had I
seen such vibrant throngs in front of newspaper-offices,
as stood eager and transfixed by day and far
into the night in Times and Herald Squares, Columbus
Circle and Park Row.  America might have been in
the fray herself, to judge by the one absorbing topic
which dominated men and women's talk and obsessed
their thoughts.  Detached as we were, it was
unmistakable that Europe's agony had eaten deep into our
souls, for even the baseball bulletin-boards were now
deserted in favor of those which were telling in
breathless telegrams of the German cannon-ball plunge
through Belgium toward the fatal Marne and of Russia's
seemingly irresistible advance into East Prussia.
I had heard no Englishman arguing about the issues of
Armageddon or the kaleidoscopic events of the
battlefield with half the flaming ardor of those Broadway
war experts.  In fact there were no blackboards at all
around which the British could hold curbstone
parliaments, for Lord Kitchener's censorship was not
parting with news enough, apparently, to make even the
chalk worth while.  In London I had observed the
inexplicable phenomenon that at the moment when hell
had broken loose for the British Empire, great
journals, instead of deluging the public with news, actually
reduced their ordinary size in some cases to four pages,
though I believe that fear of a print-paper famine and
disappearance of advertising had something to do with
those atrophied dimensions.  All in all, however, there
was no doubt that isolated neutral America was excited
about the war to a degree which reduced British
interest almost to nonchalance by comparison.

Though I tarried in the East but forty-eight hours,
I was conscious of breathing almost exclusively
pro-Ally air.  President Wilson's neutrality proclamation
was being respected in letter, as far as restraining our
people from actual breaches in favor of either
belligerent group was concerned, but every minute of the day,
everywhere, it was being vociferously violated in
spirit.  Before the war was a month old, Americans
already were confessing freely that they were so
"neutral" that they didn't care who won as long as
Germany was "licked."  They resigned themselves to the
Chief Magistrate's dictum that the country as such
must be guilty of no "un-neutral" acts, but it failed
lamentably to still the natural instincts of American
hearts which were beating fervently, irresistibly, for
the Allies.  Bernstorff's hour-by-hour interviews,
apologies and explanations, Münsterberg's homilies, *The
Fatherland's* vituperations, the *New-Yorker Staatszeitung's*
editorials in English signed by Ridder and
"boiler-plated" to any newspapers which would give
them space, "fair play" appeals from obsequious
ex-Berlin exchange-professors like Dean Burgess of
Columbia--all these things fell on deaf ears.  None of
them could obliterate the crime of Germany, which
loomed ineradicable on the war horizon as Americans
scanned it--Belgium.  All the instincts of American
justice, liberty, humanity and regard for treaty
obligations rebelled against "Necessity-knows-no-law" and
"scrap of paper" ethics.  We had gone to war
ourselves, in 1898, to defend the rights of a small nation.
The spectacle of Military Germany trampling little
Belgium under foot, causelessly, mercilessly, was
enough, had there been no other single issue to
enlist our sympathy, to vouchsafe it, whole-heartedly, to
the nations which were leagued in support of the
old-fashioned principle that Right is nobler than Might.
Thus was America's mind attuned in August, 1914,
and at least in the opinion-molding area of the
country which lies between the seaboard and the line where
the Middle West begins, that mind was, with American
predilection for reaching right conclusions
spontaneously, irrevocably made up.  The attempts of the
Propaganda Steam-Roller to flatten out the anti-German
prejudices provoked by the rape of Belgium were
frantic, but fruitless.  The pre-digested baby food
which pedagogues and demagogues, ambassadors,
brewers and rabbis now began to ladle out for
American consumption did not temper those prejudices.
Indeed, it was manifest that it was but aggravating them.
Our own General Brooke, attending the German
army maneuvers in Silesia eight or nine years ago,
was asked by the Kaiser if he had ever been in
Germany before.  "Never in this part," remarked Brooke.
"Where, then?" persisted William II.  "In Cincinnati,
Chicago and Milwaukee," replied the general.  I was
about to enter "that part" of Germany now.  I was not
there long before realizing that pro-Ally sentiment was
immeasurably less assertive, at any rate, than in the
outspokenly pro-Ally East.  Chicago, of course, has
more Germans than Düsseldorf, and Cincinnati and
Milwaukee, in spots, are as Teutonic as Hamburg or
Bremen, so it was natural to find *Deutschland,
Deutschland über Alles* more than disputing
supremacy with *Rule Britannia*.  In Chicago pro-Germanism
was rampant and articulate.  An article written by
me for the *Chicago Tribune* in the first fortnight of
September, in which I ventured to express my opinion
as to where the responsibility for the war lay, how long
it would last and who would win it, brought down on
me as violent a torrent of abuse as if it had been
published in the *Berliner Tageblatt*.  For saying that, in
my judgment, the German War Party had made the
war; that it would go on till Germany was beaten to
her knees, and that eventual exhaustion of the
Germanic Powers and the longer resources of the Allies
would win the war for the latter, I became forthwith
the target of all the forty-two-centimeter guns in the
Windy City.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HELMSMEN`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium

   THE HELMSMEN

..

   |   "We don't want to fight,
   |   But, by Jingo! if we do,
   |   We've got the men,
   |   We've got the ships,
   |   And we've got the money, too!"

.. vspace:: 2

When during the dark hours of the
Russo-Turkish War in 1877 a London music-hall
comedian named McDermott popularized the chorus
of a ditty which has rung down the ages, he not only
enriched the English language with a new synonym
for a war zealot--Jingo--but he epitomized British
faith in British invincibility and the basis on which it
is founded.  McDermott's blustering ballad, the
*Tipperary* of its day, interpreted, by a fate which seems
strangely ironical in the light of current events,
Britain's determination to go to war to prevent the Bear
from grabbing Constantinople.

The song applied precisely to conditions in this
country in midsummer, 1914.  Englishmen "didn't
want to fight"--abroad, at least, for they were looking
forward to cooling their belligerent ardor nearer home,
in Ireland.  But when the violation of Belgium
resolved all dissension in the British Government
on the question of intervention in a conflict which,
up to then, concerned purely the Dual and Triple
Alliances, and literally dragged Britain into the vortex
in the name of both her honor and interest, Englishmen
did want to fight.  Taking quick stock of their
resources, they felt assured, in McDermott's immortal
words, that they had "got the men, the ships, and the
money, too."  But men, ships and money, vital as they
are, are useless without leaders, and it was natural that
Britons' first thoughts, in the dawn of the Empire's
supreme emergency, should be concerned with the
personnel of the helmsmen.  A super-crisis calls
insistently for super-men, and in the midst of an era
which cynics call the age of mediocrities doubts were
not few that England might find herself fatally lacking
in a plight as stupendous as any Pitt, Nelson and
Wellington had ever faced.

With their astonishing capacity to stifle domestic
controversy and party bickerings on the threshold of a
foreign crisis, Englishmen decided that the first
essential was to repose implicit confidence in the existing
Government.  Ireland, Labor, Suffragettes, Opposition,
the four thorns in the Asquith Administration's
side, withdrew, leaving the cleavage they once made so
completely healed that hardly a scar remained.  The
Liberal Cabinet, admittedly stale with nearly a decade
of uninterrupted power, might not contain all the
talents of statesmanship essential for the conduct of a
struggle on whose issue hung Imperial existence.  It
was a Government overweighted with "tired lawyers,"
consisting (with the exception of Lord Kitchener) of
exclusively professional politicians, and even tinged in
important directions (like Lord Haldane) with
confessed Germanophilism.  It was a Government long
and openly charged by its foes with desiring office at
any cost and placing the perpetuation of its hold on the
fleshpots before any other interest.  It was a
Government which had avowedly temporized with the Irish
yesterday and the Labor Party to-day as the price of
maintaining its Parliamentary existence.  It was finally
a Government notoriously consisting of rival internal
factions best typified by the aristocratic Imperialism
of Sir Edward Grey on the one hand and on the other
by the rugged and radical Democracy of Mr. Lloyd-George.
Yet the nation, in the presence of peril palpably
incalculable, relegated its criticisms, its doubts
and its carpings, and with one voice agreed that "Trust
the Government!" must be the slogan of the hour.  The
Anglo-Saxon spirit of Fair Play asserted itself.  The
country said that the Asquith Administration must be
given a chance to exhibit its mettle.  If it failed, there
was always time for a reckoning.  The British
Government of August, 1914, entered upon the war clothed
with a mandate as sweeping in its powers as formal
conferment of a Dictatorship could have been--a woof
of national confidence amounting to little short of *carte
blanche*.  John Bright once said that a British Government
is always annihilated by the war which it is called
upon to wage.  But Englishmen wished Mr. Asquith's
Cabinet Godspeed, and by their unquestioning support
of every measure it proposed showed that their loyalty
and trust were real and sincere.

Although the British Government (by which is
meant only the Premier's Administration) consists of
twenty-one ministers of Cabinet rank, the war régime,
it was manifest from the start, would be confined to
five outstanding men combining the motive forces of
the entire organization.  These five were the Prime
Minister himself, the Foreign Secretary (Sir Edward
Grey), the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd-George),
the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Winston
Churchill), and the Secretary for War (Lord
Kitchener).  Although the highest-salaried member of
the Cabinet, the Lord High Chancellor (Lord
Haldane) drew ten thousand pounds a year, and there were
half-a-dozen others like the Home Secretary, the
Colonial Secretary, the Secretary for India and the
Presidents of the Board of Trade and Local Government
Board whose financial status (five thousand pounds a
year), outranked the four thousand five hundred
pounds which Mr. Churchill received, the quintette
named, by reason of their posts and personalities, was
the logical inner Government to deal with the war.
That brilliant English essayist and biographer,
Mr. A. G. Gardiner, even further delimited the numerical
dimensions of the *real* War Government when he said
that "if Mr. Asquith is the brain of the Cabinet, Sir
Edward Grey is its character and Mr. Lloyd-George is
its inspiration."

.. _`Herbert Henry Asquith.`:

.. figure:: images/img-230.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Herbert Henry Asquith.

   Herbert Henry Asquith.

Herbert Henry Asquith, Yorkshireman by birth
and barrister by profession, has been Prime Minister
for seven years, succeeding his late Liberal chieftain,
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in 1908.  Asquith,
whom Bannerman used to call "the sledge-hammer,"
because of his lucidity of thought and expression, was
sixty-three years old in September, 1915.  Although
not a Pitt, nor even a Disraeli or Palmerston, the
statesman who looks like a Roman senator and is
gifted with eloquence in keeping was considered in
many respects a Heaven-sent blessing in the melting-pot
era of British history, for as a purely steadying
influence he is probably without a peer in contemporary
politics.  As a politician in the narrower sense of a
party disciplinarian, manager and leader he will rank
with the craftiest names in his country's tortuous
history.  British Liberalism has skated on perilous ice
following the reaction which swept the Conservative
Party from power after the Boer War and throughout
the era of Democratic radicalism in which Great
Britain has meantime had its being.  That Mr. Asquith's
party is enabled to celebrate ten years of sovereignty
still strongly intrenched is by general consent due to
the astute generalship of its commander-in-chief.
Asquith is not commonly accused of imaginativeness.  He
is too typical a British statesman for that.  His
temperament is devoid of the adventurous, like that of the
true intellectual, and he is pathologically fonder of
harking to public opinion than boldly leading it.  When
he coined the "Wait and See" epigram during the
Ulster crisis, he gave utterance to a phrase which
accurately epitomizes the tentativeness so preponderant
in his political career.  British procrastination and
vacillation at vital periods of the war were undoubtedly
the reflex action of the Prime Minister's own low-speed
mental processes.  Yet in the revolt of the Curragh
Camp officers, that strange curtain-raiser of the
impending Ulster crisis, which threatened to embroil
these fair isles in another Cromwellian trial of strength
between Parliament and the army, Mr. Asquith, by a
courageous stroke of positive genius--his own assumption
of the Secretaryship for War in succession to the
compromised Colonel Seely--resolved into tranquillity
and hope a situation more menacing to civil peace in
England than living Britons had ever before lived
through.  Beneath Mr. Asquith's polished exterior,
unemotional mask and sweet reasonableness Germany,
mistaking his for a peace-at-any-price nature, made
one of the most egregious of her numerous and glaring
miscalculations.

Only the results of the Peace Conference will
determine the true ramifications of Sir Edward Grey's
reputation.  It was deservedly high when the war began.
No Foreign Secretary in Europe approached him in
stature, with the possible exception of Delcassé.  He
had long been Germany's *bête noire*, being looked upon
as the incarnation of the British diplomatic policy of
blocking German ambitions for a "place in the sun"
wherever and whenever they manifested themselves.
As long before as December, 1912, Professor Hans
Delbrück, the sanest of German political professors,
told me in a prophetic interview for *The Daily Mail* on
"What Germany Wants" that unless England abandoned
her policy of "arbitrary opposition to legitimate
German political aspirations; if she had no inclination
to meet us on that ground; if her interests rather
pointed to a perpetuation of the anything-to-beat-Germany
policy, so let it be.  The Armageddon which
must then, some day, ensue will not be of our
making."  That was a fairly plain warning of coming events.
The Germans, as I have said, considered Sir Edward
Grey anti-Germanism personified.  They regard him
to-day as the "organizer of the war."  Taking an
obviously short-sighted view, I used sometimes to think
that it would have been good politics for Britain to
buy off Germany with a *Trinkgeld* (tip) of some sort.
If Bismarck was right when he called the Germans "a
nation of house-servants," they could obviously have
been bribed.  Delbrück himself once confessed to me
that Germany did not *need* more oversea territory;
she only *hankered* for it for window-dressing
purposes.  She wanted as expensive millinery and
high-powered a car as her rich neighbor across the way.
Colonies were fashionable, and she had to have them.
I occasionally thought that England would be staving
off trouble for herself by bribing avaricious Germany
with a coaling-station on some inconsequential
trade-route or even shutting the eye to some burglarious
descent on territory or concessions in Asia Minor or
Central Africa.  But such notions left the German
character, the Oliver Twist in it, fatally out of account.
The German is the most eager person in the world to
covet a mile if given an inch.  Concessions to his
rapacity would have meant purchasing turmoil for the
conceding party not eliminating it.  British opposition
to Pan-Germanic designs, typified by Sir Edward Grey,
was based on thoroughgoing insight into the German
nature and German ambitions, epitomized for all time
by Bernhardi when he said that nothing would appease
the Fatherland except World Power or downfall.
Hush-money to Germany in the shape of periodically
new "places in the sun" would have kept her quiet for
spells.  But the blackmailing process would have been
resumed.  It is the German way.  "Mr. Balfour tells
us we must not expect Englishmen to support our aims
in the direction of territorial expansion," said
Delbrück.  "What remains then for us, except to enforce
the accomplishment of our purposes by strengthened
armaments?"  Could avowal be plainer-spoken?

Sir Edward Grey is fifty-three years old and has
been a childless widower since 1906.  He has been a
Member of Parliament continuously since he was
twenty-three years of age.  Though an Oxford graduate
and successful barrister, he is in no sense a scholar,
and his experience of foreign affairs up to his becoming
Foreign Secretary in the Campbell-Bannerman ministry
in 1905 was confined to an under-secretaryship of
the Foreign Office in the preceding (Rosebery)
Government.  Grey, who is also of the smooth-shaven
Romanesque type of statesman in external appearance, is
an amazing example of natural British aptitude for the
higher politics, for he is not a linguist (he speaks
nothing but English) and except for a visit to France with
the present King a couple of years ago was said never
to have been abroad in his life.  His hobbies are tennis,
fly-fishing and birds.  The only book he ever wrote
was a treatise on the piscatory art and he tramped
through the New Forest with Colonel Roosevelt talking
ornithology all the way.  Yet a man has only to read
the British White Paper--he need not, indeed, do
much except read Sir Edward Grey's dispatches to his
ambassadors on July 29, 1914--to realize that the
Foreign Secretary is a statesman of marvelous force
and capacity to grapple with the essentials of a
situation.  No state papers of modern times outrival Grey's
diplomatic correspondence on the eve of the war.  They
ought to insure him, as I believe they will, immortality,
no matter how the war ends.  Sir Edward Grey's
speeches are like his dispatches--devoid of irrelevancy
or rhetorical claptrap and incisive in the highest
degree.  They ring conviction and sincerity and their
argument is usually unanswerable.  Doctor von
Bethmann Hollweg's clumsy attempts to parry Grey's
mid-bellum dialectics have only brought out the latter in
bolder relief.  The war has notoriously eaten into
Grey's soul.  Germany calls it guilty remorse.  Men
who know are conscious that he labored for peace to
the last minute with unflagging enthusiasm.  His
industry during the war has been intense, and his insistence
upon looking at things for himself has threatened
more than once to cost him his eyesight.  As it is,
intermittent relaxation has to be forced upon him by
his colleagues and his medical advisers.  Sir Edward
Grey's permanent disappearance from Downing Street
would rejoice Germany like a victorious battle.  Grey
has been violently blamed for the failure of Britain's
mid-war diplomacy, especially in the Balkans.  His
own defense against charges of failure in that region
is likely to seem plausible in the light of history, viz.,
that, unaccompanied by commensurate military successes,
the efforts of Allied diplomacy in the Near East
were almost hopelessly handicapped.

One night during the South African War a Radical
M.P., advocating the downtrodden brother Boer's
cause at a mass-meeting in Birmingham, received such
a warm reception from the crowd that he had to flee
for his life through a back-door, disguised as a
policeman.  His name was David Lloyd-George, whose
present occupation is that of England's man of the hour.
He was Chancellor of the Exchequer when war broke
out and introduced the initial war budgets, earning
thereby encomiums from the financial community
which for years before looked upon him as capital's
demagogic arch-foe.  To-day, Minister of Munitions--the
circumstances under which he became such are
treated in a subsequent chapter--Lloyd-George comes
far nearer being Britain's national hero than any of
his contemporaries.  He is charged by his detractors
with the design to make himself Dictator.  England
could have a worse one.

If Lloyd-George were an American instead of a
Welshman, he would have been President of the United
States by this time, or at least as close to it as Bryan
has ever been.  There is in fact very little typically
British about him.  He is emotional, for example, and
he has an imagination.  His whole make-up is
trans-atlantic, which is *Anglice* for sensational.  Picture, if
you can, a strong solution of Booker Washington (I
mean, of course, only his eloquence), of flamboyant
and appealing Billy Sunday, of the Boy Orator of the
Platte at his silver-tongued best, and of our inimitable
T. R. in his most rampageous form, and you will have
Lloyd-George in composite.  It was because he is all
this that he was chosen for the "shells portfolio" in the
reconstructed Asquith cabinet.

.. _`Lloyd-George.`:

.. figure:: images/img-236.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Lloyd-George.

   Lloyd-George.

He knew very little--probably nothing--about
munitions seven months ago.  It could not have been very
much before that when he probably thought that
guncotton was raw material for pajamas.  But he is the
prize "enthuser" of the Kingdom, a master of the
tedious art of welding drowsy Britons into a race of real
war-makers.  All the ingredients for supplying the
army with the shells it needed were in existence; but
they needed organization.  The manufacturers and
their works needed organization.  The workmen
needed organization.  The public spirit needed
organization; and the whole business needed a
Lloyd-George.  It got him ten months after it ought to
have had him, but not too late.  Obviously the
diminutive Welsh country lawyer who had brought
about the disestablishment of the State Church of
Wales, imposed State Insurance and Old Age
Pensions on a reluctant Kingdom, assailed the vested
interests of the House of Lords and demolished them,
was the man to impress the country with the true
meaning of the shells tragedy.  He took the stump, his
natural element, for the purpose.  He went to the
people, especially in the great industrial centers, and
told them the truth.  He burned into their conscience--that
was the only way to get the stolid British to
wake up to a real peril--that shells, shells, and then
shells, and nothing but shells, were required if Britain
meant to win the war.

The people listened to Lloyd-George.  He has a way
of making them listen to him.  They gave him their
ear even in his pro-Boer days.  They listened to him
when he (an ardent Baptist) cleared for action against
the Welsh Church.  They listened to him even when
he went down to Limehouse and coined a new word,
"to limehouse," meaning violent political spell-binding,
second cousin to demagogism, by the nature of his
impassioned appeals to the people to rise and slay the
Lords.  It was inevitable that the country would listen
to him in his newest and greatest rôle as organizer of
victory.

Lloyd-George's goal is undoubtedly the Premiership--the
ambition of every British politician.  He has
plenty of time to wait--he is only fifty-two--and
unfailing week-end golf keeps him as "fit" as a man
fifteen years his junior.  Of Napoleonic stockiness of
build, with a wealth of wavy gray hair worn long, he is
a figure which radiates strength and power, though
unimpressive of itself.  He is a capital "mixer."  It is,
indeed, his principal political asset.  He is as much at
home laboring with a gang of recalcitrant miners at
the pit-mouth--he always goes straight to headquarters
when he essays to settle a strike--as he is on the
floor of the House of Commons or as moderator at a
Baptist convention.  He likes Americans and specializes
in extending hospitality to interesting ones.
Unquestionably he has a strong hold on our imaginations,
as a man of his temperament, career and talent is
bound to have.  An eminent Chicagoan visited London
last summer, with introductions which would have
easily paved his way to the throne or any other
exalted British quarter.  "Whom would you like to meet
most of all?" he was asked.  "Lloyd-George," he
said, with the intuitive sense of a Yankee who only has
time for the things worth while.

Winston Churchill, the son of an English father
and an American mother, is the Peck's Bad Boy of the
British Government.  His popularity has been sadly
dimmed since the war began, for he was looked upon
as not only the author of the grotesque naval "relief"
expedition to Antwerp--now either prisoners of war
in Germany or interned in Holland--but the
culprit who was chiefly responsible for the far more
disastrous Dardanelles adventure.  Another crime is
charged against him, hardly less serious than the two
just named: his imperious administration of the
Admiralty drove from the First Sea Lordship the man
universally considered Britain's greatest sailor, Lord
Fisher.  All agree, friend and foe, that to "Winston"
was due in a very marked degree, England's superb
readiness at sea when war broke out, but it is a matter
of grave doubt whether even that superlative service to
the country will be looked upon as great enough to
blanket his subsequent and costly incompetencies.
When the upheaval in the Asquith Cabinet came about,
in the spring of 1915, Churchill was nominally
squelched by interment in the harmless berth of the
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, most of whose
official time is spent in licensing Justices of the Peace
and Notaries Public.  That ennui hung heavily on his
hands was manifested by the announcement during the
summer that Churchill had taken up painting as a
pastime.

I have said that "Winston" was nominally subjugated,
for a petrel of his peculiarly irrepressible storminess
can only be wholly curbed by annihilation.  Asquith
is far too sagacious a politician to risk Churchill's
complete eclipse in the Government of which he
has always been the most picturesque constituent.
Churchill, too, aspires to the Premier's toga, though a
good many people fear that the defects of his qualities
will keep him, just as they kept his distinguished
father, Lord Randolph Churchill, from No. 10 Downing
Street.  But "Winston" is far less dangerous to
the Government as a friend than as a foe.  His chameleon
political career justifies the fear that he would
turn on his old associates and party cronies the
moment he conceived that advantage to self was thereby
obtainable.  Obviously such a man is better in the
Cabinet than out of it, especially if he is of Winston
Churchill's undoubted personal charm, magnetism and
resistless force.

Combining the best qualities of his dual ancestry, he
makes a lively appeal to the average heart.
Aristocratic to the core, with the blood of the Marlboroughs
in his veins, and a snob of snobs in his personal
relations, it is an anomalous fact that Churchill is an
endlessly popular figure with the crowd.  Whether it is
his youth--he is only forty-one, was a soldier of no
mean renown at twenty-three, a Member of Parliament
at twenty-six, a Cabinet Minister at thirty-two and a
force in Imperial politics long before he was
forty--or his impetuous devil-may-care make-up, or his
bombastic platform style, the masses like him.  He
has only one serious rival, indeed, in their
affections, and that is Lloyd-George.  He is
remembered in war thus far not only for his Antwerp
and Dardanelles indiscretions, but for his equally
unhappy oratorical excesses, which are doomed,
apparently, always to precede some untoward naval or
military event.  Within thirty-six hours of proclaiming at
Liverpool (in September, 1914) that "if the German
navy does not come out and fight, we shall dig it out
like rats from a hole," *U9* sent the *Cressy, Hague* and
*Aboukir* to the bottom.  In the spring of 1915,
discussing the Dardanelles, Churchill blustered that "we
are within a very few miles of the greatest victory this
war has seen," and a few weeks later Kitchener
announced that twelve miles of precarious front in
Gallipoli were all there was to show for a campaign which
had already cost eighty-seven thousand casualties.
When Churchill prognosticates nowadays, the country
trembles for what the next day will bring forth.  Yet
he is a rash prophet who would predict that "Winston"
has run his course in British politics.  He took manfully
the discomfiture of the Coalition reshuffle, and
although his picture is no longer cheered when it is
flashed on the cinematograph screen the shrewdest
seers are certain that he will "come back."[1]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

   [1] Churchill resigned from the Cabinet in November, 1915,
   declaring that he was a soldier--"and my regiment is in France."
   To it he said he preferred to go rather than continue in a
   position of "well-paid inactivity" at home.  In a dramatic speech in
   the House of Commons, he took political farewell of the country
   and, having pleaded "Not Guilty" to the capital charges of
   responsibility for Antwerp and the Dardanelles, left England
   unostentatiously for the trenches, as a major of cavalry.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: medium

Lord Kitchener has always boasted that he scorned
popularity.  He has need for his philosophical
temperament to-day, for there is no manner of doubt that his
hold on the imaginations of his countrymen is less
firm than it was when the war began.  "K.'s" dramatic
appointment to the War Office, in the earliest hours of
the conflict, heartened the nation to an extraordinary
degree.  Britain had no army, Englishmen said, but it
had Kitchener, who was a host in himself.  His name
alone was an asset which bred indescribable confidence.
Men recalled his dominant traits--iron determination,
strenuous application to duty, imperious disregard of
hide-bound methods and red tape, and, above all, his
genius for organization.  They rejoiced to hear that
he had accepted the War Office, long cob-webbed with
circumlocutory traditions and petticoat influence, on
the strict understanding that he was to be monarch of
all he surveyed--that he would not tolerate such party
interference as intrudes itself on departmental affairs
in general.  Immensely to the popular taste, because it
confirmed the masses' conception of "K.," was the
story that when he arrived at the War Office for the
first time and was told there was "no bed here, Sir,"
he commanded the affrighted and astonished caretaker,
then, "to put one in, as I am going to sleep here."
Britain said to herself that she indubitably possessed
a match for German Efficiency in her new Secretary
for War, and all thought of "losing" with such a man
as the supreme chief of the military establishment
vanished from her mind.

.. _`Kitchener.`:

.. figure:: images/img-242.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Kitchener.

   Kitchener.

Kitchener was never one of the war-will-be-over-by-Christmas
crew.  His maiden speech as War Minister
in the House of Lords informed the country, bluntly,
that he expected a three years' struggle.  During the
winter an anecdote ascribed to the taciturn War
Secretary's loquacious sister gained currency, and passed
from mouth to mouth.  "When is the war going to
end?" she asked him.  "I don't know when it's going
to end," he was said to have replied, "but it is going
to begin in May."  It was in May, by the pitiless irony
of Fate, that the War Office's muddle of the
ammunition supply was exposed.

Like all else in Britain--men, measures and
institutions--the arbitrament of time will be required to pass
final judgment on Kitchener's part in the war.  In the
principal field he was called upon to plow--the raising
of a huge army from out of the earth--he accomplished
marvels.  No nation within fourteen months evolved
from practically nothing an organization of, roundly,
three million soldiers.  It is not enough, for the
actual requirements of the war call insistently for
more and more, yet "K.'s" recruiting achievement
stands forth without parallel in military history.
It is certainly without precedent of even
approximate magnitude in the annals of a non-conscript
democracy.  Lord Kitchener's accomplishments in
other directions have notoriously not kept pace with
his successes as a recruiting-sergeant.  The shells
affair can hardly fail to dim his reputation.  The
deficiencies of the voluntary system can not be called
a failure directly chargeable to him, in that it has
not brought forward men in quantity commensurate
with the developed necessities of the campaign.
Kitchener has hinted, but only that, that he is prepared
to resort to Conscription the moment he is convinced
that Voluntaryism has collapsed.  But it does not seem
unlikely that history may condemn him for clinging
to the voluntary principle too long and hesitating to
make Englishmen do their duty, instead of relying
endlessly on their casual inclination to perform it.
Kitchener has ruled the British War Office practically
as an autocrat.  He brooked no interference, even
from the Cabinet.  Viewed from that standpoint, "K."
can hardly be absolved from cardinal responsibility for
British military failures.  Before the end of 1915
General Sir Ian Hamilton had disappeared from Gallipoli,
Sir John French returned from France, General
Townshend retreated from Baghdad, and the Allied
"Relief" Expedition to Serbia had retired to Salonica,
whence it had set out less than ten weeks previous.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE GENERAL, THE ADMIRAL AND THE KING`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium

   THE GENERAL, THE ADMIRAL AND THE KING

.. vspace:: 2

That Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of
the British forces in France and Flanders, an
army which reduces to comparative insignificance the
largest host ever marshaled by Napoleon, comes from
fighting stock is plain enough from the fact that his
only sister, Mrs. Despard, is a militant suffragette.
She herself provides homely evidence that the
appointment of her brother (whom she practically
"brought up") to lead the British fight against the
Germans on land realized a boyhood aspiration.  "When
we were children," Mrs. Despard relates, "the great
province of Schleswig-Holstein was taken from
Denmark by what was then Prussia.  We were discussing
the disgraceful incident of poor little Denmark losing
the province, and a certain little boy, then ten or twelve
years of age, strutted about and said: 'If I was only
a man, I know what I'd do to them.'  He was very
indignant.  That little boy is now commander of
Britain's great army."

It has been said that South Africa is the grave of
British military reputations.  Sir Redvers Buller's was
buried there, and though those of Roberts and
Kitchener emerged from the Boer War, the renown of Botha
and Dewet admittedly outshone them.  One British
General at least was "made" by the three years'
conflict with the Dutch Republics--Sir John French, the
cavalryman who relieved Kimberley, and whose
escutcheon during the sorry South African campaign
was alone untarnished by blunder or reverse.  As
Kitchener was the logical choice for organizer of Britain's
new armies, Sir John French was the natural selection
for their field-commandership.  French, following in
paternal footsteps, began his fighting career in the
navy, but he has been a soldier for the past forty-one
years--he was sixty-three in September, 1915.  A man
whose entire manhood has been lived in the army, who
knows it through and through, loves it passionately,
has devoted himself to it with the zeal of a student,
and fought in all its campaigns for nearly half a
century, had an ideal claim upon its supreme honor in
the hour of superlative crisis.  Doubtless in the
Government's mind when it entrusted "Jack" French with
the command of the British Expeditionary Force was
the reputation he had won in South Africa as a
fighting field-general.  Unquestionably the broad sweeping
movements his cavalry divisions executed at
Elandslaagte, Lombard's Kop, Bloemfontein, Pretoria and
Barberton were operations which contributed, perhaps,
more than any other scheme of the brilliantly mismanaged
Boer campaign finally to bring it to a victorious
end.  Neither the British nor the German General Staff
realized in August, 1914, that Armageddon was going
to develop into a trench or "positional" war, with
little or no latitude for those grandiose tactical maneuvers
which delighted the heart of Moltke and made a Sedan
the ambition of every modern tactician.  Yet Sir John
French, whose military virtues include adaptability, if
not imaginativeness, which is oftener born, than
acquired, turned out to be ideally fitted for "spade
warfare," in which the qualities of endurance,
steadfastness and patience have displaced the more spectacular
talents of daring and recklessness and those bold
strokes of magnificent vastness known as Napoleonic.
Bonaparte's scintillating genius, his predilection for
the stupendous, would probably have counted for little
amid such immobile conditions as the Allied armies
have had to face in the West, just as the Germans'
prized Moltke traditions in the same region have come
to naught.

.. _`Sir John French.`:

.. figure:: images/img-246.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Sir John French.

   Sir John French.

Military history will unquestionably accord the
retreat of the British army from Mons a place among
the finest achievements of all times.  It was due to Sir
John French's strategy that Berlin was cheated of
that fiendishly coveted orgy of gloating over the
"annihilation" of what the Kaiser is said to have called
"the contemptible little British army."  Since Mons and
the Marne the British Field-Marshal's task has been
to "hold" the enemy and to inspire his men to fulfil,
unflinchingly, that prodigious, but comparatively
inglorious, task.  In the circumstances it was fortunate
that a man of Sir John French's temperament was in
charge.  He knew how to "sit tight."  Kinship with
his soldiers has been his lifetime specialty.  He is fond
of sharing their joys and sorrows not in any
stereotyped, dress-parade sense, but actually.  He likes to
move among them, and does so.  His jaunty fighting
bearing and unfailing good humor are a constant
inspiration.  Short and stocky, straight and energetic
of movement, he looks every inch a soldier, and he has
a soldier's habit of saying what he means, direct from
the shoulder, whether it is a corporal, a staff officer,
a brigadier or a Cabinet Minister to whom he is
addressing himself.

The Allied military arrangement conferred supreme
authority on General Joffre, but the British Field
Marshal's character and career were considered a joint
guarantee that Sir John French would not be found lacking
when called upon to do and dare greatly on his own
account.  It would be going too far to say that the war
has covered French with glory.  He would be the first
to banish such a thought.  Though Britons have fallen
laurel-crowned on a score of fields in France and
Flanders and irrigated the cock-pit which lies between the
Alps and the Channel with as heroic blood as was ever
spilled, the British offensives in the West have been
little more than brilliant failures.  Neuve Chapelle is
an undying story of Anglo-Saxon gallantry, as was
Ypres before it; but it was nothing else.  The "big
push" which England hoped had at last begun with the
fighting in Artois and the Champagne at the end of
September, 1915, turned out to be a victory of
distressingly short life and little real effectiveness.  Yet
when Germany lost the war--when she failed to take
Paris--the British army under Sir John French wrote
history of which Englishmen will never be ashamed.
Who it was that most effectually parried von Kluck
and the Crown Prince's thrust at the French
capital will probably, among generations of
schoolboys yet unborn, be as fruitful a theme of argument
as is the question who won Waterloo--Wellington or
Blücher--but whatever the verdict of posterity the
smashing of the Germans on the Marne reeked glory
for all concerned, and Britain's share of it is a
heritage which will survive with Blenheim, Balaclava,
Kandahar and Khartoum.[1]

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: smaller

   [1] Sir John French returned to England in December, 1915,
   relinquishing (at his own request, it was officially stated) the
   commandership-in-chief in France for the command of the Home
   Defense forces.  King George conferred the dignity of a
   Viscountcy on the Field-Marshal.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: medium

Another Sir John--Admiral Jellicoe--is commander-in-chief
of the British navy.  Events still to come
must determine whether Anglo-Saxon history is to be
enriched with another Nelson.  But as far as human
prescience could foretell, "Jack" Jellicoe was of all
men in the British Fleet preordained by talent,
temperament and training to be the admiral in whose
keeping could safely be entrusted British destinies more
priceless than those which were safeguarded at Trafalgar.

Jellicoe was one of the godfathers of the
dreadnought, having been summoned by Lord Fisher, the
real author of that revolution in naval science, to
support and carry into execution the all-big-gun ship idea.
Fisher had years before associated young Captain
Jellicoe with him as assistant director of naval ordnance,
whereupon there ensued an intimacy which friends say
will link their names together much as history
associated St. Vincent and Nelson as the twin victors of
Trafalgar--the one, the far-sighted planner of preparatory
reforms; the other, the faithful executor of their
purpose.

Jellicoe resembles Sir John French in more than
given name.  Like him, he is of quite markedly small
stature.  Neither the Generalissimo or Admiralissimo
of Britain in the Great War at all corresponds,
physically, to the popular notion that the English are
"big" men.  Like French, again, Jellicoe is mild and
gentle, a pair of conspicuously tight lips indicating
poise, reserve force and self-confidence.  The chieftain
of the Grand Fleet--that is its official title and not an
effusive expletive--did not make his first acquaintance
with danger afloat when von Tirpitz' submarines
began to make life a burden for British sailors.  He has
been snatched from the jaws of death on three
separate occasions.  In 1893 Jellicoe was commander of
Sir George Tryon's *Victoria*, when it was sent to its
doom in the Mediterranean, and, although "below" in
the ship-hospital with fever at the moment of the
disaster, was miraculously rescued by a midshipman when
he came to the surface more dead than alive after the
vessel foundered.  Seven years previous, as if Fate
was keeping a protecting hand over him for some
great hour, Jellicoe had an equally marvelous escape
from drowning when a gig he was commanding off
Gibraltar capsized and he was washed ashore.  In the
Boxer war of 1900, Jellicoe was flag captain to
Admiral Seymour, the commander of the Allied expedition
which marched from Tien-tsin to the relief of the
Powers' legations in Pekin, and at the battle of
Peitsang Jellicoe was struck by a Chinese bullet, incurring
wounds which the flagship-surgeon considered fatal.
Again Jellicoe was spared.  A brother-officer tells a
story of Jellicoe's agony on that occasion, which
illuminates his capacity for facing the music, however
doleful.  He had asked how the advance to Pekin was
proceeding.  Told that everything was going satisfactorily,
Jellicoe flashed back: "Tell me the truth, damn
it.  Don't lie!"

The triumvirate which has accomplished that
amazing, silent victory of the British Fleet in the
war--the complete conquest of sea power without anything
savoring of a decisive action in the open--consists of
Lord Fisher, the creator of the dreadnought; Admiral
Sir Percy Scott, the inventor of the central "fire
control" system, and Sir John Jellicoe, to whose gunnery
science and innovations in that all-important branch of
naval warfare are ascribed, in large measure, the
acknowledged preeminence of the British Fleet as a
striking force.  He had not been director of ordnance
a year when the percentage of the navy's hits out of
rounds fired increased from forty-two to more than
seventy.  "In other words," as a critic describes it,
"Jellicoe enhanced by more than a third the fighting
value of the British Fleet, and that without a keel being
added to its composition."

Jellicoe, who is fifty-six years old, has nothing but
sailor blood in his veins.  His father was a captain in
the Fleet before him, and one of his kinsmen, Admiral
Philip Patton, was Second Sea Lord in Nelson's time.
Jellicoe is the incarnation of the spirit, traditions,
practises and brain-force of the British navy of to-day.
He has the not inconsiderable advantage of having had
opportunity personally to take the measure of his
German antagonists, for he has visited their country, where
he made the acquaintance of von Tirpitz, Ingenohl,
Pohl, Behncke, Holtzendorff, Prince Henry and all the
other naval men of the Fatherland, and was even
privileged to cruise over Berlin in a Zeppelin.

England has heard little and seen nothing of
Jellicoe during the war.  The veil of mystery which
envelops the Grand Fleet is seldom lifted.  Not one
Englishman in a million knows where the Fleet is, though
all know that it is where it ought to be.  A ten days'
visit paid to the officers and men of the Armada by the
Archbishop of York in the late summer of 1915
resulted in imparting to the nation the first glimmer of
their life, of their indomitable watch and wait, which
had been forthcoming.

.. vspace:: 2

"It is difficult for our sailormen," wrote the
Archbishop, "to realize the value of their long-drawn vigil.
Their one longing is to meet the German ships and sink
them; and yet month after month the German ships
decline the challenge.  The men have little time or
chance or perhaps inclination to read accounts in
serious journals of the invaluable service which the
Navy is fulfilling by simply keeping its watch; and
naval officers do not make speeches to their men.  I
think, indeed I know, that it was a real encouragement
to them to hear a voice from the land of their homes
telling them of the debt their country owes them for
the command of the seas--the safety of the ships
carrying food and means of work to the people, supplies
of men and munitions to the fields of battle--which
is secured to us by the patient watching of the Fleet."

Speaking of Admiral Jellicoe, the Archbishop said:

"It was refreshing and exhilarating beyond words
to find oneself in a world governed by a great
tradition so strong that it has become an instinct of unity
and mutual trust.  But to the influence of this great
tradition must be added the influence of a great
personality.  I can not refrain from saying here that I
left the Grand Fleet sharing to the full the admiration,
affection, and confidence which every officer and
man within it feels for its Commander-in-Chief, Sir
John Jellicoe.  He reassuredly is the right man in the
right place at the right time.  His officers give him
the most absolute trust and loyalty.  When I spoke of
him to his men I always felt that quick response which
to a speaker is the sure sign that he has reached and
touched the hearts of his hearers.  The
Commander-in-Chief--quiet, modest, courteous, alert, resolute,
holding in firm control every part of his great fighting
engine--has under his command not only the ships but
the heart of his Fleet.  He embodies and strengthens
that comradeship of single-minded service which is
the crowning honor of the Navy."

.. vspace:: 2

More than once the criticism has been uttered in
England itself that the Fleet has been conspicuously
lacking in the "Nelson touch."  Even Americans,
friendly observers, have ventured to suggest that
there seemed to be an absence of the Farragut or
Dewey "to-hell-with-mines" spirit.  Up to the end of
the first year of war, Britons faced the fact that their
"supreme navy" had lost seven battleships aggregating
97,600 tons (not counting a super-dreadnought
reported by the foreign press to have been lost in the
early months of the war, but which was a loss never
"officially confirmed" in England), and ten cruisers
aggregating 81,365 tons.  Submarines, in that
nerve-racking and troublous day before Scott and Jellicoe
solved the problem of sinking "U boats" almost faster
than German dockyards could launch substitutes,
accomplished terrific havoc among the British merchant
fleet, even though the sea commerce of these islands
was never remotely in danger of being "paralyzed,"
as von Tirpitz and the minions of Frightfulness fondly
planned.

.. _`Sir J. R. Jellicoe.`:

.. figure:: images/img-252.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Sir J. R. Jellicoe.

   Sir J. R. Jellicoe.

Yet all this while, the British Fleet was tightening its
grip upon the command of the sea to an extent which
may now be described as absolute.  The German flag,
war ensign and merchant pennant, has been swept from
the oceans as if it had never flown.  Hamburg and
Bremen, the Fatherland's prides, are as completely
demolished, as far as their usefulness to Germany for
war is concerned, as if they had been battered into
smoking ruins.  German mercantile trade simply no
longer exists, except such of it as can be smuggled
in tramps and ferries across the narrow reach of the
Baltic between Pomerania and the Scandinavian ports.
The Germanic Allies can import and export nothing
oversea except by the grace of Jellicoe.  Their
deported propaganda chieftains or compromised
ambassadors and attachés can not return to their homes in
Europe from the United States without gracious "safe
conduct" by the British Fleet.  The toymakers of
Nuremberg can not deliver a solitary tin soldier to an
American Christmas tree unless Jellicoe says yes.  Two
score proud German liners, including the queen of
them all, the *Vaterland*, are rotting and rusting in
United States harbors, ingloriously imprisoned by
British naval power.  In a dozen other ports
throughout the world Hamburg and Bremen vessels tug at
anchor--greyhounds enchained.  Germany is banned
from the oceans like an outlaw.  Her people can eat
and drink only on the ration basis.  The British Fleet
has done something else of which, it seemed to me, an
American Presidential message might legitimately have
made mention.  It has enabled the people of the United
States for many months to traverse the oceans in
security.

These are the immediate effects of British sea
supremacy on the enemy, but even they are incommensurate
with the advantages which accrue to Britain
herself.  A navy has three cardinal functions: to
preserve its own shores from invasion; to maintain
inviolate its country's oversea communications, including
cables, food supply, passenger traffic and postal
transportation; and, finally, to destroy the sea forces of the
enemy.  The first two of these functions have been
fulfilled by the Grand Fleet, and at a cost in men and
material, though not inconsiderable, which is infinitesimal,
measured by the results attained.  To absolve
the third, and, of course, climacteric, function, Jellicoe
and his men and his ironclads stand ready when the
opportunity is given them--readier, by far, than when
the war began.  They have not lost a really vital
fighting unit (supposing unconfirmed reports to the
contrary to be unfounded).  They have had a priceless
experience of sea warfare under almost every
conceivable condition.  They are veterans of every
essential contingency.  There is hardly a terror, military or
atmospheric, which they have not faced and
surmounted.  They have added to their battle efficiency
by a great many new and powerful ships.  Their
*morale* is unbroken.

When the Kaiser's Canal Armada finally makes up
its mind, as I believe that German public opinion will
some day compel it to, to forsake the snug harbors of
Kiel and Wilhelmshaven and the screen of Heligoland
for the high sea, it will find that Jellicoe has up his
iron sleeve a welcome, as to the issue of which no one
in these islands is capable of cherishing the remotest
doubt.  History is barren of an instance of a Power
defeated in war, who retained command of the sea.
Were there no other considerations which spell the
eventual, though probably not the early, frustration
of Germany's ambition to master Europe and, as
William II once sighed, to snatch the trident from
Britannia's grasp, the vise-like grip of naval power
which Jellicoe has wrested alone denotes that
Armageddon can have but one ending, however long it be
deferred.

In this cursory review of the men at Britain's helm,
the Sovereign is deliberately put at the end instead of
the beginning.  I mean to cast no impious slur upon
George V in thus classifying his relative importance
in the scheme of British war life, yet to rank him at
the front of the captains of the State would be
hyperbole as unpardonable in a chronicler as gratuitous
defamation would be.

To discuss the figure cut by England's King during
the past year is a task which a foreigner approaches
with diffidence.  I should not dream of taking such
liberties with their Britannic Majesties, for example,
as my gifted friend and colleague, Irvin Shrewsbury
Cobb, who recently diagnosed the Royal situation in
England thus: "I have seen the King and Queen, and
I know now why they call him George the Fifth;
Mary's the other four-fifths."  Whether this subtle
tribute to the undoubtedly potent influence of the
gracious Queen explains it or not, the indisputable fact
remains that the part played by King George in the
day of supreme British national trial has been a keen
disappointment to a great many of his subjects.  It is
not a topic which they discuss at all in public, nor one
upon which it is easy to extract their views even in
private.  But when an inquiring alien even of
unmistakably sympathetic sentiment accomplishes the
miracle of inducing a Briton to pour out his heart, he will
secure evidence corroborative of an impression the
foreigner has had from the start, if he has lived in
England since August, 1914--that the monarchy, as
such, has not given a wholly satisfactory account of
itself.  Men who are so utterly un-English as to be
"quite" frank even suggest that King George's
insistence not only upon enacting the "constitutional
monarch," but *overplaying* that rôle, has not inconsiderably
undermined the solidity of the Royal principle in
numerous British hearts.  They will tell you, if in
communicative mood, that George has failed to rise
to the majestic opportunities of the moment.  They
contrast his incorrigibly "constitutional" behavior with
what they feel assured is the red-blooded lead King
Edward would have given.  They assert that the hour
of Imperial peril, when national existence itself is at
stake, has caused so many cherished shibboleths to go
by the board, that the strait-jacket of "constitutional
monarchy," which is another name for Irresponsibility,
ought to go with them.  In times of peace, say
Englishmen, a conscientious figurehead on the throne is good
enough.  In times of war, they want a King.  He need
not be the blatant, ubiquitous limelight-chaser that the
Kaiser is, but some of that royal dynamo's attributes,
diluted with English seasoning, would not have been
unwelcome to his people during the past year and a
half.  Britons, though, I repeat, they do not cry it out
for the multitude to hear, are not edified by the
spectacle of a sovereign who has sojourned with his army
and fleet only in the most formal manner, whose
war-time activities are confined to peripatetic visits to
hospitals and convalescent homes, to inspections and
reviews, and to distribution of Victoria Crosses and
Distinguished Service medals at Buckingham Palace.

"The King," to whom Englishmen, before 10 P.M.,
still drink in reverential sincerity, and who rise in
devout respect when they hear the anthem which
beseeches Divine salvation for him, is an institution from
which Britain felt it had a right to expect both lead and
deed in a great war.  She did not demand, or at least
no conspicuous section of her has, that the King should
take the field or the sea, and prance about in the saddle
or on the quarter-deck, but they did hope, I think, for
something more inspiring than nebulous constitutionalism.
It was many months after thousands of other
British mothers had sent their sons to death and glory
that Queen Mary consented to the dispatch of the
twenty-one-year-old Prince of Wales to the trenches.
And Prince Albert, who is twenty, and was in the
navy before the war, was never, as far as the public
is informed, able to gratify his desire to return to
active service afloat, but must cool his martial ardor
in the inglorious capacity of an Admiralty messenger
in London.  Britons look across to Germany, Russia
and Italy, even to Belgium and Serbia, and, contrasting
the spectacle with "constitutionalism" in their own
Royal household, acknowledge that theirs is not a
thrilling picture.

If you attempt to penetrate into what may strike
you as a mystery, you will be told that the cause as
far as King George is concerned, is twofold: first,
his high-minded, even slavish, devotion to his
conception of his constitutional limitations, and, secondly,
his equally incorrigible shyness.  Sarah Bernhardt,
when King George and Queen Mary were in Paris
a couple of years ago, was once summoned to the
royal box of the Comédie Franchise for presentation
to the British sovereigns.  She explained to
friends afterward that the King's modesty positively
unnerved her.  He was as bashful as a schoolgirl.  I
have been told that his manner in the presence even of
his Ministers is almost deferential.  He does not know
the meaning of "mixing," an art in which his late
father excelled.  "The King and Queen are fond of
lunching alone, and usually take their tea together," I
read the other day in a "well-informed" society paper.
Edward VII was fond of lunching with men of affairs.
He did not heed the hoots of the aristocratic set, which
was scandalized by his intimacy with tea-merchants
and money kings, because through them he was
accustomed to keep in touch with the human currents of his
people's life and times.  Edward would hardly have
allowed even the Empire's greatest soldier (Englishmen
explain) to call the new army "Kitchener's Army."  It
would have been called the "King's Army" and the
King would have thrown his incalculably great moral
influence into the breach in some more practical way
than lending his photograph for recruiting
advertisements.  George V could have been England's finest
recruiting sergeant.  He preferred to remain a
constitutional monarch.

.. _`King George V.`:

.. figure:: images/img-258.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: King George V.

   King George V.

Englishmen excuse, rather than blame, the King.
They point out, in his extenuation, that George's is a
gentle, self-effacing nature little fitted for the
soul-stirring era in the midst of which Fate decreed that his
reign should fall.  They cast no aspersions on his
rugged patriotism or even on his kingly zeal.  They
believe that, according to his lights, he exercises
faithfully what he considers to be his prerogatives.  They
feel, they tell you, that it is not his fault that he
remains the only man in the Kingdom who still wears a
Prince Albert coat.  His is, somehow, not the
magnetic influence which, if it were that of Edward VII,
would still be condemning Englishmen to cling to that
ancient robe.  They explain that it is his psychic
misfortune, rather than a failing, that nobody thinks it
worth while to emulate him by taking the pledge "for
the duration of the war" and drinking barley-water.
Edward VII's abstemious decree would have blotted
the liquor trade out of existence, because in the lap of
his example sat militant loyalty.  The "old King's"
wish was law.

Perhaps--I do not know--George V is wiser than
men think.  Perhaps he is not being kept in cotton-wool
by his Victorian private secretary.  Perhaps he
is not yielding as supinely as many people imagine to
the inflexible mandates of constitutionalism.  Perhaps
he has his ear closer to the ground than his
contemporaries realize, and with it hears the far-off but
unmistakable rumbles of the limitlessly democratized
Britain which is already emerging from the crucible of
war.  Perhaps injustice is done to him by those who
accuse him of not rising more vigorously to the
opportunities of his Empire's hour of destiny.  May he not
be fitting himself still to sit the throne in that coming
day when Britain will perhaps want even a more
constitutional ruler than ermine and the crown now rest upon?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"Your King And Country Want You"`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium

   YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT YOU

.. vspace:: 2

"Luna Park," in Berlin, once had an English
manager and an American "publicity agent."  In
pursuit of his lime-light duties the transatlantic
hustler, who had been engaged because he was such,
reported to the manager one day that he had
accomplished a feat on which he had been plodding for
weeks.  The owners of a building which commanded
the most prominent view in Berlin had finally
consented to let "Luna Park" affix a gigantic electric
flash-light sign to the roof.

"It will be the greatest thing of the kind ever seen
in Germany," exclaimed the enthusiast from the
U.S.A.  "They'll allow us to have 'Luna Park' in
letters twenty feet high across a one-hundred-and-fifty-foot
front, and you'll be able to see 'em a mile away!"

He expected his British superior fairly to jump for
joy.  But this is what he said:

"Quite so.  But don't you think that will be a bit
conspicuous?"

When I returned to London on September 24, after
four short, strenuous weeks in the United States, I
found Englishmen dominated seemingly by a genuine
fear that the war might become "a bit conspicuous."  It
was true that stupendous things had happened in the
interval.  Namur, "the impregnable," had melted
before the merciless German 42's like the other Belgian
fortresses.  Brussels was in the enemy's hands,
unscotched, thanks to the intervention of the American
Minister, Brand Whitlock, and through it were
passing apparently endless streams of gray-clad Germans
bound for Antwerp and the sea.  France had been
overrun, regardless of the cost in Teuton blood, Lille
and the industrial provinces were securely held, and,
although the Crown Prince and von Kluck had been
gloriously repulsed in their frenzied dash on Paris, the
capital had all but resounded to the clatter of Uhlan
hoofs, and Bordeaux was still regarded a far safer
seat of Government.  England herself had lived
through hours of anxious crisis blacker than any
within the memory of the living generation.  At Mons,
as official reports disclosed, the gallant little British
army narrowly escaped annihilation.  As it was, it
lost hideously in killed and wounded.  Gaping holes
had been ripped in the ranks of famous regiments, and
the Expeditionary Force, within six weeks of its
landing, was already sadly mangled.  Sir John French stirred
the nation with his dispatch on the retreat from Mons
and told how his army, though hurriedly concentrated
by rail only two days before, had tenaciously withstood,
in the dogged British way, the combined attack
of five crack German corps.  In the subsequent
fighting which beat the Germans on the Marne and saved
Paris, British soldiers, battered and battle-scarred as
they were, had done even more than their share.  Two
days before arrival in Liverpool the *Campania*
wireless--I returned to England in the same veteran hulk
which had taken me to America in August--brought
the dread tidings of the submarining of cruisers
*Aboukir, Cressy* and *Hogue* in the Channel by the *U9*
and *Weddigen*, with cruelly heavy sacrifice of British
lives.

All these things had happened, and yet London was
unshaken.  She had been "a bit uneasy," my English
friends conceded, in the days and nights when the fate
of Paris and Sir John French's army seemed to be in
doubt, and the *U9's* feat had "cost us three obsolete
boats," but the Germans were checked now, and the
worst was over.  Churchill was sending a British
naval expedition to Belgium to save Antwerp, and what
was the use of worrying, anyhow?  Kitchener's army
was filling up with recruits by the thousand, and
England's motto was "Business as Usual."

Yea, verily, Britain was pursuing the even tenor of
her imperturbable way.  The Savoy, at supper after
theater, glittered with all its old-time flare.  The tables
were thronged in the same old way with gaily-clad
women, romping chorus-girls, monocled "nuts" with
hair plastered straight back, opulent stock-brokers,
theatrical celebrities and all the other familiar people
about town.  The band interpolated *Tipperary* a
little oftener between rag-time one-steps and fox-trots,
and lordlings and other bloods in khaki gave a new
tinge to the picture, but otherwise it was night-time
London "as usual."  The theaters and music-halls
were full.  At Murray's and the Four Hundred--those
dens of revelry called "night clubs," invented for
law-respecting English who can afford five guineas a year
for the privilege of wining, supping and dancing
after the Acts of Parliament send ordinary people to
bed--you could hardly wedge your way in.  At the
Carlton or the Piccadilly, or for the matter of that at
any other popular resort in all London, you found
yourself lucky to locate a single unpreempted place.
Wherever you went or turned, whomever you saw, it
was dear old London "as usual."  If you were an
impulsive, excitable, sentimental American and thought
you were mildly rebuking your British friends when
you ventured to wonder at the extraordinary naturalness
of life in the West End, or at Walton Heath golf
links, or at Chelsea football grounds, or at the
Newmarket race-course, you found yourself unconsciously
paying a tribute to "British character."  For John Bull, far
from being ashamed of adhering religiously to peace-time
activities, was positively proud of the exhibition
of "reserve" and "poise" and "calmness" which he was
now giving.  People talked about the war, of course.
They hardly mentioned anything else.  But if you had
the patience to listen to their airy, fairy converse, you
soon gathered that they spoke of it exclusively as
something about which no self-respecting Englishman
or woman purposed for a solitary moment to get
indecorously agitated.  There were even people who
confessed that the war was beginning to "bore" them.

As for myself, I had a go at British acquaintances
from two entirely different standpoints.  In the first
place, fresh from America, where the war had burnt
into people's minds as deeply almost as if it were their
own destiny which was at stake, I was still filled with
the energizing atmosphere omnipresent there.  I
remembered how even our puny war with Spain had
gripped the nation's thought and concentrated it to the
exclusion of all else.  I could not, for the life of me,
understand how Englishmen, with the history of the
preceding eight weeks before them, could still look
upon "business as usual" as the desideratum for which
the moment insistently called.  I knew, I thought, how
Americans would feel and act at such an hour; and as
I had in my time dozed through many after-dinner
speeches about the "kindred ideals" and "identical
habits of thought" which so indissolubly bound the
English-speaking nations, I ventured to marvel, and
even at times to swear, at the spectacle of national
nonchalance which Britain at the beginning of October,
1914, so resolutely presented.  It was magnificent, but
it was not war.

In the second place, I was conscious, with the
knowledge and conviction of a long-time eye-witness, of
both the visible and the dormant strength of Germany.
I had written literally reams, during the preceding
eight years, about Teuton preparations on land, in the
air and on the sea.  I had discussed the German War
Party, its leaders and its literature, its aspirations and
its plans, till I often grew weary of the task, not so
much because pacifist critics in England pilloried me as
a war-monger and an alarmist, but because there was
a monotony in that sort of news about Germany
which strained even the patience of those whose duty
it was to report it.  When Englishmen now told me, as
so many of them did, that they would "muddle
through this show," as they had "muddled through" in
South Africa and on all the other occasions in Britain's
martial past, I grew sick at heart.  I knew, as
everybody who had lived in Germany between 1904 and
1914 and kept his ears and eyes open knew, that
"muddling through" would never beat the Germans, even if
it had finally overcome the Boers.  I knew, and
anybody really acquainted with the Germans knew, that
they would not be vanquished so long as there was a
man or a mark with which to fight.  I knew that
nothing short of the supreme effort which the British
Empire and its Allies could put forth would suffice to
overcome the most highly-organized and efficiently
patriotic people which had ever gone to war.  I knew that
the German General Staff and the other war-makers of
the Fatherland had long reckoned, in the emergency of
a struggle with England, on the very thing of which
my eyes were now witness--British reluctance to shake
off the shackles of ease and comfort and buckle down,
a nation in arms, to the inconvenient and grim realities
of war.  Of these things I thought, and the reflection
was disquieting, as I saw the mad whirl of light,
frivolity and care-free joy which the Savoy at
supper-time, plainly epitomizing London life at the moment,
presented night after night.  "Business as usual!"  It
was small comfort my English friends provided, when,
remonstrating with me for my foolish solicitude, they
assured me that my misgivings were misplaced
because I was hopelessly ignorant of "the British character."

England, it was obvious, was like the manager of
"Luna Park" in Berlin.  She was afraid the war might
become "a bit conspicuous," and was, moreover,
determined that it should not.  I remember well the crushing
rebuke administered to me by a Britisher of international
renown when I intruded my view of all these
things.  I had offered, in a desire to hold the mirror
up to Nature and let Londoners see how they looked to
foreigners at so transcendent a moment in their
national existence, to produce a little article entitled
"What an American Thinks of the English in
War-Time."  I even went to the length of putting my
thoughts on paper and submitting the manuscript.  I
did so with considerable confidence, because the
celebrity in question is a notorious "Wake Up, England!"
man.  But he returned my masterpiece with a look and
gesture mingling pity and contempt for my wretched
unfamiliarity with "the British character."

"My dear Wile," he explained, "you do not understand
us.  You forget that this war is not an American
World's Championship baseball series.  You mustn't
try to foist transatlantic brass-band methods on us.
It is not the British way."

Lest I convey the impression that I had advocated
rousing the British lion from his slumbers by wild and
woolly western methods palpably unsuited to his
stoical temperament, let me make haste to explain that
I was pleading for nothing but a system which would,
spectacularly if necessary, do something to let the
British public at least know that they had a war on
their hands, and popularize it.  A great contingent of
Indian troops, led by Maharajahs and Rajputs, Maliks,
Rajahs and Jams, had arrived in Europe, tarried in
England and been slipped, in the dead of a Channel
night, across to France.  An entire army from Canada
was encamped on Salisbury Plain, and no one had seen
a sign of it except an occasional detachment of
boisterous subalterns, many with a pronounced "American
accent," who had kicked up a row in some Leicester
Square music-hall the night before.  The Nelson
monument in Trafalgar Square was desecrated with
recruiting circus-bills which would have delighted the
heart of Barnum, and every taxicab wind-shield in
town beseeched passers-by to "enlist for the duration
of the war."  But why, I had had the temerity to
inquire in my little "Wake Up, England!" homily, which
was rejected because it revealed no insight into
"British character," were not the turbaned Gurkhas and the
swarthy Sikhs and the brown men from Punjab and
Beluchistan brought to London-town and paraded up
and down the Strand and the Embankment, for all the
metropolis to have a priceless object-lesson in Imperial
patriotism?  Why was Kitchener allowed to intern the
young giants in khaki from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta,
Saskatchewan and British Columbia in the hidden
recesses of the provinces, instead of giving Londoners
a glimpse of Colonial love of mother country in the
flesh?  It was due to the Indians and to the Canadians
themselves, no less than to London, I argued, that
opportunity should be provided to pay homage to the
men who had crossed the seas to fight for Motherland.
Non-British though I am, I felt morally certain that
even my Hoosier bosom would swell with emotion in
the presence of so ocular a demonstration of
Britain's Imperial solidarity in the day of trial.  But my
suggestions were rejected as unbecomingly boisterous
in their intent, good enough for the Polo Grounds or
Madison Square Garden, but grotesquely out of place
in England.  If carried out, you see, they would
inevitably have made the war "a bit conspicuous."

.. _`Kitchener's army`:

.. figure:: images/img-268.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Kitchener's army

   Kitchener's army

That the war was almost invisibly hidden, as far as
the daily life of the people was concerned, was
primarily due to the bureaucratic and autocratic methods of
the censorship.  Bureaucracy and autocracy in
Germany, for instance, have their redeeming qualities.
They are usually highly efficient, and their arrogance
and high-handedness are tolerated because accompanied
by a maximum of practical effectiveness.  When
England established her war censorship, she went over
to bureaucracy and autocracy, as made in Germany, but
lamentably lacking in the saving graces of the system
as there exemplified.  In vain the Press, now muzzled
almost as effectually as if the Magna Charta and free
speech had never existed, stormed and fumed against
the tyranny of the "Press Bureau," the innocuous title
chosen for the Juggernaut which, before six months
had passed, was to grind British journalistic liberties
into the dust.  It was discovered that the "Bureau" was
staffed for the most part by amiable gentlemen no
longer fit for active duty in the army and navy, who,
having patriotically offered their services to King and
country, had been pitchforked indiscriminately into
billets which clothed them with more real influence on
the war than if they had commanded armies or fleets.
It became painfully apparent that news of the war was
being suppressed, mutilated and generally mismanaged
either by military men who knew nothing of journalism,
or by journalists who were profoundly ignorant
of military matters--for the official censor caused it to
be announced, in self-defense, that he had associated
with the Bureau in an advisory capacity a couple of
eminent ex-editors.

Just who was responsible for annihilating the
elementary rights of the British Press never became
quite clear.  Some blamed Kitchener.  His hostility to
journalists and journalism was notorious, though
"With Kitchener to Khartoum," by the most distinguished
special correspondent of our time, the late
G. W. Steevens, who died in *The Daily Mail's* service
during the South African war, probably did as much to
give "K." a reputation as anything which England's
War Minister ever did in the field.  Others said
Joffre was the man who had put the lid on.
Whoever laid down the law saw that it was relentlessly
enforced.  Petitions, protests, cajolings, threats,
complaints, abuse--all were in vain.  The antics of the
"Press Bureau" became more exasperating and
inexplicable from day to day.  Also more domineering, if
common report could be believed, for presently Fleet
Street heard that "K." had intimated to a mighty
newspaper magnate that if the latter did not mend his
ways, and abate his insistence, "K." had the power,
and would not shrink from using it, to incarcerate even
a peer of the realm in the Tower and turn his entire
"plant" into junk.  That dire threat, I imagine, was
just one of the myriad of chatterbox rumors with
which the air in England, all through the war, fairly
sizzled.  At any rate, it failed utterly to curb the stormy
petrel to terrorize whom it was said to have been
uttered, for his onslaughts on the censorship grew,
instead of diminishing, in intensity as the "war in the
dark" proceeded.

But it was in its treatment of news destined for the
United States that the Press Bureau most convincingly
revealed its lack of imagination.  Here was Germany
leaving no stone unturned to take American sympathy
by storm.  The Bernstorff-Dernburg-Münsterberg
campaign was in full blast.  Von Wiegand in Berlin
was interviewing the Crown Prince and Princess, von
Tirpitz and von Bernhardi, Zeppelin, Hindenburg
and Falkenhayn, and only narrowly escaped interviewing
the Kaiser himself.  American correspondents
arriving in Germany were received with open arms, and
had but to ask, in order to receive.  Sometimes they
received without asking.  They could see anybody and
go anywhere.  That was German efficiency--and
imagination--at work.  The Germans realized that we are
a newspaper-reading community.  They knew that the
best way in the world to win American newspapers' and
American newspapermen's sympathy is to give them
news.  So they did it.  When the German Crown
Prince told the correspondent of the United Press that
he would "love" to see American baseball, that he
longed to hunt big game in Alaska, and that Jack
London was his favorite author, he broke a lance for the
Fatherland's cause in the United States that a
four-hundred-fifty-paged "unhuman" British White Paper
could never hope to equal.  Somebody with an
imagination--probably Bernstorff--had put a flea in Berlin's
ear, and the result was open-house for American
journalists for the duration of the war.

What was happening in London?  There were
plenty of American newspapermen on the ground, not
only special correspondents who had come over to join
the British army in the field, like Will Irwin, "Bell"
Shepherd, Alexander Powell, Arthur Ruhl, or Frederick
Palmer, to name only a few of them, but resident
London correspondents who had lived in England a
dozen years, like Edward Price Bell of the *Chicago
Daily News*, Ernest Marshall of the *New York Times*,
or James M. Tuohy of the *New York World*, who
were well known to the British authorities as men of
judgment, integrity and responsibility.  But resident
or newcomer, nothing but inconsequential facilities or
the cold shoulder awaited them when they went to the
Press Bureau, cap in hand, to ask even the most
rudimentary professional courtesies for themselves or their
papers.  Quite apart from the indignities thus heaped
on American correspondents, the Press Bureau, when
it suppressed or butchered their dispatches, left pitiably
out of account the susceptibilities of the great neutral
news-devouring community which these men
represented.  Therein lay the real infamy.  Think of it.
Here was Great Britain and her Government
confessedly anxious for American moral support in the
war, and something more than that, and yet a subordinate
department seemed clothed with authority to flout,
exasperate and bully the agency directly responsible
for the production of public sentiment in the United
States.  I call it a tremendous tribute to the sincerity
and depth of our loyalty to the Allies' cause that we
never for a moment allowed it to waver, even in the
face of the British Press Bureau's arrant provocation.
The American Press, asking for bread in England,
received a stone.  That it accepted it, and went on
playing the Allies' game, has been one of the miracles of
the war, for which these British Isles have reason to
be profoundly grateful.

.. _`5 Questions to those who employ male servants`:

.. figure:: images/img-273.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: 5 Questions to those who employ male servants

   5 Questions to those who employ male servants

Inherent imperturbability and unimaginative censorship
thus combined in the early weeks of the war, on
the one hand to minimize popular conceptions of the
struggle's magnitude in England, and on the other to
smother enthusiasm for it.  You can not fully realize
the immensity of the task if you are not permitted by
your overlords to see it in its true proportions.  You
can certainly not become ecstatic about it if they insist
on having it painted in exclusively drab, routine and
joy-killing tints, when they are not covering it up
altogether.  Yet British patriotism was triumphing over
all these natural and artificial handicaps.  Kitchener
was not only calling for five hundred thousand
volunteers, but intimated that he would soon be asking for
another five hundred thousand.  He was getting them.
London and the provinces were now plastered with
recruiting posters, calling in compelling language for
soldiers.  "Your King and Country Need You!"  Thus
ran the most direct and frank appeal.  By the tens of
thousands men answered it.  The desecrating bill-board
which we know in America is an unknown excrescence
in the British Isles, but, for the purposes of advertising
for men for "Kitchener's Army," practically every
vacant space in the Kingdom was now turned into a
hoarding.  The base of Nelson's Column in Trafalgar
Square was splashed red, white and blue, black and
yellow, green and orange, and every other shade capable
of lending distinction to an eye-arresting poster.  The
great hotels and theaters, banks, government offices,
and even churches, turned their walls and windows
over to Kitchener's advertising department for
recruiting-bills, and occasionally themselves put up huge
signs across their most imposing facades with such
legends as:

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   TO ARMS!  RALLY ROUND THE FLAG!
   TO ARMS!  YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU!
   TO ARMS!  ENLIST AT ONCE FOR THE WAR ONLY!

.. vspace:: 2

or

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   TO-DAY, YOUNG MAN, YOU ARE NEEDED
   TO FIGHT FOR YOUR COUNTRY'S DEFENSE!
   FALL IN!  JOIN THE ARMY AT ONCE!

.. vspace:: 2

or

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   MEN OF BRITAIN, UPHOLD YOUR COUNTRY'S
   HONOR AND LIBERTY!  SERVE WITH
   YOUR FRIENDS!

.. vspace:: 2

or you would read what the King had said:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   "NO PRICE CAN BE TOO HIGH WHEN
   HONOR AND LIBERTY ARE AT STAKE."

.. vspace:: 2

Even the fences of the parks, the windows and sides
of the omnibuses and the wind-shields of the taxicabs
reminded men every hour of the day and night that
"Your King and Country Need You."

I recall, with amusement, how "scandalized" some
Americans were at England's resort to "circus
methods" to manufacture an army.  I remember that pert
(and extremely pretty) young Chicago newspaper-woman
who, having come over from Paris which had
not needed to advertise for an army, because France
had one, was mortified beyond words to find London
screaming with "Your-King-and-Country-Need-You"
sign literature.  She was so stirred by this "undignified
exhibition" that she sat down before she had been
in town forty-eight hours and dashed off to her paper
just what she thought about "degenerate Britain."  She
was convinced that a nation so "hopelessly unpatriotic"
that it had to advertise for defenders was "doomed."  Her
erudite observations made a deep impression on
her editors, who, in a learned editorial asked gravely
whether the British Empire was "reaching the
Diocletian period of the Romans."

.. _`4 Questions to the Women of England`:

.. figure:: images/img-276.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: 4 Questions to the Women of England

   4 Questions to the Women of England

As a matter of fact, Kitchener's project to advertise
for an army was the one ray of imagination, and a
boundlessly encouraging one, which the War Office
had so far revealed.  It showed even more imagination
in entrusting the technique of the scheme to a professional,
Mr. Hedley F. Le Bas, who, besides bringing to
the task the expert knowledge of a publisher, had once
been a trooper in the 15th Hussars, and knew and
loved the army.  Mr. Le Bas modestly disclaims credit
for originating the plan to create an army of millions
by advertisement.  He says that the Duke of Wellington
beat him to it.  A hundred years ago, when England
was at grips with the oppressor of that day, a
poster appeal for soldiers was issued, which is *prima
facie* evidence that advertising is not a modern
invention.  Only a few Englishmen, and probably still fewer
Americans, are aware that even in Napoleonic times
advertising for an army was *de rigueur*, and as the
invitation to "The Warriors of Manchester" was, to a
certain extent, the spiritual inspiration of Kitchener's
remarkable recruit-getting campaign, I make no
apologies, despite its raciness, for reproducing on the
following page a document of genuinely historical value.

The methods to which the American Democracy
has resorted to secure soldiers for her wars were
also in the minds of Lord Kitchener and Mr. Le Bas.
Indeed, the practises of President Lincoln, in respect
of raising armies, were the model to which the British
Government from the start determined to adhere.  It
was discovered that Lincoln and Seward had not
shrunk from appealing to the men of the North from
the hoardings and through the newspapers, while the
advertisements of the United States army and navy
during the Spanish-American War were a modern
example of recruiting measures in a country where the
absence of conscription compels a Government, in the
hour of emergency, to scrape an army together by
hook or crook.  Then the constant advertising by our
War and Navy departments, even in peace-times,
proved that there must be efficacy in asking men to
serve their country in posters, magazines or
newspaper-columns in which they were also being persuasively
urged to buy automobiles, "quality" clothes or
shaving-sticks.  Kitchener's "advertising campaign" was
destined, before the war was old, to be the target of
bitter attack, but the skill, persistence and
comprehensiveness with which it was prosecuted played an
immense rôle in the creation of the greatest volunteer
army in history.  It opened a new epoch in advertising
and clothed that art with a distinction which will never
be taken from it.  The seal of an Empire has been
placed on the maxim that it pays to advertise.

.. _`To the Warriors of Manchester.`:

.. figure:: images/img-278.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: To the Warriors of Manchester.

   To the Warriors of Manchester.

By the end of October, after three months of war,
the muster of the British Empire was in full
progress.  Complacency and nonchalance in London
were still wretchedly wide-spread, but the call of the
Motherland for soldiers was echoing around the world.
Wherever Britons were domiciled, it was answered.  It
penetrated into far-off British Columbia, where young
Englishmen, comfortably settled in new existences,
abandoned them unhesitatingly.  It was heard in even
more distant climes, like Australia, New Zealand and
Africa, where adventurous spirits who had crossed the
seas to seek their fortunes in lands of promise were
now dominated by no other ambition than to "do their
bit" for King and country.  Even emigrated Irishmen,
long irreconcilable, were electrified by John Redmond's
clarion message, and they, too, turned their faces
homeward.  By the ides of November whole shiploads of
repatriated Britons, returning from the four points of
the compass, reached the island shores, fired by one
consuming purpose.

These home-coming patriots were not only rendering
valiant service by placing their lives at the King's
disposal, but they were demonstrating, along with
native-born Canadians, South Africans, New Zealanders,
Australians and Indians, that one of Germany's
fondest dreams was the hollowest of fantasies.  I had
been familiar for years with a German political
literature based on the roseate theory that, once Great
Britain was embroiled in a great European war, her
world-wide Empire would crack and tumble like a house of
cards in a holocaust.  Had not Sir Wilfred Laurier on
a famous occasion declared that Canada would never
be "drawn into the vortex of European militarism"?  Were
not the Boers thirsting restlessly for revenge
and the hour of deliverance from the British yoke?
Were not Republican sentiments notoriously rife in
Australia and New Zealand, and would not Labor
Governments in those remote regions seize eagerly on
coveted opportunity to snap the silken cords which bound
them to England, and declare their independence?
Would not India, the enslaved Empire of the vassal
Rajahs, leap at the throat of an England preoccupied
in Europe and drive the tyrant into the sea?  These
were the thoughts which were discussed by Teuton
political seers as something more than things which
Germany merely desired and hoped for.  They were
treated as axiomatic certainties.  The rally round the
Union Jack by the Britons of Australia and New
Zealand, Canada and South Africa, Nova Scotia and
Jamaica, Barbadoes and Ceylon, British Guiana and
Mauritius, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, was
Germany's great illusion.  When the "conquered
Boers" under Botha, the "alienated Irish" under
Redmond, the "rebellious Indians" under maharajahs and
princes, even the "downtrodden" black Basutos,
Barotses, Masai and Maoris of Africa and Australasia
under their native chieftains, announced that they, too,
were ready to bleed for the Empire, Germany's
awakening was rude and complete.  London might be
callous, pleasure-loving and unperturbed.  But the Empire
was alive both to the peril and the duty of the hour,
and when it vowed to face the one and absolve the
other an oath was sworn which spelled British invincibility.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`WAR IN THE DARK`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium

   WAR IN THE DARK

.. vspace:: 2

It is November, 1914.  Britain is waking, but is far
from awake.  Nearly everybody and everything are
proud to be "as usual."  The Fleet has been able to
secure but one action with the Germans--Beatty's
smashing blow at the Kaiser's cruiser squadron in the bight
of Heligoland.  A great trophy of the engagement is in
hand--Admiral von Tirpitz' son, watch-officer in the
Mainz, a prisoner in Wales.  For a month and more the
war has been raging furiously in the west all the way
from the Alps to the North Sea.  Antwerp is taken,
after a farce-comedy attempt at relief by levies of raw
British naval reserves.  Joffre is at sanguinary grips
with the "Boches" in the Aisne country.  The twelve or
fifteen miles of British front in the northernmost
corner of France and that patch of Flanders not yet in the
enemy's hands is the scene of ceaseless, desperate
combat.  Jellicoe's dreadnoughts and destroyers take part
at intervals in the grim battle for the channel coast.
Ostend has fallen.

The German objective farthest west is now clear.
The Berlin newspapers head-line the tidings from
Flanders "the Road to Calais."  Major Moraht in the
*Tageblatt* acknowledges that the campaign for the
base from which Napoleon essayed to invade England
is "a matter of life or death" for the Germans.  Sir
John French and the remnant of Belgium's little army
steel themselves for a stone-wall defense.  Again and
again they keep the frenzied enemy at bay.  Have you
ever seen Harvard holding the Yale eleven on the
five-yard line three minutes before the call of time in the
last half, with dark gathering so fast that you could
hardly distinguish crimson from blue?  Do you
remember Yale's ferocious first, second, third, yet always
vain, attempts to batter and plunge her way through
Harvard's concrete, immobile phalanx?  If you do,
and if your red-blooded heart has tingled at some such
spectacle of young American bulldoggedness, which
can be seen West as well as East, in the North and in
the South, just as commonly as in the New Haven
bowl, you will be able to visualize, infinitesimally, the
titanic grapple around Dixmude, Ypres and the Yser
in the bloody days and hellish nights of October and
November, 1914.  "The Watch in the Mud" was the
way German military critics paraphrased their
national anthem, to describe the situation in Flanders,
for the Belgians had now flooded the region contiguous
to the Yser Canal, and the Kaiser's legions, in their
breathless thrust for Calais, were fighting in mire and
slush to their boot-tops.  More than one company of
*Feldgrauer* was ingloriously drowned.

The British were engaged in precisely the operation
for which their temperament best fits them--"holding."  The
German attack rocked against them remorselessly,
giving neither assailant nor defender rest
or quarter.  But the bulldog "held."  He was mauled
unconscionably and bled profusely.  Thousands upon
thousands of his teeth were knocked out, and he was
half-blind, and limped.  Yet he "held."  Winter had
come.  Men lived in trenches which had been merely
water-logged ditches, but were now frozen into rock.
The German eagle, hammered, of course, no less
cruelly than the bulldog, was still screaming and clawing,
in his mad desire to cleave a way to Calais.  But,
mangled and scarred as he was, the bulldog barked
"No!"  He had set his squatty bow-legs, disjointed
though they were, squarely across "the Road to
Calais."  There he intended to stay.  It could be traversed,
that road, only through a welter of blood which,
regardless as German commanders are of the cost when
they set themselves an objective, gave the General Staff
at Berlin furiously to ponder.

I have already intimated that Britain all this
tempestuous while was rubbing her eyes, but was only
partially open-eyed.  It was not altogether Britain's fault.
The immutable Censorship still gave the public no real
glimmer of the history-making struggle going on
almost within ear-shot of the chalk-cliffs of Dover.
Throughout the entire month of October, four weeks
as crammed with death and glory as in all England's
martial history, Sir John French was permitted to take
the public into his confidence but on one single
occasion--and that, a dispatch dealing with operations six
weeks old!  For its news of the heroic deeds and
Spartan sufferings of the greatest army it ever sent
abroad, the British Empire was compelled to depend on
stilted French *communiques* and the fantastic or
irrelevant narratives of an official "eye-witness at British
Headquarters," who was allowed to bamboozle the
nation for months before his flow of mediocrity and
piffle was choked off by disgruntled public opinion.
England was fighting her greatest war in Cimmerian
darkness.  Casualty lists, terrible in their regularity
and magnitude, kept on coming, but of the coincident
imperishable triumphs of British sacrifice and courage,
not a word.  One's *Illustrated London News* and
*Sphere* printed depressing double-pages weekly, filled
with pictures of England's masculine flower killed in
action "somewhere in France" or "somewhere in
Flanders."  But of the manner in which their precious lives
had been laid down, of the price they had made the
Germans pay for them, not a syllable.  If by accident
some correspondent or newspaper secured the account
of an engagement, which ventured so much as to hint
with some picturesqueness of detail how Englishmen
were dying, the Press Bureau guillotine came down on
the narrative with a crash which taught the offender
to mend his ways for the future.

Under the circumstances it was not surprising to
hear well-founded reports that recruiting was falling
off.  In the clubs men said that Kitchener's "first
half-million" was in hand, but that men for the second
five hundred thousand, for which the War Office had
now called, were holding back to a disappointing, and
even disquieting, degree.  Meantime the popular ballad
of the hour was, appropriately, Paul Rubens' "Your
King and Country Want You"--"a women's recruiting
song," as its sub-title runs.  Its opening verse and
chorus tell their own story:

   |   We've watched you playing cricket
   |     And every kind of game.
   |   At football, golf and polo,
   |     You men have made your name.
   |   But now your country calls you
   |     To play your part in war,
   |   And no matter what befalls you,
   |     We shall love you all the more.
   |   So, come and join the forces
   |     As your fathers did before.
   |
   |   CHORUS
   |
   |   Oh!  We don't want to lose you,
   |     But we think you ought to go.
   |   For your King and your Country
   |     Both need you so!
   |   We shall want you, and miss you,
   |     But with all our might and main
   |   We shall cheer you, thank you, kiss you,
   |     When you come back again!

These words, in prosaic type, look banal.  Their
appeal seems trite.  Yet rendered to plaintive melody
by such an operatic artist as little Maggie Teyte,
they went straight to men's hearts.  They must
have sent thousands upon thousands of cricketers,
footballers, golfers and poloists--that is a classification
which takes in pretty nearly all Englishmen--into
khaki and training-camps.  But the growing insistence
with which the walls and windows of Old England
were plastered with recruiting posters--even entire
front pages of newspapers were now employed to
advertise that "Your King and Country Need
You"--indicated that Kitchener's army was not being built
up yet by the desired leaps and bounds.  Obviously the
war needed some other kind of advertising than even
the accomplished Mr. Le Bas could give it.  It was not
strange that the enthusiasm of Englishmen, cheated of
the chance to know what was really going on at the
front, was beginning to find expression in other directions.

.. _`Greeting the Kaiser (in helmet) the day he declared Germany "in a state of war," July 31st, 1914.`:

.. figure:: images/img-286.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Greeting the Kaiser (in helmet) the day he declared Germany "in a state of war," July 31st, 1914.

   Greeting the Kaiser (in helmet) the day he declared Germany "in a state of war," July 31st, 1914.

It was not magnificent, for example, but it was
natural, that Englishmen should, in all the circumstances,
reveal a very materialistic passion to "capture
Germany's trade."  Denied the opportunity of
"enthusing" over events at the seat of war, they proceeded
to dedicate themselves energetically to the task of
eliminating the Germans as a factor in the markets of
the world.  A profound book on the subject
appeared--*The War on German Trade*, with the sub-titles of
"Ammunition for Civilians" and "Hints for a Plan of
Campaign."  My old friend, Sidney Whitman, the
distinguished author of *Imperial Germany*, dignified it
with a preface.  England had not entered upon the war
"in a commercial spirit or with a commercial purpose,"
he said, "yet it behooves her to seize and hold fast the
ripe fruit which has dropped into Englishmen's lap--as
a first incident in the clash of nations."  The volume
had frankly been published, explained Whitman, "with
the purpose of stimulating the English manufacturer
and the English trader to seize the opportunities thrust
upon them by the war."

Then, as the Censorship, as callous to criticism and
abuse as if it were a sphinx, still insisted that
Englishmen must fight and die in the dark, as far as their kith
and kin were concerned, patriotism at home found
vent in a crusade against the Germans still at large on
British soil.  They numbered thousands.  They were
a distinct and undeniable danger.  In days of peace
they spied patriotically and flagrantly, thanks to John
Bull's easy-going, guileless toleration of the stranger
within his gate.  Personally I never believed that the
German waiters and barbers in the Savoy or the
Carlton, and their myriad of *confrères* elsewhere in the
country, were the advance guard of the German army
of invasion in disguise.  Nor did I imagine (as I
actually made a very British friend once seriously believe)
that Appenrodt's restaurants in the Strand and
Piccadilly were in reality masked commissariat-stations of
the Kaiser's General Staff.  Nor could even so
persuasive an authority as William Le Queux, author of
*German Spies in England*, convince me that every
German resident who kept homing-pigeons, owned a
country-place near the East Coast suitable for wireless,
or got drunk on the Kaiser's birthday in the
Gambrinus restaurant in Glasshouse Street, was a paid
member of the Berlin secret-service.  Most of these
stories made me smile as broadly as the "star" rumor
of the war--the story that seventy thousand armed
Russians had been "actually seen" by Heaven knows
how many veracious Britons sneaking across England
from Newcastle to Southampton, on their stealthy way
from Archangel to the Western allied front.

Yet it was palpably not the hour for German
subjects, any number of them of military age and ardor,
to be at large in England.  So Britain, in a tardy
manifestation of self-preservation, began to arrest and
intern the Kaiser's hapless subjects, who hitherto had
suffered no impairment of their liberties except
detention in the country, compulsory visits to the police,
and restriction of movement (except by special
permission) to an area five miles from their domicile.
The German is far too much of a patriot to be trusted
to do as he pleases in a country with which his
Fatherland is at war.  He never forgets that he is a German
*first*, and a stock-broker earning commissions in
London, a barber taking English tips, or a waiter spilling
English soup, afterward.  It is always *Deutschland,
Deutschland über Alles* with him.  He may not have
made a profession or habit of writing home to Berlin
or Hamburg, Cologne or Breslau, Kiel or Wilhelmshaven,
what he noted of interest at Aldershot, Portsmouth,
Dover, Woolwich, or Sheerness, or what his
English friends might from time to time tell him of
interest at the Admiralty or the War Office.  But it
was "bomb-sure," as the Teuton idiom rather appropriately
puts it, that if ever a British state secret fell
into Herr Apfelbaum's hands on the Stock Exchange,
or into Johann's in the "hair-dressing saloon" of the
Ritz, or into Gustav's at the grillroom of the Piccadilly,
that morsel would sooner or later find its way to
Germany.  When one considered that Englishmen of
the highest class--one even said the King had a
German valet!--were attended night and day, in their
homes, their clubs, their offices and their favorite
"American bars," hotels, grillrooms, cafés and
restaurants by Germans, with eyes to see and ears to hear, it
was small wonder that an irresistible cry was sent up
before the winter of war had advanced very far, that
these "enemy aliens" should not be merely ticketed,
labeled and superficially watched, but placed behind
barbed-wire, with British sentries on guard.  And so
it came to pass that Mr. McKenna, Home Secretary,
whose reluctance to intern the Germans gossip
absurdly ascribed to his "German connections," finally
ordered "the enemy in our midst" to be rounded up.
Not all of them were at first taken.  Thousands
remained at liberty.  The British are a patient and a
trusting clan.

It was not only the acknowledged German subject
in Great Britain who was the object of the
anti-Teuton crusade.  The naturalized German, in many
cases the holder for years of a certificate of British
citizenship, was made to feel the blight of the wave of
passion sweeping over the country.  Naturalized
Germans have won in England wealth and eminence
outstripping even the heights to which they have
climbed in the United States.  In the preceding reign
they were the bosom companions of the Sovereign.
King Edward's intimate circle contained the Cologne
financier, Sir Ernest Cassel, and another Prussian
native, Sir Felix Semon, was His Majesty's Physician
Extraordinary.  In the "City," London's Wall Street,
German financiers almost dominated the picture.  Baron
Schroeder (naturalized only within a few hours of
the outbreak of the war) was so great a power that
citizenship was practically thrust upon him as a
measure of vital British self-protection.  Sir Edgar Speyer,
like Cassel a member of the King's Privy Council, and
a Baronet besides, was not only a City magnate, but
controlled London's vast system of surface and
underground traction lines, including the omnibus service;
yet his English counting-house was a branch of a
parent establishment in Frankfort-On-Main.  These were
a few of the outstanding names among the "Germans"
in high place in England.  They by no means
exhausted the list.  Domiciled in this country for years,
they had, while openly maintaining sentimental
relations with their Fatherland, played no inconspicuous
rôle in British affairs, economic and political.  Any
number of naturalized Germans were married to
British women and were fathers of British-born families.
Scores of their sons were already wearing King
George's khaki in Kitchener's army.  Sir Ernest
Cassel had given five thousand pounds to the Prince of
Wales' National Relief Fund.  Yet rumor shortly
afterward had him locked up in a traitor's cell in the Tower
of London!  No matter how acclimatized these
naturalized Germans had become, no matter how long they
had been British subjects--in many cases their title to
that distinction was half a century old--they found
themselves under a ban.  They were not physically
maltreated.  Their windows were not broken.  Men did not
spit in their faces.  They were permitted (like the rest
of the British) to do "business as usual," except the
stock-brokers, who were invited to keep off 'Change.
But they were a marked class.  If they ventured to
visit clubs in Pall Mall or St. James Street, to which
they had paid dues for years, they were confronted
with notices reading:

::

   +-------------------------------------------------+
   |                                                 |
   |  Members of German or Austrian nationality      |
   |  are requested, in their own interests, not     |
   |  to frequent the club premises during the war,  |
   |  and British members are asked not to           |
   |  bring to the club any guests of enemy          |
   |  nationality.                                   |
   |                                                 |
   +-------------------------------------------------+

Or, if the naturalized German, no matter whether his
boy had just fallen at Ypres or not, went to his
favorite golf-club of a Saturday or Sunday, he received
a greeting to the same effect.  The virtue of tolerance,
a prized British quality, was vanishing from the face
of these war-ridden isles.

The anti-German fury in England claimed an early
victim and a shining mark--His Serene Highness
Vice-Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, who, as First
Sea Lord of the Admiralty, was practically in
supreme control of British strategy at sea.  Prince Louis
is a native-born Austrian, and although he had been a
naturalized British subject and attached to the Royal
Navy since 1868, and in 1884 married into the British
Royal Family by wedding his own cousin, Princess
Victoria of Hesse, a grand-daughter of Queen
Victoria, a campaign inaugurated and mercilessly
prosecuted by the aristocratic *Morning Post*, led, on
October 29, to the Prince's resignation.  Public opinion
unreservedly approved the disappearance from a post,
from which it was not too much to say the destinies
of the Empire were controlled, of a man who was
brother-in-law of Prince Henry of Prussia, the
Inspector-General of the German Navy, and of the
Grand Duke of Hesse, one of the Kaiser's federated
allies.  The same spirit of "Safety First" which sent
the German barbers and waiters to camps in Frith Hill
and the Isle of Man dispatched Vice-Admiral Prince
Louis of Battenberg into official oblivion.  Nobody
actually distrusted his patriotism.  But England was
in no humor to run even remote risks.  He had to go.
Satisfaction over Battenberg's retirement was only
slightly modified by a later revelation that it was
Prince Louis himself, and not Mr. Churchill, as
universally supposed, who was chiefly responsible
for the mobilization of the British Fleet just before
the outbreak of war in consequence of having "commanded
the ships to stand fast, instead of demobilizing
as ordered."

November was a month of kaleidoscopic sorrow
and joy for the British.  It began in gloom, with
Turkey's entry into the war and the inherent menace to
Egypt which that event denoted.  Then came the great
naval action off Chili, with first blood to the Kaiser in
the only regulation stand-up battle in which British
and German warships had so far met.  The sinking
of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock's flagship, the
cruiser *Good Hope*, and her companion, the
*Monmouth*, by Admiral Count von Spee's cruiser
squadron, with the loss of one thousand four hundred
precious lives, was a bitter blow.  Lord Charles
Beresford, under whom Cradock had once served, told me
that his death was a more serious loss to the British
Fleet than a squadron of cruisers.

It was a depressing beginning for the First Sea
Lordship of Lord "Jackie" Fisher, who succeeded
Prince Louis of Battenberg.  Churchill was still First
Lord of the Admiralty--what we in the United States
should call Secretary of the Navy--but Fisher, as First
Sea Lord, was in practical control of everything
connected with the actual activities of the Fleet.  The First
Lord of the Admiralty's business is to get ships for the
navy.  The First Sea Lord's task is to man, arm and
fight them.  Fisher lost no time in angry remorse over
Cradock's disaster.  He set about to repair it.  He
applied forthwith the "Fisher touch."  He ascertained
that it was Rear-Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton
Sturdee, Chief of the War Staff, who had been chiefly
responsible for dispatching Cradock's squadron to waters
in which it would have to meet a German force superior
in both tonnage and gun-power.  Whereupon Fisher
ordered Sturdee to place himself at the head of a
squadron which was to find and destroy von Spee, and
not come back until it had done so.  Sturdee
"delivered the goods" with neatness and dispatch.
Almost a month later to the day--it is a fortnight's
journey from British waters to the Southern Atlantic even
for twenty-seven-knot battle-cruisers--he carried out
Fisher's imperious orders.  On December 8 Cradock
was gloriously avenged.  Von Spee in his flagship, the
*Scharnhorst*, together with the sister cruiser *Gneisenau*
and the smaller *Leipzig*, was sent to the bottom off the
Falkland Islands, and the remaining units in the
German squadron, the *Dresden* and *Nürnberg*, were
accounted for later.  Britain breathed easier.  The
bulldog breed in her navy was still to be relied upon.
Everybody instinctively felt that there was any
number of more Sturdees and ships and guns and sailors
ready to do equally invincible service for England if
the Germans would but give them the chance von Spee
had offered at the Falklands.

Spirits which had drooped when Cradock was lost
were revived ten days later by the most welcome piece
of naval news the British people had had since the war
began--the destruction of the Kaiser's champion
commerce-raider *Emden* by the Australian cruiser *Sydney*
off the Cocos Islands and the capture of her intrepid
commander, Captain von Müller, and many of his
crew.  The *Emden* sank seventeen ships and cargoes
worth eleven million dollars before her career was
ended.  But von Müller won universal renown and even
popularity in Great Britain for his daring,
"sportsmanship" and gallantry to vanquished merchantmen.
Germans do not appreciate such a spirit, and do not
deserve to be its beneficiary--the utter lack of the
sporting instinct in the Fatherland is responsible for
that unfortunate fact--yet if von Müller had been
landed a prisoner of war in England and could have
been paraded down Pall Mall, he might have counted
confidently on a welcome which Englishmen customarily
reserve for their own heroes.  Here and there in
London protests were raised against the encomiums
which almost every newspaper, and for the matter of
that almost every Englishman, uttered in praise of von
Muller's vindication of the nobility of the sea, but the
overwhelmingly prevalent opinion was that he had
"played the game" and, pirate though he was, deserved
well of a race which still holds high the traditions of
the naval service.

Ever-changing and stirring were November's events--the
capitulation of Germany's prized Chinese colony
of Kiau-Chau to the besieging Japanese; Lord Roberts'
tragic death in the field among the soldiers he loved so
well, the Indians who had come to Europe to fight
Britain's battles; the still victorious advance of the
Russians in East Prussia, though Hindenburg's smashing
blow in the Tannenberg swamps had been delivered
many weeks before; the honorable acquittal of
Rear-Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge, commanding the
Mediterranean cruiser squadron, on the charge of having
allowed the German cruisers *Goeben* and *Breslau* to
slip through his meshes into Constantinople--the
Admiral had applied for a court-martial, to clear himself
of a grotesque accusation that a relationship with the
captain of the *Goeben* had induced him to let the
Germans through.  But all these things combined left no
such indelible impression on my mind as the Lord
Mayor's dinner at the Guildhall in the city of London
on the night of November 9.  That function, the
inauguration of the new chief magistrate, is celebrated
in British history as the annual occasion on which
leaders of the State promulgate some great new line of
Governmental policy--a national keynote for the year
to come.  The Guildhall dinner in the midst of Britain's
greatest war was sure to be of immemorial significance,
and my heart beat high with anticipation when Lord
Northcliffe assigned me to attend it and record an
American's impressions of England's most august
feast.

Guildhall was the scene of a famous flamboyancy by
the Kaiser not so many years ago, when he had talked
about the comparatively firmer consistency of blood
compared to water and consecrated himself to the cause
of Anglo-German peace and friendship.  I was keenly
anxious to hear what sort of sentiments would echo
through the century-old sanctuary of the City to-night,
with men like Asquith, Balfour, Kitchener, Churchill
and Cambon, the French Ambassador, as the speakers.
I looked forward to an evening sure to be crowded with
imperishable memories.  I was not disappointed.  At
midnight when it was all over, I sat down to write "an
American's impressions" for *The Daily Mail*, and as
they were exuberant with the freshness of mental
sensations just experienced and have not cooled in the
sincerity of their utterance in the long interval which
has supervened, I make no apology for repeating them
herewith verbatim:


"When I became the joyful recipient of an invitation
to attend last night's Guildhall banquet I reveled
in the prospect of a feast of Bacchanalian pomp and
pageantry.  I expected to witness nothing much
except a Lord Mayor's 'show,' translated into Lucullian
environment, a riot of food, drink, cardinal robes,
gold braid, gold chains, gold sticks, wigs and the other
trappings of mayoral magnificence.  I came away
utterly disillusioned, for I had spent three hours in what
will live in my recollection as the Temple of British
Dignity.

"Those stately Gothic walls, whose simple groups
of statuary which tell of Wellington and Nelson and
Beckford; those amazingly non-panicky war speeches
of your Romanesque premier, your grim Kitchener,
your--and our--Winston Spencer Churchill, and your
polished Balfour, all made me feel that I was tarrying
for the nonce within four walls which, if they did
not envelop all the great qualities of the British race,
at least typified and epitomized them.

"Guildhall is dignified by itself beyond my feeble
hours of description.  I have never trod its historic
floors before, but I have the unmistakable impression
that it has taken on fresh dignity to-day for the words
which were spoken in it yestereve.  I was about to
say, in the idiom which springs more naturally to the
lips of an American, 'for the words which rang
through it.'  Words were not made to 'ring' through
Guildhall.  They would be ludicrously out of place.
An American political spellbinder, no matter how
silver-tongued, would pollute the atmosphere of London's
civic shrine.  Its acoustic qualities, which I should
think were not faultless, are intended for exclusively
such oratory as put them to the test last night.

"Guildhall's tone is the tone of Mr. Asquith--'practicing
the equanimity of our forefathers, the fluctuating
fortunes of a great war will drive us neither
into exaltation nor despondency.'  I thought that striking
phrase of a brilliant peroration British character in
composite.  It was more than that.  It was Guildhallian.
The cheers for the Premier, like those for
Balfour, Churchill and Kitchener, would have been
more vociferous in my country.  But my country is
not British.  We are not devoid of dignity, I hope, but
we have no Guildhall."

.. vspace:: 2

It was left to other hands to report in detail the
speeches of the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the
Admiralty and the Secretary of War.  Each uttered
phrases of golden significance.  Mr. Churchill was
evidently still his ebullient self, although he had not yet
fulfilled his promise of September that the German
navy, if it remained in port and refused to come out,
would be "dug out like a rat from a hole," nor had his
now acknowledged personal responsibility for the fiasco
of the Antwerp naval expedition perceptibly staled his
infinite buoyancy.  "Six, nine, twelve months hence,"
he declared, "you will begin to see the results that will
spell the doom of Germany."  I had never heard
"Winston" speak before, but I understood now the charm of
his personality and the attractiveness of an oratorical
style made even more magnetic by the suggestion of a
combined stammer and lisp.  "In spite of its losses," he
continued, "our Navy is now stronger, and stronger
relatively to the foe, than it was on the declaration of
war."  Asquith read his speech, and Kitchener was
about to do the same, but Churchill, youthful, vibrant,
tense, spoke extemporaneously, and the consequent
effect was indubitably the most striking of all the
oratory of the night.

Lord Kitchener, in khaki and with a mourning band
on his arm, was redolent of strength and impressiveness,
but when he rose, clumsily adjusted a pair of
huge horn-rimmed reading glasses, and began to chant
his carefully-prepared "speech" in monotone from
manuscript, he was far less convincing, and certainly
not approximately so electrifying as Churchill.  But
he had messages of no less magnitude and cheer.  "We
may confidently rely on the ultimate success of the
Allies in the west," he said simply.  "But we want
more men and still more men.  We have now a million
and a quarter in training."

But it was Asquith's peroration, at which my
impressionistic sketch in *The Daily Mail* only hinted,
which was the nugget of the night.  Englishmen still
repeat it as something which puts in more terse and
concrete words than anybody else has clothed it the
solemn spirit in which they have consecrated themselves
to the task now trying the Empire's soul:

.. vspace:: 2

"It is going to be a long, drawn-out struggle.  But
we shall not sheathe the sword until Belgium recovers
all, and more than all, she has sacrificed; until France
is adequately secured against the menace of aggression;
until the rights of smaller nations are placed on
an unassailable foundation; until the military
domination of Prussia is finally destroyed."


It was in that incorrigible resolve that Britain
entered upon the second calendar year of war, bleeding
uncomplainingly, losing stoically, taking what came and
ruing it not; determined as she lived, to keep on until
her vow to herself was vindicated and her duty to
civilization performed.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE INTERNAL FOE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium

   THE INTERNAL FOE

.. vspace:: 2

Britain's autumn of complacency faded
unruffled into a winter and spring of lassitude and
bungle.  Nothing, no matter how ominous or catastrophic,
seemed capable of rousing the nation to the
immensity of its emergency.  The Kingdom was aflame
with recruiting posters, in ever increasingly lurid hues
and language, but with amazingly little red-blooded
interest in or enthusiasm for the war.  If one
commented on the oppressive and disconcerting
nonchalance of the populace, one was called a "Dismal
Jimmy," or a "professional whimperer" whose mind
was poisoned by the "Northcliffe Press."  If you
remarked that indications were countless that the
enemy was vastly more alive to the stupendousness
of the moment than England seemed to be, you were
set down for a "pro-German," and the patriot whose
guest you were when you ventured that suggestion
never invited you to dinner again.  If you were an
Englishman, you were simply snubbed henceforth.  If
you were a foreigner, your name may have been
handed in to Scotland Yard as that of an "alien"
worth watching.  Whoever you were, or whatever
your views, unless they represented unadulterated
admiration of unshakable British calm, you were headed
straight for a crushing rebuke.  Retribution took the
form of branding you either as pitiably ignorant of
"British character" or not knowing history well
enough to realize that the British are "slow starters"
and "always muddle through somehow."  You were
advised to squander your qualms on a needier cause.
The "boys of the bulldog breed" were "all right."

You wondered, if you were a blithering, neurotic
American, for example, what *would* stir the British
temperament into something faintly resembling ardor
and emotion.  Zeppelins came, despite Mr. Churchill's
swagger that a horde of "aeroplane hornets" was ready
to greet and sting them.  They came periodically,
leaving destruction in their wake, but the coast towns
are one hundred fifty miles away from London, and
nobody cared.  They had demonstrated, it was true,
that England was no longer an island, but "they can't
reach London--that's one sure thing," and, "anyway,
the time to worry about that was when they tried it."  Was
not the metropolis magnificently equipped with
searchlights, even if the sky-pirates should attempt
the impossible and try to pick their way up the Thames
in the dark?  Then, always, there were those "hornets,"
and "British coolness."

"Scarborough Shelled by German Cruisers!"  So ran
the newspaper posters in the streets at midday of
December 16th, 1914, an announcement grim with historical
import.  For the first time in centuries the sacred
shores of these sea-girt isles had felt the impact of
bombardment.  The raid extended far along the Yorkshire
coast.  Whitby and Hartlepool had been attacked--there
were a hundred deaths in the latter alone.  Material
damage was extensive; homes, shops, hotels,
churches, hospitals were struck and shattered.  Yet
England was "calm."  It did not matter in the least
that there was a list of seven hundred Britons dead
and injured, or that the Kaiser's "Canal Fleet"
apparently *was* able to risk a sortie in the North Sea.  What
mattered most was that the islanders still alive were
*unmoved and immovable*.  That the "baby-killers" by
air and water had signally failed to "excite" or
"frighten" the country was the circumstance which
made incomparably the liveliest appeal to the imagination.
Kitchener's astute recruiting advertisers shrieked
"Remember Yarmouth!" (where the Zeppelins had
been) and "Avenge Scarborough!" across the top of
their newest posters, but West End London, where the
seats of the mighty are, and where the opinion which
gives tone to national thought is molded, remained
Gibraltarian.  A flock of British aeroplanes assailed
Cuxhaven on Christmas Day by way of "reprisal" for
the intermittent Zeppelin raids over English territory.
The attack was not noteworthy in its results, but it
gave a fresh fillip to British confidence that
"everything was all right."

As a matter of fact, "everything" was about as all
wrong as it could be.  Beneath the surface of national
life a volcano was boiling and sputtering, and though
it gave early and unmistakable evidence of its
presence, British calm with invincible indifference tossed
it off as a sporadic manifestation unworthy of serious
consideration.  I refer to the Labor question--to
trade-unionism's revolt against reorganization of industry
for the purposes of war, and to its stubborn opposition
to the introduction of compulsory military service.
As long ago as January, the Labor controversy
raised its hydra-head, and yet, in October, despite
nine months of subsequent turmoil, it only began to
be recognized for what it is--the peril which
threatens these isles with danger hardly less gigantic
than invasion itself.  It is the decade-old British story
of temporizing with impending menace, oblivious of its
portent, serenely conscious only that it, too, can be
"muddled through," like everything else in Britain's
glorious past.  It is the spirit in which Britain almost
*invited* war with Germany, the flaming warnings of
which the islands had for years.

The workmen on the Clyde, the engineers, mechanics
and artisans responsible for the maintenance of British
life itself--for in their hands rests the creation of the
ironclads to preserve England from invasion and the
merchantmen to bring food to her shores--were the
first to cause the volcano to rumble.  They objected
to "overtime."  The process of "speeding up" in every
department, due to the iron necessities of war, was
violating the most sacred traditions of trade-unionism.
If not forcibly checked, practises tolerated in the name
of emergency were in imminent peril of becoming
fixed rules.  The Clyde workmen struck.  They paid
no heed to Sir George Askwith, the Chief Industrial
Commissioner, when he declared that "the requirements
of the nation were being seriously endangered."  Jellicoe
urgently needed those six new destroyers
waiting to be riveted.  But the Clyde engineers wanted the
overtime question settled, and settled in their way; and
until it was, the navy could go hang.  Englishmen were
disappointed when they read the news from Glasgow
and Greenock, but they were not upset.  Matters would
"right themselves."  Trade-unionists were an
"unreasonable lot."  But they always "came around."  At
any rate, there was no cause to "worry."

One man, a big man, was "worrying."  He was
Lloyd-George, whose specialty is taking bulls by their
horns.  Being Welsh, it was not "un-English" for him
to dignify an emergency with its intrinsic importance
and act accordingly.  He grasped instantly the
menace which the situation on the Clyde conjured up.
With decision of Napoleonic boldness in a politician
to whom report ascribed the ambition to hoist
himself into a dictatorship on the shoulders of the
"masses," Lloyd-George determined to "speed up"
industrial England for war by Act of Parliament.  If
labor would not voluntarily throw trade-union dogma
to the wind when national existence was at stake, the
possibility of imperiling it should simply be taken from
them.  Thereupon he introduced in the House of
Commons an amendment to the "Defense of the Realm
Act," which provided for nothing short of Industrial
Conscription.  Emerged later as the Munitions Act,
it conferred enormous powers upon the Government.
Reduced to essentials, it robbed Labor of the right to
strike.  It forbade lockouts, as well.  It provided for
compulsory arbitration of all disputes.  It withheld
from a workman the right to leave one employment
and take another.  It obliterated primarily and
absolutely that holiest of holy trade-union regulations, by
which output is restricted.  On the other hand, it
provided for the limitation of employers' profit by
establishing a system of "controlled establishments," *i.e.*,
works engaged exclusively in the production of
munitions for the Government and whose financial
operations could, therefore, be exactly checked.

The Munitions of War Act was Great Britain's
longest step in the direction of Industrial Socialism.
It emanated with singular appropriateness from
Lloyd-George, the father of the German-imported system of
old age pensions and workmen's insurance introduced
six years previous.  Trade-unionism was aghast at
the radicalism of the new proposals, which Mr. Balfour
rightly described as the "most drastic" for which
British Parliamentary sanction had ever been sought.
Lloyd-George only partially subdued Labor's
misgivings by pledging the Government's word that the
scheme applied for the duration of the war only, and
that with peace the old order of things would be
automatically reestablished.

The men on the Clyde had no sooner gone back to
work, reluctantly and sullen after a "compromise"
settlement, when the dockers of Manchester, Birkenhead
and Liverpool struck on the overtime issue.  Lord
Kitchener, while reviewing troops in the district,
formally notified the Dock Laborers' Union that if they
"did not do all in their power to help carry the war to
a successful conclusion," he would have to "consider
what steps would be necessary" to hammer patriotism
into their souls.  "K.'s" unambiguous language
signally failed to impress the dockers.  They remained
on strike.  A deputation of shipbuilding and
shipowning firms now waited on Lloyd-George.  They told
him that drink, more truly the curse of the British
working classes than of any other in the world, was at
the bottom of the rebellious, lazy spirit of the men.
They urged prohibition for the period of the war.  The
deputation declared that eighty per cent. of avoidable
loss of time could be ascribed to drink.  Lloyd-George
sympathized with that view.  "We are, plainly," he
said, "fighting Germany, Austria and drink, and as far
as I can see, the greatest of these three deadly foes is
drink."

Now the miners became restless.  They demanded
a revision of the wage scale in accordance with the
mine-owners' notoriously swollen war profits.  Their
Federation decided that notice should be given on April
1st to terminate all existing agreements at the end of
June.  There were hints that the miners intended
pressing not only for a "war bonus," but for an advance of
twenty per cent. on current wages.  From the pits of
South Wales comes the coal which is the navy's black
breath of life.  A week's idleness meant one million
tons unproduced.  The Government summoned the
Miners' Federation for conference.  Coal prices were
already soaring.  Here and there there was a shortage
of supply.  Germany was jubilant.  Labor's temper
in the Clyde country, the docker districts and in the
colliery regions was far from improved by Lloyd-George's
support of the suggestion that drink was the
root of the industrial evil.  The Chancellor of the
Exchequer essayed to play a trump card.  He announced
that King George, "deeply concerned over a state of
affairs which must inevitably result in the prolongation
of the horrors and burdens of this terrible war," was
himself prepared to set an august example to Labor by
giving up all alcoholic liquor, "so that no difference
should be made as far as His Majesty is concerned
between the treatment of rich and poor in this
question."  Working-class Britain committed wholesale
*lèse-majesté* by paying no attention to the King's
decree of self-denial.

The sequel, though not, of course, the immediate
result of King George's total abstinence proclamation,
was the outbreak of the South Wales miners' dispute
in full fury a few weeks later.  Joint conference
between the Federation, the owners and the Government
ended in hopeless deadlock.  The miners stubbornly
refused to accept the principle of compulsory
arbitration provided by Lloyd-George's now enacted
Munitions Law.  Two hundred thousand men stopped work.
Threats to enforce the punitive provisions of the law
did not terrify them.  The establishment in Wales and
Monmouthshire of a "Munitions Tribunal," before
which they could be haled, only made them more
defiant.  In London one heard irresponsible mutterings
that "a few leaders of the Federation" might usefully
be shot, and it was suggested that if England were
Germany, they would be.  More than one voice
advocated lynching "a few owners," too.  The country
waited dutifully for the Government to employ the
"drastic powers" it had arrogated to itself only a few
short weeks before.  Instead of anything so heroic,
it flung Lloyd-George into the breach.  It sent him
to South Wales, and in his entourage went Arthur
Henderson, the new Labor member of the Cabinet, and
Mr. Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade
(the government department which deals with
industry).  The little Welshman drew forth from his
inexhaustible arsenal the weapon he seldom unsheathes
in vain--his persuasively silver tongue.  New terms
were drawn up between the miners and the colliery
owners.  The men got about everything they wanted.
"Fill the bunkers," Lloyd-George cried to them amid
their cheers in a farewell speech at Cardiff.  "It means
defense.  It means protection.  It means an inviolate
Britain."  The miners went back to work.  But peace
had been dearly bought by the Government.  It had
not dared to enforce the coercive paragraphs of the
vaunted Munitions Law.  The Act, it was now painfully
evident, might do very well to discipline a handful
of "shirking-men" at some shell works or shipyard,
but to invoke its machinery to browbeat two hundred
thousand organized miners was manifestly a horse of
a different color.  And one which the British Government
was not prepared to back.  Industrial Conscription
was magnificent in theory.  In its first great test
in practise it had proved to be fire with which the
authorities preferred not to play.  Some one (I think
it was Price Collier) called England the Land of
Compromise.  The Welsh miners seem to have shown that
he was right.

Events were not long in forthcoming to demonstrate
that neither forceful persuasion by a popular
Cabinet Minister nor "drastic" Acts of Parliament
were in themselves capable of regenerating the British
working man or inspiring him with full and patriotic
realization of the national emergency.  Shortly after
becoming Minister of Munitions in May, Lloyd-George
began a speech-making tour of the industrial
districts.  He pleaded eloquently to Labor to forget
its "isms" and its "rules" and throw the full weight
of its Titan strength into the balance for the winning
of the war.  He addressed his appeal alike to masters
and men.  Passionately he begged both to relegate
traditions, suspicions and prejudices and join hands
for the common cause.  He did not mince words as
to the national consequences if either of them
permitted ancient antagonisms to restrict their producing
power at a moment when nothing short of the
Empire's existence was trembling in the balance.  "Pile up
the shells!" was the burden of his plea.  Bristol,
Birmingham, Sheffield, Coventry, Leeds, Nottingham,
Manchester, all the great industrial centers of the
Kingdom, listened, and promised.  By the beginning
of autumn Lloyd-George had pledged nearly one
thousand establishments, hitherto engaged in the peaceful
arts, to devote their plants exclusively to the
manufacture of sinews of war, and employers and workmen
passed automatically under the "control" of the
Ministry of Munitions.  The country seemed to be
yielding effectively to Lloyd-George's project for
"speeding up" war industry.

Yet, as sporadic announcements in the newspapers
presently indicated, the system was by no means
producing desired results.  Dogmatic trade-unionism was
dying hard.  The Government's call to men and
women to do their "bit" for the war, either by
enlisting in the fighting forces or engaging in munitions
work, naturally sent tens of thousands of people to
the factories who never possessed a "union card" in
their lives.  Organized Labor was horrified by the
deluge of "scabs" thus created.  It saw the results of
decades of crusade for "union shops" and for privilege
for skilled hands swept away like chaff in the wind.
Another phenomenon of no less disagreeable omen
was making its appearance.  Marvelous American
automatic lathes for shell-making were being installed
on a prodigious scale--machinery so simple in
construction that one man, or even a woman or girl, might
learn to keep five lathes running at one time.  This
conjured up disquieting visions for the devotees of a
system which looks upon arbitrary limitation of
output and minimum employment of maximum numbers
of skilled men as an inalienable heritage of Organized
Labor.  War might be war, national existence might be
at stake, nothing else might count except victory, to say
nothing of a dozen other shibboleths dinned incessantly
into their ears, but trade-unionists had "rights" and
"necessities," too.  It had cost them years of blood and
tears, and strikes and lockouts galore, to enforce
them.  Was Labor supinely to permit them to be
snatched away bodily under cover of war, which
Labor had always opposed?  Were sainted rules about
Sunday work and other "overtime," about apprentices,
about female labor, and a dozen other trophies of
triumphant trade-unionism to be renounced?  Could
Governments, from which hard-won prerogatives had had
to be extorted almost by violence, be trusted voluntarily
to restore them, once Labor had been cowed into
surrendering them, and comfortable precedents
established?  Was the British proletariat, now only on
the threshold of its liberties, to be hurled back
at one fell swoop into the abyss of inglorious
mid-Victorian "slavery"?  Let the nation rant itself blue
in the face over Labor's "disgraceful lack of
patriotism."  Let Germany find comfort, if it could, in the
spectacle of British working men refusing to relinquish
their holiest privileges on the blood-smeared altar of
Militarism.  "Patriotism begins at home," said the
trade-unionist.  "The Government is looking after its
own interests.  I am looking after mine," he explained.

With such recalcitrant and explosive conditions
prevailing, the public was not surprised, though
profoundly chagrined, to learn at the end of September--I
choose the case as typical, and by no means because
it was an isolated instance--that the Liverpool
Munitions Tribunal had fined hundreds of workmen
employed by Messrs. Cammell, Laird & Company, one of
the most important firms of armament manufacturers
in the country.  It was testified that owing to shirking
during the period of the preceding twenty weeks, there
had been a loss of 1,500,000 hours' time.  The evidence
is so characteristic that I reproduce it textually:

.. vspace:: 2

"The average daily number of men employed was
10,349, and the average number of men out on each
day of the week was: Monday, first quarter, 2,135,
and the whole day, 1,156; Tuesday, 1,421 and 1,030;
Wednesday, 1,439 and 1,231; Thursday, 1,764 and
1,126; Friday, 1,492 and 984; and Saturday, 1,057
and 1,015.  The average number out per day for the
whole period was 1,552 who lost a quarter, and 1,090
losing the whole day.  In other words, fifteen per
cent. lost a quarter, and about ten and one-half per
cent. did not go into work at all on every day of the
whole twenty weeks.  The loss of working hours on
ordinary working days was a million and a half, and
represented a full week's work for nearly thirty
thousand men; or, alternatively, the time lost practically
represented a complete shutting down of the whole
establishment for three working weeks.  Neither the
men themselves nor their societies could plead
ignorance of what was going on.  Frequent appeals had
been made to representative deputations of the men in
the works by the managing director of the company,
also to the local representatives of the men's unions,
pointing out this most discreditable state of affairs.
Seeing that the men had proved deaf to all persuasion,
and had shown no improvement in response to appeals
either from Ministers of the Crown, their own trade
unions, or their employers, the only course was to
prosecute them before that tribunal."

.. vspace:: 2

The announcement of the sentences on the shirkers
caused an outbreak of dissatisfaction, and the
chairman of the Tribunal was interrupted several times by
the men as he was giving the judgments.  Half a dozen
or more of the men all attempting to speak at once
caused great confusion.  "There'll be a revolution in
this country," cried one, and such phrases as, "It's time
the Germans were here if we are to be treated like
this," "What did South Wales do?  Defy them!" "We
are not here as slaves" were shouted from various
quarters.  The disturbers were asked to leave the
Court.  "Let's all go," called one of the men--and
they all went, giving "three cheers for the British
workman."

Labor pleads in extenuation of its seemingly treasonable
disregard of national interests that it is not
merely reluctance to yield ground on fixed trade-union
principles which inspires a spirit of revolt in the
"munition areas."  It is only fair to record that the
attitude of Union leaders throughout has generally been
above reproach.  Their counsel to the men to forget
"rules" and give the best that is in them has in many
cases fallen on deaf ears.  What particularly gnawed
at the men's hearts was a conviction that they were not
getting even an approximately "square deal" under the
abnormal conditions of "war industry."  They insisted
that while employers' profits had risen inordinately in
almost every branch--shipping, collieries, the steel and
iron trades, and primarily, of course, in the armaments
industries--the wages of the men who were doing the
actual producing lamentably failed to keep step with
the masters' swollen revenue.  The men assert, indeed,
that such advance in wages as has taken place does
not remotely correspond to the increased cost of
living, which averaged forty per cent. up to the end of
the summer of 1915, with a further rise in almost
inevitable prospect.  Labor, in other words, so the
working classes claimed, was being "sweated" in order that
the coffers of the "profiteers" might continue to
overflow.  If British trade-unionism had an epigrammatist
as inventive as Mr. Bryan, it would no doubt have
adopted as its war-time slogan the aphorism that
Capital was determined to press down a crown of thorns
upon Labor's brow, and crucify working mankind upon
a cross of gold.  Those, at any rate, were precisely the
sentiments which fired British Labor's soul.

But if revolt on the old-time issues of output,
overtime and Unionism was bitter and menacing, it was
destined to be a mere whisper compared to Labor's
rebellious hostility to Conscription.  The "controlled
establishment" system evoked more or less continuous
opposition.  Almost every day batches of workmen,
ranging from twos and threes to troops of fifty or a
hundred, were dragged before Munition Tribunals,
and fined a week's pay for shirking.  In one or two
cases they preferred the martyrdom of imprisonment
to money punishment.  But on the whole, notwithstanding
the ceaseless howl of Ramsay Macdonald's *Labor
Leader* and George Lansbury's Socialist *Herald* against
the "tyranny" and "slavery" of the Munitions Act and
the "unchecked piracy of the employer-profiters," the
ambitions of Lloyd-George to "speed up" war industry
were satisfactorily realized.  He was able to state that
"taking the figure one as representing the output of
shells in September, 1914, the figure for July, 1915,
was fifty times greater.  It was a hundred times
greater in August, and thenceforward production
would continue to rise in a surprisingly rapid crescendo."

By midsummer of 1915 Britain was faced by an
emergency not a whit less urgent than shells.  She
had effectively organized her facilities for turning
out a maximum of high-explosives.  She had now to
confront and solve the insistent problem of manning
her decimated armies.  Kitchener and the voluntary
system had worked wonders.  The actual figures, for
some unaccountably censorious reason, were never
disclosed, except in the case of Ireland, which up to
October 1 had furnished 81,000 recruits; but the
authorities allowed to pass uncontradicted the statement
that the United Kingdom and the Colonies between
them had raised a volunteer army of approximately
3,000,000 men.  Had it turned out to be anything
except a War of Miscalculations, this gigantic contribution
of British military force might have sufficed, but
with 500,000 British casualties after fourteen months
of fighting--roundly, 400,000 in France and Flanders
and 100,000 in the Dardanelles--and with the Germans
not only not yet expelled from Belgium or France, but
in undisputed possession of Poland and about to pound
through Serbia on "the road to Constantinople, Egypt
and India," it was apparent that probably twice
3,000,000 British soldiers would be required.  Two
spectacular attempts to "break through" the wall of concrete
and iron Germany had erected in the West had been
made.  Both failed, however gloriously.  Neuve
Chapelle and Artois inscribed fresh and imperishable
deeds of valor on the scroll of the British army, but
each was strategically valueless.  Results attained were
frightfully out of proportion to the price they cost in
blood and treasure.

Succeeding events of the war of stalemate in the
West and fiasco in the Dardanelles--dreary and weary
months of fighting accounted "victorious" if it took
three hundred yards of trenches, or a hill, or a
cemetery, or a sugar-factory, or a strip of beach, or if it
advanced the British line a mile and a half over a front of
twelve miles--every "gain" entailing a terrible toll in
killed and maimed and fabulous expenditure of shells--all
demonstrated one outstanding, immutable fact:
that nothing but sheer preponderance of man-power
weight would or could "cleave the way to victory."  If
it cost 25,000 or 30,000 young British lives to win
Neuve Chapelle, probably twice that many to carry
out the trial push of the great offensive at the end of
September, and 100,000 casualties to fail in Gallipoli,
what rivers of blood would not have to be spilled along
that once-vaunted "march to Berlin"?

Britain's volunteers had done nobly.  But they
manifestly did not do enough.  Mighty as was their
response, Britons must yet come, or be brought, forward
in their millions if the Empire was to be saved.  The
specter of Conscription became more of a tangible
reality from day to day.  Voluntaryism had received
a fair and a long and patient trial.  It accomplished
far more, probably, than its most sanguine supporters
hoped for.  It outstripped any record approximated by
Lincoln in our Civil War, but now, like him, England
was plainly compelled to resort to more heroic
measures if the overthrow of Germany was to be anything
more than a pious aspiration.  "Mahanism" had given
Britannia control of the sea, but "Moltkeism" was still
unbeaten on the Continent.

.. _`Soldiers in the making--11th Battalion cook-house.`:

.. figure:: images/img-316.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Soldiers in the making--11th Battalion cook-house.

   Soldiers in the making--11th Battalion cook-house.

Now Organized Labor revolted afresh.  It would
not hear of the "Prussianization" of England by
Conscription.  It had already "surrendered" its "industrial
liberty."  It did not propose to part with whatever
vestige of "personal freedom" remained.  It pilloried
Conscription as "Compulsion" and, as brazenly as they
dared, certain leaders threatened any Government
which essayed to fasten it upon the "British Democracy"
with political ruin for itself and gory revolution
for the country.  The Conscriptionists were accused
of wanting, instead of an army of volunteer freemen,
"a servile, cheap and sweated army."  They aspired
to "something which would imperil the civic basis of
British liberty and degrade the nation."  Conscription
was "desired for the war and for after the war, in
order that its advocates might better be able to
promote their Imperialistic schemes abroad and their class
vanity and political interests at home."  In the midst
of a war to "crush militarism," it was now plotted to
impose that monster on Englishmen themselves.
Shrieked Bruce Glasier, for example, a paladin of the
Socialist-Labor phalanx:

.. vspace:: 2

"Compulsion, especially with regard to personal
service, to one's choice of occupation and way of life,
is of the essence of slavery and oppression.  Nothing
but actual extremity of life and death ought to justify
us in resorting to it even temporarily.  No such
extremity has arisen, or is, happily, likely to arise.  The
voluntary principle has not failed either in the Army
or any other profession.  What has failed, what does
fail, is the political policy and administration of the
Government.

"*Since the days of Feudal slavery in Great Britain
no man or woman, except he be a criminal, a lunatic,
or a pauper, has been compelled personally to serve any
master or Government, or engage in any occupation or
task by legal compulsion*.

"Shall we allow the old-world tyranny to return?"

.. vspace:: 2

Glasier, unwittingly, tapped the very root of the
problem, as far as his own particular cohorts,
"downtrodden labor," are concerned.  *The British masses, in
their preponderant majority, have not been brought to
comprehend what Germany's war is--that it involves
for Britain "nothing but actual extremity of life and
death.*"  Although leaders of public opinion, from the
highest to the lowest, never ceased to emphasize
the true inwardness of the struggle, Organized Labor
was not convinced that Voluntary Service was unequal
to the emergency.  At Bristol, in the first week of
September, 610 delegates to the annual Trade Union
Congress, representing nearly 3,000,000 workers,
placed themselves on record flat-footedly against
Conscription.  With British military failure in the war
crying to Heaven, the following "anti-Compulsion"
resolutions were adopted:

.. vspace:: 2

"We, the delegates to this congress, representing
nearly three millions organized workers, record our
hearty appreciation of the magnificent response made
to the call for volunteers to fight against the tyranny of
militarism.  We emphatically protest against the
sinister efforts of a section of the reactionary press in
formulating newspaper policies for party purposes and
attempting to foist on this country Conscription, which
always proves a burden to workers and will divide the
nation at a time when absolute unanimity is essential.

"No reliable evidence has been produced to show
that the voluntary system of enlistment is not adequate
to meet all the empire's requirements.  We believe that
all the men necessary can and will be obtained through
a voluntary system properly organized, and we heartily
support and will give every aid to the Government in
its present efforts to secure the men necessary to
prosecute the war to a successful issue."


When the cheers following the unanimous adoption
of these resolutions subsided, Robert Smillie, the
miners' leader and one of the most respected Labor
chieftains in Britain, received the heartiest applause of
the whole debate when he rapped out: "Now that this
congress has declared, on behalf of organized labor,
that it is against Conscription, it will be the duty of
organized labor to prevent Conscription taking place."

It was not long after the Bristol Trade Union
Congress defied the Government to establish Conscription
that Vernon Hartshorn, the Socialist miners' leader,
declaimed in the *Christian Commonwealth* that "a
golden opportunity for Labor" had arrived, asked
"whether trade-unions shall now not be successfully
recognized as the controlling authority in a new
industrial democracy," and set up "the irresistible claim of
Labor to control its own destinies and those of the
country."  The Bristol and Hartshorn manifestoes
were followed by the most extraordinary outburst of
all--the formal declaration on the official premises of
the British House of Commons by J. H. Thomas, a
Member of Parliament for Derby and Organizing
Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway
Workmen, that if the Government attempted to
enforce Conscription, 3,000,000 employees of the
national transportation lines of the country would not
shrink from precipitating "industrial revolution!"

Interesting to the foreign observer as are all these
manifestations of the British masses' opposition to
war-time "control" and universal military service, the
pathological causes of it are no less absorbing.  They
are not, in my judgment, far to seek.  I thought I
gained a composite glimpse of them one day at
Shepherd's Bush, by no means the most squalid section of
London, for it lies in the west, far from the putrid east.
I had gone to watch a great "recruiting-rally"--an
attempt to inject some patriotism into regions where it
was sadly lacking.  I found myself in the midst of a huge
typically lower-class and lower middle-class multitude.
Scattered throughout it were countless hundreds of
what should have been young men fit for military
service.  It was for the most part a motley throng of
blear-eyed men and women of all sorts, sizes and conditions
of mental and physical deterioration.  Nearly everybody,
particularly children, was unkempt and seemed
underfed.  In the wide-open doors of odoriferous
saloons stood hatless, slovenly females, balancing with
one hand a half-emptied mug of beer, while the other
shepherded a cluster of wretched youngsters with dirty
faces, tattered clothing and shredded shoes.  Collarless
men slouched along, filthy of attire and language alike.
The remarks one overheard, as the troops trudged by
and the bands blared *Rule, Britannia*, were usually
purely ribald, and the cheering, when a taxi full of
wounded Tommies, shoved into the procession to lend
corroborative detail to what Sir W. S. Gilbert would
have called an otherwise bald and unconvincing
spectacle, was desultory and short-lived.  The parade had
been assigned a line of march through several miles
of district precisely like Shepherd's Bush.  I could
hardly imagine that the scenes anywhere were considerably
different from those of which I was an astonished
and chagrined witness.  There were very few recruits.

I could not resist a reminiscent soliloquy.  I had
stood in the midst of German crowds in Berlin and
elsewhere times without number.  But I was quite
sure that nowhere in the Fatherland had I ever been
in contact with such concentrated, omnipresent,
apparently inconquerable squalor and proletarian apathy.
It was manifestly not this stratum of English society
which was to perpetuate Britannia's rule of the waves.
Lamentably little of the "bulldog breed" was visible
here.  It was more like the starved cur type.  Starved!
That was the word.  Starved for generations of the
nourishment on which health, education, ideals and
patriotism must be developed, if they are to stand the
test in the hour of supreme trial!  Why, I asked
myself, was such a disheartening picture as good as
physically impossible in Berlin or Hamburg or Düsseldorf
or Breslau?  I may be wrong, but the answer seemed
to me to be that paternalistic Government in Germany
had produced a race of men and women who, because
better educated, better housed, better fed and generally
better cared for--even under the relentless
jackboot of Militarism--looked upon a war for national
existence through entirely different-colored spectacles
than this slipshod composite of British illiteracy and
nonchalance.  I seriously doubted if Shepherd's Bush
understood the meaning of Patriotism as the Germans
know it; understood that *Service* and *Sacrifice* are
necessary in the hour of the nation's jeopardy, and,
because necessary, must be lavishly, unquestioningly
rendered.  I found myself excusing the British
proletariat.  I felt that they were what they were, and
acting as they were, or, rather, failing to act as they
ought, because *they knew no better*.  Patriotism is
not altogether instinct.  It is largely a cultivated virtue.
That is why we teach immigrant children from Russia
and Italy and Hungary to sing "My Country, 'Tis of
Thee" as the rudiment of their American schooling.
Education has been compulsory in Britain for many
years, but drink has been traditionally universal, and
housing of the poor and the working classes was only
in comparatively recent years deemed a subject worthy
of vast national effort.  Public hygiene is no longer a
neglected theme, and playgrounds and parks are
numerous.  But illiteracy, intemperance and disease can
not be eradicated in a generation.  Masses which have
for decades been neglected and held in subjection and
contempt by an unrelenting class-distinction system
heavily charged with arrant snobbishness can not be
churned, by the turning of a crank, into a community
of enlightened, high-minded or able-bodied patriots
and war-makers.  Britain has sown the wind.  She is
reaping the whirlwind.  That has been said before, but
never has it applied with such grim significance as at
this hour.

Recruiting "rallies," recruiting advertisements,
reproaches of the "slacker" and the "shirker" in the
press, on the platform, in the parks and from the
pulpit, have signally failed to shame lower-class Britain
into doing its duty as the upper and middle classes
have so gloriously done.  In consequence, the Voluntary
system is on its last legs.  Early in October Lord
Kitchener appointed Lord Derby "Director of
Recruiting."  In assuming the thankless job, Derby said
he felt like taking over the receivership of a
bankrupt concern.  He proposed granting Voluntaryism
a six weeks' respite.  He would give the stay-at-homes
one more chance.  The Government (which enacted
the National Register for the purpose--hated
Prussian system which card-indexed every male and female
in the realm between fifteen and fifty-five!) knew
exactly who and where they were.  "Push and Go," said
one of the last-ditch poster appeals, "But It's Better to
Go than Be Pushed."  Lord Derby intimated that
"pushing" would set in on December 1.  It was estimated
that, by hook or crook, not less than thirty thousand
fresh men a week would be needed to keep the British
armies in Europe and Africa at effective strength in
1916, and, if they did not come forward voluntarily,
Kitchener was determined to "fetch" them.  That
means Conscription.  Northcliffe calls it National
Service.  Shepherd's Bush calls it National Servility.  If
Labor means what it says, "Compulsion" will not be
established until Trafalgar Square and
Whitechapel, Clydebank and South Wales, have run red
with the organized proletariat's "freeman" blood.  On
Britain's recreant past, then, rather than on her
embattled present, will lie, in my judgment, the real
responsibility for that dread triumph of ignorance and
indolence over the elementary dictates of patriotism
and self-preservation.

If I have emphasized British Labor's influence in
blocking National Service, I must, in all fairness, point
out that brows not accustomed to sweat and hands
never grimy from toil have joined their frowns and
their strength with Trade-Unionism and Socialism
against Conscription.  The professional pacifists, the
"anti-militarists," the statesmen and the newspapers
which for years prior to 1914, and even during the
weeks immediately preceding August of that year,
ridiculed the idea of "war with Germany," were all
mobilized against the revolutionary idea of converting
able-bodied Britons by law into defenders of the
realm.  From these quarters the men who have dared
to advocate Conscription have been besmirched with
abuse no less torrential than that which was heaped
upon them at the Trade-Union Congress in Bristol or
from week to week in the columns of Socialist-Labor
organs.  It will not be only certain famous proletariat
leaders who prevented Britain from rising in the great
war to her full military stature--if prevented she
be--but the party-hack editors, authors and anything-for-office
politicians who preferred the fetish of "our
unenslaved Democracy" and "Voluntaryism" to the
system under which *every other single one of Britain's
Allies* is fighting and under which, if the opinion of
professional soldiers is to be trusted, victory alone can
be made to perch on the Union Jack.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE EMPIRE OF HATE`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium

   THE EMPIRE OF HATE

.. vspace:: 2

Though the end of the carnage is not even
approximately in sight, a synoptic view of Germany
in war-time is feasible to a more comprehensive
extent than is possible in Britain.  Armageddon found
the Fatherland completely caparisoned for war, with
her people so steeped in discipline that it was the
merest formality to harness their peace-time habits
to Mars' Juggernaut and drive the entire nation to
battle as one would a well-trained team.  "Team-work,"
in fact, exactly describes Germany's war-time
performances.  They are achievements in national unison
without parallel in history.  Britain, on the other hand,
having been overtaken by war, except for her navy,
in a state of naked unpreparedness, was plunged
forthwith into the melting-pot.  Traditions, customs,
institutions, hobbies, prejudices, fetishes, even cherished
laws, had to be abandoned, upset or reconstructed to
fit a world of iron conditions unsuited to a dreamland
of comfortable theories.  The remaking of Britain,
after sixteen months of war, is not yet ended.  It has,
indeed, hardly commenced.  The time to write an
accurate history of these isles during the Great Test will
come not when peace is signed, but perhaps a decade
later, when the New England will have begun to
assume, in misty outline at least, the physical, moral and
intellectual dimensions in which war, with its scars and
its cleansings, left her.

Organized for war, body and soul, as Germany has
been for generation upon generation, and never more
so, of course, than in the living generation, the
country slid into the bloody groove as neatly as if it had
never had its being elsewhere.  The prospect of
"starvation," for instance, quite apart from the fact that it
was a German-invented bogy trotted out to deceive
the enemy and extort the commiseration of neutrals,
never seriously disturbed the Germans' equanimity,
for from the cradle up frugality has been instilled in
them as a virtue sister to patriotism.  No people in
the world could overnight descend to a war standard
of living so rapidly as the Germans.  Accustomed to
the affluence of sudden prosperity as the nation, as a
whole, was, it had yet only to return to familiar
inculcated habits, when the Kaiser called.  The grand
German bluff of the first year of the war was the
introduction of the bread-ticket ration system.  How the
grain-shippers of Chicago and Duluth must have
chuckled over it, when they recalled the gigantic
advance purchases of wheat made for German and
Austrian account in May, 1914--*three full months
before* "the Russian mobilization menace!"  Germany
can never be starved, and she knows it.  Von Tirpitz
knew it when he proclaimed submarine piracy as a
"reprisal" for British "attempts to starve us out."  The
grip of the British Fleet around Germany's neck has
inconvenienced the Germans, but it can never cause
them to famish.  The "starvation" myth which the
German propagandists in the United States so
assiduously circulated was devised, purely and simply,
for the purpose of arousing the compassion of the
generous-hearted American people, in the hope that our
most sentimental of governments would intervene, in
humanity's name, to lift from Germany's throat a yoke
which she herself was powerless to remove.  That is
the long and short of the "starvation" story.

As inborn and cultivated habits of frugality and
thrift enabled the introduction of the bread-ticket
without marked disturbance to normal German life, so the
nation resorted willingly and easily to all the other new
conditions which war imposed.  A people goose-stepped
and policed from the nursery to the grave,
bred in docility, with wills of their own eternally
broken before they have left the *Kinderstube*, with
initiative and self-reliance knocked out of them with
the rod at home and in school, and with blind unyielding
subordination to discipline literally pounded into
their bones in barracks, provides no astonishing
spectacle in making war, when war comes, as one man
obeying one supreme will.  War is the *ultima ratio*,
indeed, which this national system of self-suppression
has in mind.  The surprising thing is not that the
world has witnessed so colossal an exhibition of
team-work in Germany.  The unexpected would have
been if Germany had given any other account of
herself.  When we speak, as we all do, and especially the
English, of "Germany's years of preparation," we
should eliminate the notion that these preparations
were confined to shells, guns, fortifications, battleships
and legions.  No single other "preparation" of the
German war gods measured up, in my judgment, to the
unseen and unnoticed, yet all-engulfing, decade-old,
national scheme of molding the minds of men, women,
children and babes along the line of unresisting,
complete slavery to Superiority, uniformed as the State.
When you dilute this super-subjugation with the wine
of true patriotism which, despite their Socialism, their
police, their burdensome taxes, their goose-step, their
powerless parliaments and all the other concomitants
of an autocratic monarchy, flows red and joyously
through the soul of the Germans, you secure a spiritual
admixture which approaches invincibility.  You
discover the ingredients of what Lloyd-George christened
the "potato-bread spirit," which he truly described as a
greater danger for Germany's enemies than Hindenburg's
strategy.  The former will survive long after
the latter has broken down.

For a full year, interrupted only by six weeks in the
United States at the end of the winter of 1914-15, I
have kept in as close touch with Germany in war-time
as if I were at my old lookout in the Friedrichstrasse.
My professional task in London all that time has been
to study the German Press.  Day in and day out I
have done so.  I have read the Government-controlled
*Lokal-Anzeiger*, the radical *Berliner Tageblatt*, the
venerable *Vossische Zeitung*, Count Reventlow's
organ of Frightfulness, the *Deutsche Tageszeitung*, the
Pan-German *Tägliche Rundschau*, the Thunderer of
Prussian conservatism, the *Kreuz-Zeitung*, and
Maximilian Harden's vitriolic *Zukunft*.  The voice of
paralyzed Hamburg has come to me morning and night
through the malevolent *Hamburger Nachrichten* and
*Fremdenblatt*.  *Vorwärts* has kept me informed of
German Socialism's invertebrate vagaries.  The
cultured *Cologne Gazette*, the property of Doctor
Neven-Dumont, whose wife is half-English and whose
son is proud of his Oxford degree, and yet has almost
led the German Press in the violence of its
Anglophobism, has told me what semi-official Germany
wanted the world to believe was its views from hour
to hour.  In the *Frankfurter Zeitung* I have been able
to glean the news and opinion of the great German
financial and commercial classes for which it speaks.
Catholic Bavaria, the land of Crown Prince
"Rupprecht, the Bloody," has been interpreted to me by the
*Munich Neueste Nachrichten*.  The *Dresdner Anzeiger*
has mirrored Saxony day by day.  And, as the
*Stimmung* of no country in the world is so faithfully
reproduced by its comic press as is opinion in Germany, my
readings have been amplified, as well as lightened, by
heartlessly ironic *Simplicissimus*, artistic *Jugend,
Fliegende Blätter* and *Lustige Blätter*.  My German literary
diet, which was ruining my eye-sight, has been almost
more opulent than when in Berlin, has finally been
enriched from week to week by the incessant grist of
pamphlets and booklets which has poured from the
German mill even in more copious and overwhelming
measure than in peace-times.  If the printed word is
the index of a nation's thought, little of moment in
Germany since August, 1914, has escaped me.  I have
had the inestimable advantage of being able to absorb
it in the light of its relationship to the situation outside
of Germany--an opportunity of which the Germans
themselves, though I would not try to make them
believe it, have been cruelly deprived.

Telescopic observation of Germany, as reflected by
its press, a little knowledge of what Doctor
Münsterberg would call the Fatherland's "psychology," and the
actual deeds of the German army, navy and
Government have provided me, I think I may make so bold
as to say, with a fairly complete and accurate
picture.  Germany, thus visualized, stands out to me
in bold, clear-cut relief.  It is a strange and
terrible composite of forces generally considered
incongruous and mutually destructive--Efficiency, Malice
and Intolerance.  The world ought to have known that
in war Germany would reveal titanic powers of
scientific organization.  It did not expect to find her an
Empire of Hate.  It hardly imagined that the land of
Goethe and Wagner, Koch, Behring and Ehrlich,
Siemens, Rathenau and Ballin, Hauptmann, Strauss and
Reinhardt, Eucken, Haeckel and Harnack, could be
turned even by the devouring blasts of war into a
community capable of elevating to the dignity of a
national anthem such a ferocious song as Lissauer's
*Hymn of Hate Against England*, whose soul is best
breathed by its closing stanza:


   |   "Take you the folk of the Earth in pay,
   |   With bars of gold your ramparts lay,
   |   Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow,
   |   Ye reckon well, but not well enough now.
   |   French and Russian, they matter not,
   |   A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot,
   |   We fight the battle with bronze and steel,
   |   And the time that is coming Peace will seal.
   |   You will we hate with a lasting hate,
   |   We will never forego our hate,
   |   Hate by water and hate by land,
   |   Hate of the head and hate of the hand,
   |   Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown,
   |   Hate of seventy millions, choking down.
   |   We love as one, we hate as one,
   |   We have one foe, and one alone--
   |   ENGLAND!"
   |

Even Barbara Henderson's brilliant translation of
this epic of spleen, the first version of which to be
published in Great Britain it was my privilege to reprint
in *The Daily Mail* from the columns of the *New York
Times*, fails to do justice to the innate rancor and gall
of Lissauer's original verses.  Americans who visited
Germany during the war were unanimous in agreeing
that no rendering of the *Hymn of Hate* in English
could possibly interpret its consuming spirit.  You had
to hear it rasped with the ferocity of snarling, guttural
German, they would say, to gain even an approximate
idea of its power.  You had to watch a man or woman
recitationist or singer, for it was set to music, too,
bawl it out, in a crescendo of passionate fury as the
final word of each stanza, *England!* was reached.  You
had to sit in the midst of a theater, café or music-hall
audience, or even in a drawing-room, and note all
around you the frenzied countenances, the clenched
fists, the whole enraged being, of men, women and
children, to know how Lissauer's ballad of gall had
burnt itself into a people's soul.  There have been
more or less sincere efforts in Germany to banish the
*Hymn of Hate*.  Lissauer having previously
received the Iron Cross for poetic gallantry, and from
the pulpit and the school rostrum the unrighteousness
of hate had been sanctimoniously proclaimed.  But
Lissauer only put into verse the spirit which
maddened Berlin on the night of August 4, 1914, which
grew in intensity as the magnitude of British
intervention in the war slowly dawned, and which, surface
manifestations to the contrary notwithstanding,
lingers deep and ineffaceable in the German breast, and
will remain there, barring a miracle, for generations
after the war is over.

While the *Hymn of Hate* was at the zenith of its
glory, some genius whose name, unfortunately, will be
lost to posterity, invented *Gott strafe England!* (God
punish England) as the most patriotic form of
greeting which one German could exchange with another.
Friends meeting in the suburban trains or street-cars,
or in the streets, no longer lifted their hats as usual
and said *Guten Morgen*.  They shook hands solemnly
and exclaimed *Gott strafe England*!  When they
parted at night, it was not *Guten Abend*, but *Gott strafe
England*!  Then they began stamping it--with a
rubber-stamp which was sold by the thousand for the
purpose--on their letters to correspondents at home and
abroad.  It was even adopted, now and then, as an
epitaph for a fallen soldier, whose relatives would end
up the customary obituary in the advertising columns
of the newspapers with *Gott strafe England*.  Now
postcards blossomed forth with the new national motto.
Scarf-pins made their appearance in the windows of
cheap-jewelry stores, inscribed *Gott strafe England*!
The legend was reproduced in a score of different
designs on cuff-links, brooches, and even wedding-rings,
while hardly a schoolchild was without a badge or
button emblazoned with the Fatherland's holiest war
prayer.  Handkerchiefs were embroidered with it,
pocket-knives had it enameled on their handles, and
many a *Liebesgabe* to a dear one in the trenches went
forth with a pair of black-white-red braces imprinted
*Gott strafe England*!  On a medal which doubtless
decorated thousands of German breasts--a sample
reached England--was engraved:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: left white-space-pre-line

   "Give us this day our daily bread; England
   would take it from us.  God punish her!"

.. vspace:: 2

Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, who was
beaten by Sir John French's "contemptible little army"
at Neuve Chapelle and Artois, placed Royal approval
on the *Gott strafe England* cult in his notorious
battle-order in the winter campaign to "annihilate the
British arch-foe in front of us at any and all cost."

Englishmen, and especially English soldiers, perhaps
measured the *Gott strafe England* sentiment at
below its real value as a German fighting asset when they
decided to treat it as a joke.  That was the spirit, at
any rate, which animated a group of young Eton men
at the front, who sent a postcard to the Headmaster of
their historic school rival reading: *Gott strafe Harrow*!
And on April Fool's day British Tommies across a
certain meadow of death in Flanders expelled from a
mine-thrower something which looked murderously
like a bomb.  When it bounced in front of the
German lines, and bounced again, without exploding, a
"Boche" ventured out of the trenches and picked it
up.  He found it was a football, and on it was inscribed:

   |       April Fool!
   |   *Gott strafe England!*
   |

.. _`"A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD AT THEIR MORNING HATE--From *London Punch*"`:

.. figure:: images/img-334.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD AT THEIR MORNING HATE--From *London Punch*"

   "A PRUSSIAN HOUSEHOLD AT THEIR MORNING HATE--From *London Punch*"

Mr. Punch and his lesser *confrères* in British
humor have almost lived through the war on *Gott strafe
England*!  The sentiment has not struck terror into
John Bull's heart, but it has very materially added to
his war-time gaiety.

Next to the Hate epidemic, the mystifying account
of themselves which the German Social Democrats
have given during the war stands out as the main
phenomenon.  I have asked myself more than once what
might have been if Bebel, the brains, or Singer, the
fists, of the old-time Socialistic movement had
been alive in August, 1914.  Certainly the utter
failure of the Socialists to hamper the operation of the
German war-machine will remain forever one of the
amazing episodes of the war.  It will rank, of course,
also, as one of the blazing miscalculations of the
Fatherland's enemies.  It is true that Bebel, the
long-time autocrat of the German "Reds," proclaimed often
enough that when Germany was in peril, he and his
Genossen would shoulder the musket with a will.  Yet
the suspicion always lurked that when the German
War Party's time came and it essayed to drag the
German people across the Rubicon, the Social Democracy,
with 4,250,000 voters, 111 members of parliament and
German trades-unionism almost solidly behind it, would
be found standing like an insuperable barrier against
the powers of aggression.  There had been more than
one hint that working-class Germany, in that hour,
would not shrink from utilizing the potent weapon of
the General Strike to stay the hand of the war zealots.
Opinion on that score amounted to almost positive
conviction in non-Socialistic Germany and throughout
Europe, in case the test were to be forced by a German
war of manifestly provocative character.  It therefore
was of prime importance to the clique which engineered
the war that the Social Democracy be made to believe,
forthwith and implicitly, that the impending conflict
was a "defensive war," to which Socialist leaders
had always pledged the proletariat's unswerving
support.  Categorical and lachrymose assurances to that
effect were accordingly given to the Social Democratic
group of the Reichstag by the Imperial Chancellor in
the confidential conferences with the parties, which
preceded the public session of the House on August 4,
1914.  The once-despised "Reds," so often denounced
by William II as "men without a country," but whose
votes in the national legislature were now so essential
to the show of Imperial unity with which Germany
desired to go to war, were supplied with ample
"evidence" that Germany's cause was "just."  She had
been "fallen upon" by ruthless, envious enemies, the
struggle about to begin would be waged by the Fatherland
in "defense" of its holiest national interests, and
the support of all classes was essential to the waging
of the fight with which nothing short of "the
Empire's existence" was was bound up.  The Socialists
listened, patriotically, to this siren song.  They
believed its tale of woe.  They bade the Chancellor
to be assured that they would not be found wanting
in Germany's moment of peril.  And a few hours
later Herr Haase, the chairman of the party, was on
his feet in the Reichstag, uttering glittering platitudes
about Socialism's constitutional abhorrence of war
and all its works, but proclaiming that the party's full
strength and support were at the Government's
disposal for the purpose of repelling the invader!  *Sic
transit gloria mundi!* August Bebel might well have
remarked, could his shade have hovered over this
abject surrender to Mars by his supine heirs of the
fundamental principles to which he had consecrated a life-time.

From that moment forth the Kaiser needed to give
himself no concern as to "the internal foe," the
nickname of reproach always saddled on the Social
Democracy by the Military Autocracy.  The wing-clipped
"Reds" were even allowed a certain latitude of free
speech and thought about the war.  They were
permitted to indulge in their favorite academic discussions
about the propriety of Socialist votes for war credits,
and even Haase himself, having gradually come to
realize that the Kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg had sold
the Social Democracy a political gold brick, was not
locked up for sedition for issuing, together with two
fellow-leaders, Bernstein and Kautsky, a courageous
manifesto against support of limitless war grants.
*Vorwärts*, the Socialist organ, and other party newspapers
were from time to time suppressed by the military
censor for airing war opinions too freely, but as successive
war measures were presented for the approval of the
Reichstag, a safe majority of Socialist votes was on
each occasion cast in their favor.  The myth of a "war
of defense" was never broken down.  The King of
Bavaria and the National Liberal Party gave the game
away during the spring and summer of 1915, by
blustering about the necessity for sweeping "rectifications
of our frontiers," or, in other words, wholesale
annexation of conquered territory, but Germany's war
was well into its second year finding the Social
Democracy, for the purposes and needs of the
Government at least, entirely harmless.  Food shortage and
high prices churned proletariat Germany into growing
discontent, as the war proceeded.  Butter and meat
riots have occurred in Berlin, and there have been
ominous suggestions that the military authorities are
alive to the possibility of "revolutionary" manifestations.
But the day of Germany's Commune is not yet.
No better evidence of the completeness with which
the Socialist party was hypnotized from the outset
could have been supplied than by the action of Doctor
Ludwig Frank, one of its brilliant young leaders, in
volunteering for military service.  Frank fell in the
earliest fighting in France, in August, 1914, and now
fills a hero's grave.  A Jewish lawyer in Baden, he
was commonly looked upon as the future chieftain of
Social Democracy.  The war interfered with a
cherished plan of his--to visit and lecture in the United
States--and I suppose the last interview he ever gave
was one I had with him, in which he spoke with
enthusiasm of the American impressions he hoped to
gather.  He was keenly interested in the corporation
problem, recognized that it contained evils with which
Germany before long would have to cope, and wanted
to equip himself with first-hand knowledge of its
ramifications in the home of its highest development.  Frank
was not a fire-eating German Social Democrat.  He
belonged to the moderate or "revisionist" wing of the
party.  He was obsessed with no illusions as to the
future possibilities of Socialism in Germany and
acknowledged that sane democrats had long since
abandoned hope of accomplishing anything more than the
establishment of a truly constitutional monarchy and
Parliamentary government.  It is a thousand pities
that Ludwig Frank has not been spared to play his
capable part in the political reconstruction of Germany
which, win or lose, is almost inevitably certain to
follow the war.  Doctor Karl Liebknecht, that stormy
petrel of German Socialism, remained the one man to
utter anti-war sentiment day in and day out.  Even
the Government's action in sticking him into field-gray
and dispatching him to the front for intermittent
service failed to check the flow of his invective.  Liebknecht
represents the Imperial borough of Potsdam, of all
places in the world, in the German Parliament, but,
though he has talked incessantly and voted rebelliously,
the voice of the representative of the Kaiser's
congressional district was destined to remain as one
crying in the wilderness.

I have said that the triumphs of Germany behind the
firing-line--the fortitude with which she has borne her
hideous losses in life, the magnificently effective
demonstration of unity, economy, self-sacrifice, industrial
and financial organization, and adaptability to all the
domestic conditions of war--were only things which
those of us who knew the Germans expected to come
to pass.  They were as inevitable, in their paternalized
State, the Empire of System, as were the early
cannon-ball successes of the German army.  We who
were aware, as eye-witnesses, of Germany's prodigious
preparations for "the Day," never doubted that, having
chosen her own moment for launching her thunderbolts,
they would accomplish precisely the staggering
blows and strangle-holds which August and
September, 1914, brought forth.  Although (including
myself) there was not one man in ten thousand in
Berlin who knew who Hindenburg was--I have merely
a faint recollection of having once read his name as
an army commander in *Kaiser Maneuvers*--a good
many of us had an abiding impression that the
Russian army was no match for the German war
machine, however easily the Czar might roll up the
Austrians.  The victories of the German armies in the
war are no surprise to the German people.  They have
been raised in the belief that their military power was
invincible, even against a world of foes.  Events in
the first year and a half of the war, even though
Paris and Calais remained untaken, were certainly such
as to convince Germans that their traditional and
child-like confidence in their armed prowess was justified.

But in addition to Hate and Socialist impotence,
two things which astounded those who knew and
admired the German people, were their callousness
toward the deeds which have been committed by their
army and navy and their savage intolerance of any
other point of view except their own.  I am not one
of those who believe that all Germans have cloven
hoofs.  Bitterly as I oppose their cause in this war
and fully as I hold their War Party responsible for
the war, I am not prepared to believe that the
Germans are either a decadent or a lost race.  What I
do believe is that the war has, temporarily at least,
annihilated the moral qualities of the Germans and
dragged them from the high estate of ethical and
discriminating intelligence in which they lived in
antebellum times.  The Germans of Louvain, of the
*Lusitania*, asphyxiating gas, liquid fire, submarine piracy,
airship assassination and General Frightfulness are not
the Germans among whom I spent thirteen happy,
fruitful years.  They are not the Germans whose main
concern, as it is that of the average run of men and
women in other climes, was to prosper, raise families,
educate children, live comfortably, acquire a
competence and enjoy life generally.  These Germans no
longer exist.  They have been succeeded by a race of
war-maddened Germans, who were told by their
Imperial Chancellor that "necessity knows no law," that
treaties are "scraps of paper," and who have been
made to believe that, in war, there is but one thing to
do--"to hack our way through"--and that, as
Bismarck and the German War Book said, the enemy must
be left with nothing except eyes to weep with.  The
Germans have been steeped in all this by their
overlords, living and dead, and, being children of
discipline, they have looked with unmoistened eye upon
all and sundry done in the holy name of these bedrock
German principles.

The Fatherland's heartlessness toward such events
as the rape of Belgium becomes less inexplicable when
one recalls the cult of brutality which pursues the
German from the nursery upward.  As a child in
swaddling clothes, he is taught that he has no right to a
will of his own, and if he attempts to cultivate one, it
is promptly beaten out of him.  I recall, with more
amusement than the episode inspired in me at the time,
the struggle we had with our beloved family physician
in Berlin, Doctor Keiler, to allow us to bring up our
three or four-year-old son as a boy and not as a
machine.  "*Das Kind darf keinen Willen hoben!*"  I
remember dear old Keiler shrieking in Wilmersdorf
more than once, as he labored in vain to convince us
that if Frightfulness was necessary to break the
youngster's inborn initiative and self-reliance, we must not
shrink from resorting to it.  And when the German
escapes the *Kinderstube* with its unfailing rod and
enters *Gymnasium*, he is once more under the cruel lash
of Efficiency, which drives scores of lads to suicide at
each recurring Easter-time because they have failed in
examinations for the higher grade, notwithstanding a
term's unceasing hounding by their drill-sergeant of a
teacher and class-room and home cramming which
have kept his frame thin and his cheek pallid.  A whole
literature has come into existence in opposition to the
intellectual brutality to which German schoolboys
between the ages of eight and sixteen are subjected, but
the consensus of opinion is that the system's
advantages outweigh its deficiencies, and that youthful
suicides are part of the price the Fatherland must pay for
what Professor Lasson of Berlin calls its "cultural
superiority" over the rest of mankind.

Thrashed in the nursery, tormented in school, the
German lad must then face a period of bullying in
barracks, for, if he has managed to survive his *Gymnasia*
years in health, he will enter the army.  It is not
necessary in this narrative to dilate upon the cruelties
committed in German barracks in the sacrosanct name of
Discipline and Thoroughness.  There is a literature in
Germany on that subject, too, and the penal records of
the military and civil courts comprise the bulk of it.  It
is only with the lesson of the system with which we
need to concern ourselves here; and that is, that the
German man who emerges from the army comes out
with notions about the efficacy and justifiability of
brute force and brutality which are certain, under the
red license which war confers, to find expression in
terrible deeds.  In other words, a German who has
himself perhaps been assaulted by his regimental sergeant
on scores of occasions (such cases are plentiful), who
has seen the bloody saber-duel elevated in his
university days to the level of the manliest art, who has
throughout his life been a supine victim of police
violence, who holds womankind in semi-contempt, who
thinks it sportsmanlike to shoot birds alight, who
rejoices in his prowess as a slaughterer of wild game,
who beats his horses, who is as unfamiliar with the
ethics of sport and play as he is with the lingo of a
Choctaw dialect--such a man, I say, is bound, when he
is sent forth with his Kaiser's mandate to "hack his
way through," to stagger humanity as the Germans
have never ceased to stagger it on land, on sea and
in the air since August, 1914.  Given a nation of
non-combatants who have been instructed to believe
that these things *must* be because otherwise their
existence will be imperiled, and you have to do with
a community which, however delightful its qualities
as individuals, is no longer capable of measuring right
and wrong, by normal standards and which is ready
to tolerate any and everything, as long as it is part
and parcel of the general scheme to "preserve the
Fatherland."  If one considers all these things, which
I set down in no spirit of venom, but purely in an
attempt to diagnose German war callousness, one will
begin to be able to understand why German sensibilities
remain unshocked in the presence of things which
have horrified civilization.  One's understanding will
be complete if it is remembered that not one in a
million Germans believes that these things have happened
at all!

Philosophy, logic, metaphysics and psychology are
cultivated sciences in Germany.  It is even sometimes
claimed--in Berlin and in certain regions of
Harvard--that they were "made in Germany."  Yet as applied
sciences they have given a woefully sorry exhibition
of themselves in the Fatherland during the war.  They
have, as a matter of fact, entirely disappeared.  They
have been supplanted by a new doctrine, for which the
Germans themselves have an old and incomparable
word--*Rechthaberei*.  I learned that precious term
from an American colleague in Berlin, a South
Carolinian and profound student of German character
named William C. Dreher.  Dreher, who is an able
journalist specializing in economics, has held forth to
me on countless occasions about "Prussian
*Rechthaberei*"--the unquenchable conviction of the average
Teuton that he not only is "right" about everything,
but that everybody else whom he permits to have a
thought or a word on the same subject is essentially,
inherently and incorrigibly "wrong."  I can hardly
credit the report that Dreher himself has fallen a
victim to the insidious influence of *Rechthaberei*.  It is
something that presupposes omniscience and mental
aristocracy on the part of the propounder of a
given theory, and senility or utterly misguided
stubbornness on the part of the opponent.  Germany has
wallowed in *Rechthaberei* since August 1, 1914.  It
has sucked into the mire of intolerance everybody who
has dared to cherish a contrary view.  It has refused
the right of independence of thought to every living
soul, unless that thought is pro-German.  It has
swallowed whole anything the German Government and its
muzzled press have said, and it has condemned as
criminal falsehood anything published in enemy countries.
It allows British, French and Russian newspapers, in
a lordly way, to circulate freely in Germany, as of
yore, thumping its chest and saying "We are not afraid
of the truth"--but only after having drilled the
country into believing that *nothing* printed abroad about
the war is or can be true!  So the German who finds
*The Daily Mail* or the *New York Times* on its
accustomed file at his favorite café, just as he used to do in
peace days, *knows in advance* that he is to read "lies,"
and he digests them, leaving his patriotism unpolluted.

"Mass-suggestion" has thus worked wonders in
War Germany.  It has driven me for example--I hope
not forever--from the ranks of my oldest and best
friends in Germany--Americans, as well as Germans.
It impelled my wife's dearest friend, the Philadelphia-born
wife of a German, to write a letter early in the
war, formally "canceling" the friendship, because
"your husband, instead of choosing to identify himself
with an honest cause, has thrown in his lot with
England, and, with her, will share the downfall toward
which that nation is headed."  That would be funny, if
it were not so tragically pathetic.  I hear that a great
many good people in Berlin, wasting upon me breath
and choleric energy which deserved to be spent on a far
worthier object, fairly splutter when they hear or read
my name.  I have been the target of absurd and filthy
personal abuse in the German press.  I have won
undying execration, for I have dared, in a most
un-German way, to have a view of my own on the question
which is agitating men's minds and searching their
hearts as never was done before.

Yet all the millstones of hate and intolerance are not
preventing the Germans from conducting a fight which
challenges, in its efficiency, barring its inhuman aspects,
the admiration of foe and neutral the world over.
They are, indeed, a nation in arms.  Their
Spartan qualities behind the front, their contempt of
death in the enemy's fire, will not easily be conquered.
Exhaustion, economic and human, must tell against
them in the long run, though the process of attrition
will be vastly slower, I fancy, than armchair war
critics in England think.  The Germans will fight to the
last man and the last pfennig, as I know them, and
when they are beaten, they will furl their tattered
standards after a combat which, stripped of its horrors,
will yet have been marked by deeds of patriotism,
courage and glory fit to take their place alongside the
heroic traditions of mankind.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE NEW ENGLAND`:

.. class:: center large

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium

   THE NEW ENGLAND

.. vspace:: 2

Rome was not built in a day, but England has
been made over in a year.  Personal liberty is
gone.  A free press no longer exists.  Extravagance
is "bad form."  Economy has become respectable.
Dukes' sons and cooks' sons are "pals."  Drunkenness
is disappearing.  Conscription looms on the horizon.
The Irish are loyal.  Suffragettes are making shells
and bandaging wounds instead of smashing windows
and going to jail.  Pride is humbled, though not
crushed.  Still ringed by Kipling's "leaden seas,"
Britain is no longer an island, for Zeppelins have
maimed and killed and wrecked in the heart of
London.  Tolerance is a lost art.  British have learned to
hate.  The link-boy has come back into his own; the
streets at night, that Admiral Sir Percy Scott,
defender of London by air, may blind the "sky-Huns,"
recall the gloom of the Cimmerian Regency.  Though
Waterloo was won a hundred years ago, a terror
worse than the Napoleonic scourge has overtaken
the descendants of Nelson and Wellington.  Britannia
rules the waves, but the blood of a half million of her
best sons fertilizes the soil of France, Belgium, Turkey,
Serbia and Africa; and the flow is far from checked.
The "shopkeeper of the world" has become a nation in
arms.  Only one phase of its multifarious life,
immutable as the sphinx, has survived the crucible of war in
pristine glory--British calm.  Ships may sink, men
may fall, bombs may annihilate and treasure be sapped,
but British imperturbability, like Time itself, pursues
the even tenor of its way, Himalayan in its imperviousness.

Assuredly it has been for no lack of cause that
England has ridden the sea of Armageddon without
capsizing.  Squalls, typhoons, storms and barometric
disturbances of every form of violence have beset her
from the outset of the voyage.  But though there has
been tempest, there is no shipwreck.  She enters upon
another lap of a seemingly endless journey, battered
indeed, but keel down and full steam ahead.  It is still
night.  Stokers and crew, nor even the captains and
commodores, are not a completely united band, but
their differences concern only the methods of cleaving
through darkness to the port, to gain which, at any
cost, all are grimly determined.  Failure to reach
the waters of their desire as soon as the unthinking
majority hoped and believed would be possible has
sobered the vision and intensified the resolve of crew
and commanders alike.  It has not reconciled their
antagonisms, but it is making surer than ever that they
will land their craft in the appointed harbor, though
the damnations of all the powers of destruction are
buffeted against her in the attempt.

My name for Armageddon is the War of Miscalculations,
for it is a title which indicts every belligerent
without exception.  The Germans expected their
army to be in Paris by the end of September, 1914.
The English and the French reckoned that Russian
Cossacks would be hacking souvenirs from the
sepulchral statues in the Berlin *Sieges-Allee* about
the same time.  The British thought that Jellicoe
would starve the Germans.  Von Tirpitz imagined
that U-boats would paralyze Britain's life-line.  The
British pounded vainly at the Dardanelles for nine
months, and when they couldn't get Calais the
Germans started out to crush Serbia.  Sir Edward Grey
thought Bulgaria and Greece were only waiting like
ripe fruit to drop into the Allies' lap and cry for
marching orders.  He was about as near right as
the German political professors who always assured
William II that India, Egypt, Canada, South Africa
and Australia were itching to revolt when the
Motherland was immersed in a vast European war.  The great
war has been a rude awakening for all concerned.  In
addition to killing its millions of men and squandering
its billions of money, it has annihilated theories,
expectations, plans and aspirations so cruelly that the
"war expert" has become a deathless laughing-stock.
If "experts" have learned anything from the war, they
will henceforth prefer history to prophecy.

"Business as Usual"--life generally in the old rut,
in other words--was adopted by Britons as their war
motto.  Truly did a politician of renown exclaim
a year later that no unhappier, because no more
unfortunate, maxim was ever foisted upon or
accepted by a patriotic people.  The nation made no
inconsiderable attempt to convert "Business as Usual"
from an aphorism into an actuality.  Seven or eight
months of unrealized objectives had to pass over
English men and women's resolute heads before they
began even to doubt the efficacy of the complacent
principle they had laid down for themselves.  But the mills
of Mars, like those of his colleagues, keep on grinding,
and England was to learn that, while invasion had not
seared her soil as it had scotched that of all her
European allies, war yet had terrors capable of burning into
the soul, saddening the homes and despoiling the
pockets of even an unravished land.

I fix the date when Great Britain began to face the
iron logic of events with sterner realization and to
doubt the efficacy of "muddle" for purposes of war as
May, 1915.  In the two preceding months there had
been a series of episodes of more climacteric magnitude
than was apparent at the moment of their occurrence.
In March Sir John French's army made a vigorous
attempt to break through the German lines, and the
much-heralded "victory" of Neuve Chapelle resulted.
Thousands of British soldiers, and half a hundred
Americans fighting in the Canadian contingent, died
gallantly in an action which, when its terrible cost was
eventually counted, could not be catalogued as
anything but a glorious failure.  In April two affairs
of purely German origin were recorded, each predestined
to leave a deep impress on the British public
mind: the employment of poison gas by the enemy in
sanguinary engagements around Ypres, and the
flinging of thirty-nine British officers, captives in
Germany, into felons' cells by way of "reprisal" for the
segregation in England of captured German submarine crews.

Because the truth about Neuve Chapelle remained
suppressed for many weeks, attention was bestowed to
an overshadowing degree on the gas and officer-imprisonment
episodes.  Hitherto the universal demand
in England was that, no matter how the Germans
waged war, Englishmen must continue to fight "like
gentlemen."  Suggestions that the hour had long since
arrived for an eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth
warfare were rejected in almost every quarter as
"un-English" and, therefore, undebatable.  The Kaiser's
soldateska might rape, pillage, loot and murder, but
British troops must battle "in the old-fashioned
way"--with clean hands.  Tirpitz's bluejackets might
practise the tactics of pirates, but Britannia's sailors would
continue to respect the high traditions of their calling.
Men went so far as to asseverate that it were better
that Britain should be beaten than win by "German
methods."  Sir Edward Clarke, the leader of the bar,
protesting against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's proposal
that Zeppelin murders could only be checked by British
air reprisals against defenseless German communities,
wrote to *The Times*: "It may be our misfortune to be
defeated in this war, but it will be our own fault if
we are disgraced."  Yet British "fighting blood"
seemed at length stirred to a boil by asphyxiating-gas
and "Hate" measures against British officer-captives.
A wave of holy rage swept over the country.  Those
who had advocated the use of kid gloves against an
enemy which fought with brass knuckles and poison
found their views sensibly less popular.  Britain was
waking at last to the realization which even the Belgian
atrocities, "Zeppelin murder" and the "Scarborough
baby-killers" had not fully aroused--that her
high-minded "sporting ethics" were lamentably out of place
in war with a foe which believed in ruthless
"Frightfulness."  The Tommies who died horrible deaths from
the effects of German poison gas and the officers who
languished in burglars' cells because martyrs in a
worthy cause--their anguish convinced England
almost against her will that the German was the most
ferocious, pitiless and unconscionable enemy who had
ever engaged in the noble calling of arms.

While this healthy conviction was soaking into
Britain's sluggish consciousness, the crowning infamy of
the *Lusitania* massacre was committed.  The cup of
indignation, already full to the brim, now overflowed.
Demand for vengeance, in the form of a campaign
against the Germans to be waged with resolution and
force more destructive than any previous effort, was
universal.  There must be no more temporizing, no
more half measures, no more vacillation and procrastination.
Recruiting enjoyed a fresh spurt, a response
to the lurid posters headed "Remember the *Lusitania*!"
and reproducing the verdict of the Queenstown coroner's jury

.. vspace:: 2

"that this appalling crime was contrary to international
law and the conventions of all civilized nations,
and we therefore charge the officers of the said
submarine, the Emperor and Government of Germany,
under whose orders they acted, with the crime of wilful
and wholesale murder before the tribunal of the
civilized world."

"It is your duty," the poster added, "to take up the
Sword of Justice to avenge this devil's work.  ENLIST TO-DAY!"

.. vspace:: 2

The *Lusitania* horror unchained the mob spirit from
Land's End to John o' Groat.  Uninterned Germans,
who were still at large in their thousands, were the
victims of rioters' fury in London and the big
provincial towns, and the Home Office was forced by
irate public opinion to place barbed-wire around all the
"enemy aliens" not already in captivity.  Simultaneously
the demand went forth that the pampering of German
prisoners of war in palatial manor-houses like
Dorington Hall should give way to rigor more suitable for
men condemned henceforth to be known as Huns.  The
*Lusitania's* aftermath was accompanied by ample proof
that the bulldog was no longer curled up on the
hearth-rug as unconcernedly as he had been throughout the
winter and spring.  He was showing his teeth, and he
was snarling.  He meant business now.  There had
been enough of Queensbury rules, Hurlingham ethics
and Crystal Palace niceties in dealing with the
Germans.  They had served notice to Humanity that it
had no laws which the German army and navy felt
bound to respect.  Englishmen said to themselves:
"So be it."  Then they rolled up their sleeves.

Thus was Britain ringing with righteous wrath in
the middle of May, 1915, when what I venture to
dignify as *the turning-point of the war* arrived: the
exposure by Lord Northcliffe's newspapers of what was
henceforth to be known as "the shells tragedy."
Northcliffe himself had recently been the guest of Sir
John French at the front.  Still more lately the
military critic of *The Times*, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles
Repington, had visited British Field Headquarters
under the same auspices.  There they were told the truth
about Neuve Chapelle.  It was a simple story.  The
British army had essayed to smash through the
German lines, hopelessly short of the right kind of
ammunition--high explosive shells.  Batteries of artillery,
often on the threshold of decisive victory, found
themselves suddenly starved of the only sort of shell which
could possibly blast a way through the concrete and
barbed-wire of the enemy's entrenchments.  What
happened at Neuve Chapelle--a terribly heavy loss of
British life with nothing like compensatory results--would
inevitably happen again when the British army
was called upon to attack.  It would simply be
sentenced to death and defeat.  Sir John French had been
provided with shrapnel which was good enough to
smash the Boers, but he was criminally ill-equipped
with the shells which alone were capable of demolishing
the elaborate German defensive arrangements and
enabling the British infantry to advance with a fighting
chance of success.  If the army was not to be
condemned to inglorious impotence or annihilation, it had
to be provided forthwith with high-explosive ammunition
on an immense and unceasing scale.  The British
Commander-in-Chief declined, in effect, to assume
further responsibility for the fate of the campaign in
Flanders unless there was sweeping and instant
remedial action by the War Office.

On May 14 Lieutenant-Colonel Repington, in a
dispatch to *The Times* from "Northern France," which,
like other news from the field, passed the Censor at
Headquarters before transmission to England, declared
that "the want of an unlimited supply of high explosive
was a fatal bar to our success."  Describing an attack
which had collapsed for the same reason that the
offensive at Neuve Chapelle had failed, Repington
wrote:

.. vspace:: 2

"We found the enemy much more strongly posted
than we expected.  We had not sufficient high explosive
to level his parapets to the ground after the French
practice, and when our infantry gallantly stormed the
trenches, as they did in both attacks, they found a
garrison undismayed, many entanglements still intact,
and maxims on all sides ready to pour in streams of
bullets.  We could not maintain ourselves in the
trenches won, and our reserves were not thrown in
because the conditions for success in an assault were
not present.

"The attacks were well planned and valiantly
conducted.  The infantry did splendidly, but the
conditions were too hard.

"On our side we have easily defeated all attacks on
Ypres.  The value of German troops in the attack has
greatly deteriorated, and we can deal easily with them
in the open.  But until we are thoroughly equipped
for this trench warfare, we attack under grave
disadvantages.  The men are in high spirits, taking their cue
from the ever-confident and resolute attitude of the
Commander-in-Chief.

"If we can break through this hard outer crust of the
German defenses, we believe that we can scatter the
German Armies, whose offensive causes us no concern
at all.  But to break this hard crust we need more high
explosive, more heavy howitzers, and more men.  This
special form of warfare has no precedent in history.

"It is certain that we can smash the German crust if
we have the means.  So the means we must have, and
as quickly as possible."

.. vspace:: 2

By way of illustrating what British guns could do,
if sufficiently numerous and adequately fed, Repington
told how the French "by dint of the expenditure of
276 rounds of high explosive per gun in one day,
leveled with the ground all the German defenses, except
the villages."  He left no doubt that until Sir John
French's artillery could attack under similar
conditions, British hopes of effective cooperation with
Joffre's army were futile.  *The Times* critic's
plain-spoken observations, which bore the unmistakable
imprint of "inspiration" from British Headquarters,
startled the nation.  They could hardly have been more
suggestive if the Commander-in-Chief himself had
gone to the country and proclaimed the facts.  Indeed,
if others had not promptly done so, I have reason to
believe that Sir John French would not have shrunk
from that very task.  No one had so direct and
personal a reason for taking the bull by the horns, for if
the British campaign were to degenerate from futility
into fiasco, the odium would necessarily fall upon its
field chieftain.  History will hardly condemn him for
resolving that the blame should be placed where it
belonged, if, as may well have been the case, inspiration
of the impending public exposure emanated from him.

On May 21 Lord Northcliffe's *Daily Mail*--his
critics are fond of calling *The Times* the "penny
edition" of *The Daily Mail*--opened a ruthless fire on
Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, as
the man directly responsible for the high-explosive
famine which was paralyzing British military
effort.  England was plastered with flaming placards
reading: "Kitchener's Tragic Blunder."  With the
journalistic instinct for a catch-phrase, Northcliffe
christened the situation "The Shells Tragedy."  He
hammered home mercilessly the theory that England
must hold to accountability the man whom the country
had entrusted with practically autocratic control of the
War Office.  He insisted that Kitchener could not take
shelter behind a brilliant past.  It was a bold throw for
the Bonaparte of British newspaperdom.  He was not
only assailing the man whom he himself had helped
to elevate to the War Secretaryship; he was
attacking the national idol.  To the overwhelming
majority of Englishmen, as I have already pointed out,
the name of Kitchener spelled confidence.  Next to
the Fleet, he represented the country's greatest
war asset.  Whenever Britons doubted whether the
course of events was leading to victory, they thought
of the navy and of Kitchener, and were of stout
heart.  Northcliffe knew and understood all this--none
better.  But he said to himself that the relief of
the shells crisis was of vastly more moment than the
prestige of a national idol; that if the vital interests of
the country demanded the dragging of Kitchener from
his pedestal, there must be no hesitation in performing
that unpleasant task.  In an editorial article which
stirred Great Britain to its uttermost foundations, *The
Daily Mail* went full tilt to the issue.  It reminded
Englishmen that Lord Kitchener loomed large in the
public eye primarily as an organizer of victory against
the Sudanese and as a man who had "helped" Lord
Roberts in South Africa, though (it recalled) there
were men who knew Roberts' private opinions of
Kitchener's achievements in the Boer campaign.
Kitchener had also been Commander-in-Chief in India
and, until the outbreak of war, was engaged in the
comparatively easy task of running the Egyptian
machine, whose wheels had been so well oiled by Lord
Cromer.  Northcliffe was well aware that Kitchener,
owing to his long absence in the East, where he had
spent the greater part of his life, was not in touch with
the democracy at home, nor had Lord Kitchener ever
pretended to any such knowledge.  *The Daily Mail*
admitted all these things and declared moreover that it
was fair to Kitchener to say that he had been thrust at
a moment's notice into a position of immense difficulty.
No longer in his first youth, and more than twice the
age of successful military commanders of one hundred
years ago, Kitchener had been put in charge of the
raising, drilling, clothing, equipping, arming, feeding
and *fighting* of an army which had to be manufactured
at a speed unprecedented in the history of the world.
Kitchener, though not essentially a good organizer, was
a man of enormous driving-power.  His talents in that
respect had stood him in good stead so far in the war.
With the aid of a gigantic advertising campaign, he had
accomplished marvels in the direction of raising a
volunteer army; but "the shells tragedy" was thunderous
proof that the Secretary for War had bitten off more
than he could chew.  Unless things were to go from
bad to worse, the all-important question of providing
munitions must be taken from Kitchener's overburdened
shoulders and transferred to those of men better
equipped in respect of time, temperament and training,
to deal with it.  The Northcliffe revelations lost none
of their sensationalism in presence of Mr. Asquith's
solemn assurances at Newcastle, barely three weeks
previous, that Britain's munition supply, as well as
that of her Allies, was entirely adequate.

If Northcliffe had suddenly proposed the abdication
of the Sovereign, or the demolition of St. Paul's
Cathedral, or the proclamation of a Republic, nothing could
have been more cyclonic in its effect than *The Daily
Mail's* imperious demand for the curtailment of
Kitchener's supreme authority at the War Office,
because he had "blundered" with the army's ammunition.
At the Stock Exchange and on the Baltic (the
shipping mart) copies of all the Northcliffe papers
were ceremoniously burnt.  Town councils held
indignation meetings, to discuss the advisability of banning
them from the public reading-rooms.  Super-patriots
and Hide-the-Truth zealots rushed to their newsdealers
and canceled their subscriptions to *The Times, The
Daily Mail* and other Northcliffe organs.  Rival
publishers went so far as to suggest that Northcliffe and
his editorial staff should be lined up in front of a
firing-squad and shot for high treason.  Wherever one
went, one encountered the most violent abuse of the
journalist who had dared to sling mud at the great
soldier who was the incarnation of the nation's hopes
and to write "Failure" next to his magic name.  *Punch*
epitomized national sentiment in a cartoon showing
John Bull patting Kitchener on the shoulder, trampling
a *Daily Mail* under foot, and saying:

.. vspace:: 2

"If you need assurance, Sir, you may like to know
that you have the loyal support of all decent people in
this country."

.. vspace:: 2

But Northcliffe, who possesses those valuable twin
assets of the true journalist, an elephantine hide and
utter fearlessness, returned to the attack, day after
day.  He never let up.  The "shells tragedy," though
Liberal organs were reluctant to admit it, dealt the
Asquith Liberal Government a body blow.  It was
reeling from the effects of still another revelation.
Lord Fisher, "Fighting Jack," the First Lord of the
Admiralty, tendered his resignation.  He refused
longer to hold office under the temperamental
Mr. Winston Churchill or even under a government to
which that impetuous young statesman belonged.  The
public learned that Fisher had not acquiesced
whole-heartedly in Mr. Churchill's schemes for limiting the
Dardanelles campaign to a purely naval operation.
England was now seething with unrest.  The political
position was chaotic.  Acrimonious debate in Parliament on
the shells question was inevitable.  For weeks
previous there had been demands from many quarters that
the conduct of the war should be transferred from a
purely Party Government to the hands of a "National
Cabinet" of all political complexions.  Mr. Asquith
yielded to the inevitable.  Before *The Daily Mail's*
exposure of "Kitchener's Tragic Blunder" was a week
old, the reconstruction of the Cabinet into a
"Coalition" Administration was in full progress.
Northcliffe's papers were still being burnt in public places,
but he had won a victory for England for which, as
she lives, she will yet come to acclaim his name.  The
completion of the Coalition Ministry was announced
on June 11.  Lord Kitchener remained Secretary of
War, but a "Ministry of Munitions," which took shells
and other sinews of war out of Kitchener's hands, was
created, and the "hustler" of the Cabinet, Lloyd-George,
was entrusted with its organization and
administration.  Northcliffe had carried his point.

The war has not been prolific in England of "big
men."  Barring, perhaps, Joffre and Hindenburg, it
has produced none anywhere.  But I venture that far
into the realm of prophecy to predict that the recorder
of the life and times of Great Britain in the crucible
which was 1915 will pay no mean tribute to the
newspaper proprietor who risked prestige and power for
the sake of that most prodigious of all tasks--stuffing
unpalatable truth down British throats.  Northcliffe's
actual methods in the performance of the deed may
have been debatable.  His motives were certainly
beyond question, and they will, undoubtedly, appear in
true perspective in the impartial light of history.  He
is not offended when people detect Napoleonic flashes
in his impetuous eccentricities, and he would be the
last man in the world to deny that his brand of genius
is entirely devoid of defects, as it assuredly is not.
Northcliffe has been held up to public obloquy
as hardly any man of his generation ever was
before him and has even been charged with being
in "German pay."  But he has lived to see the
ripening of the fruits of his sensational crusade: the
British munitions output has been quadrupled since the
Stock Exchange first burnt *The Daily Mail*.  Lloyd-George,
at the Ministry of Munitions, has gathered
round him the strongest company of business and
scientific brains that was ever applied to any Government
department in England.  One million men and women,
in more than two thousand "controlled" establishments,
are turning out days, nights and Sundays the
shells with which the British army, early or late, is
going to cleave its way to victory.  In the great fighting
around Loos at the end of September, when the French
and the British between them fired 65,000,000 shells
in seventy-two hours, there was no shortage of the
wherewithal, the lack of which turned Neuve Chapelle
into a "victory" which Britain had been better without.
A prodigious amount of high explosive was necessary
to wreck the Germans' first defensive lines in Artois,
but still the supply was not exhausted.  When the
cease-fire was sounded, the British commanders found that
they had on hand a great deal more ammunition than
they expected, and in certain departments there was
actually a greater quantity ready for the gunners at
the end of the struggle than at the beginning.
Mr. Lloyd-George received and was entitled to the chief
glory for that splendid assurance that there would be
no more Neuve Chapelles.  But I am sure that the
little Welshman who has accomplished the miracle of
"speeding up" Britain would be the first to acknowledge
that *The Daily Mail*, though its circulation is
150,000 less than it was in May, can not be robbed of
the honor that belongs to it for having torn the scales
from England's eyes on the "shells tragedy."

Previous to the "shells tragedy," I do not think it
will be possible for even the friendliest chroniclers to
record that, with the single exception of the
magnificent rush to arms of her upper and middle classes,
Great Britain had given a particularly flattering
account of herself in the searching test of war.  I do
not refer, of course, to the accomplishments of the
army and navy.  British soldiers and sailors need no
encomium at my hands.  The Trojan heroism of the
army, despite its lack of sweeping victory, will enrich
military history for all time.  The silent effectiveness
of the navy, with its vindication of Admiral Mahan's
theories, is the marvel of the war.  I am referring to
the conduct of the British who have not been in the
war as combatants--to the moral psychic aspect of
life in this country during the year of travail.  That is
why I call the *Lusitania* a blessing in disguise, just
as I sometimes felt that a landing of a German force
on the British coasts, had it only taken place soon
enough, might have proved the most practically
beneficial tonic to the British war spirit which could have
been conceived.  Something was needed to *bring the
war home* to Englishmen.  The *Lusitania* partially
served the purpose.

The renaissance set in with the dawn of summer.
Events did not give recruiting quite that "boom" which
was expected, but the national sobering process which
ensued was more than a compensating factor.
Lloyd-George, inevitable and irrepressible, invented
the doctrine that "silver bullets" (money) and
Germany's "potato-bread spirit" (economy) were now as
urgently necessary for Britain to win as high-explosives
with which to kill Germans.  Only a few weeks
before becoming "Shells Minister" and while still
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd-George introduced
the second War Budget, which gave Britons a staggering
idea of what killing Germans meant in mere lucre.
It was costing $15,000,000 a day then--in May--and
the scale was crescendo, not diminuendo.  Lloyd-George
declared that the nation's bills could not be met unless
the country went over, horse, foot and dragoon, to the
Simple Life.  The Prime Minister seconded his appeal
for the radical regeneration of British life--a
conversion from recklessness to Spartanism--with some
eloquent figures.  In a "keynote speech" at Guildhall,
Mr. Asquith declared that "waste, on the part either of
individuals or of classes, which is always foolish and
shortsighted, is in these times nothing short of a
national danger."  The United Kingdom's annual
income, the Premier explained, was between $11,250,000,000
and $12,000,000,000.  Annual expenditure
aggregated about $10,000,000,000.  The country,
therefore, saved under normal conditions between
$1,250,000,000 and $2,000,000,000.  But the necessities
of "our seven wars" (in different parts of the
hemisphere) required Britons to save about two and a half
times what they customarily put away.  They needed
to store up $5,000,000,000 instead of $2,000,000,000
a year.  In other words, they must reorganize their
scheme and standards of living--and of spending--so
that they saved $50 for every $20 saved in the
past.  In no other conceivable way, said the Prime
Minister, could Great Britain shoulder the burden of
a struggle already costing her at the rate of
$5,475,000,000 a year.  To ask the notoriously most
extravagant people in Europe--the returns from the United
States are not in yet--to "economize" on the Brobdingnagian
lines which these figures conjured up was a very
tall order, indeed.

But the gassed Tommies back from the trenches and
the widows and the orphans manufactured by the
*Lusitania* and the impregnability of the German lines were
uppermost in England's mind, and she set her jaw to
the inevitable.  The Simple Life did not find itself
among friends in the midst of a race which believes
in a maximum of servants on a minimum of income;
whose very homes and kitchens are the paradise of
wasters; which venerates leisure, week-ends, "good
addresses" and "parties"; which left the omnibuses to the
crowd and scorned anything beneath the rank of a taxi
for the truly well-born; which would gladly go poor for
a week for the sake of a Saturday lunch at the Piccadilly
grill and a supper at the Savoy, with a theater and
a music-hall between, and Murray's afterward till
dawn; which, while never ostentatious, was addicted
to luxury; which worshiped golf, football, bridge and
horse-racing like liberty itself, and which drank like
sailors all.

But the ax of retrenchment was infinitely preferable
to the sword of Damocles.  Lords and ladies, "gentry"
and common folk, prepared to make the best of it.
Prohibition, mainly to enforce sobriety on the
working classes, was considered by the Government, but
not for long, for there was a mighty howl from the
"trade" and from its bibulous votaries, who in
England include both sexes, all classes and nearly every
age.  Restriction, not prohibition, was adopted as a
compromise.  In the "munition areas" the saloons were
closed at the hours when, in former times, working
men were most inclined to squander their wages
on debilitating ale and alcohol.  Everywhere a
"No-drinks-before-10-A.-M." decree was promulgated, and,
simultaneously, it became a misdemeanor for a
restaurant, saloon, hotel, bar or even a private club to
dispense liquor after ten o'clock at night.  Clubland in
Pall Mall, St. James's and Piccadilly groaned, and
there was gnashing of teeth among the "nuts" (young
bloods) and the ladies of the chorus.  But people found
they had more money for bread and butter, potatoes,
vegetables and meat, which were costing semi-famine
prices as it was, and there were fewer besot wrecks of
women in the Strand, and almost no intoxicated men
in khaki.  War manifestly had its blessings, too.  One
met unfamiliar people in the plebeian motor-buses,
who at first wrapped their evening-coats exclusively
and close around them, for contact with the common
clay was still new and strange.  It became positively
fashionable to be a cheese-parer.  You were no longer
considered "bad form" if you went straight home from
the theater, and confessed why.  If my lady of
Mayfair did not close up her house in South Audley Street
or Park Lane altogether, to live in "chambers" or
some cozy country cottage, which was also cheap, she
at least shut up the drawing-rooms, dispensed with a
maid or two, cut out the most expensive courses at
her dinners, when she gave any at all, and didn't mind
if her guests turned up in day clothes.

The plutocratic peer who ordinarily maintained a
"place" at the seashore, an estate in Middlesex or
Devon, and a town-house in Berkeley Square had
probably long ago handed over the "place" and the
estate for military hospital purposes--hardly a
mansion or manor-house in England to-day is devoted to
any other use--and now retrenchment became for him
the order of the day in London, too.  His stable of
thoroughbreds almost vanished in the early days of
the war, for the needs of the cavalry and the artillery
were insatiable and undiscriminating, and now his
*garage* was down to a war basis--the most plebeian car
he ever drove; the others were in army service either in
England or "somewhere in France."  Sackville Street
and Albemarle Street, Bond Street and Regent Street,
where smart clothes and other expensive trinkets for
men and women were formerly sold, became deserted.
Men's tailors displayed nothing but khaki in their
windows, and Paquin's, Redfern's and Worth's languished
as if England were famine-blighted.  Society faded
away as if pestilence had swept Uppertendom into
oblivion.  Women of Britain's first families were
almost ashamed to be seen in anything more chic than
the livery of mourning, and by midsummer of 1915
black was pitiably fashionable and omnipresent.
"Entertaining" had been a lost art for months.  "Going
in for it" now seemed and was sacrilege.  Indulged at
all, it was excusable only if it had the extenuating
excuse of having been arranged, and then in the most
modest of ways, for one's wounded or recuperating
officer friends, back from Hell or on the eve of going
there--"somewhere in France."  It was war-time in
England at last.

If I have seemed to emphasize that the reconstruction
of British life, after bitterly hard knocks on land
and sea pounded some realization of their task's
magnitude into Englishmen's heads, went on chiefly in the
upper and upper-middle classes, it is precisely the
impression I seek to convey.  It is they alone, to date,
who have taken the full measure of Britain's terrible
emergency and acted accordingly.  Even that statement
requires qualification, for the fools' paradise is
not even to-day inhabited exclusively by the benighted
lower strata of the population.  Neuve Chapelle,
asphyxiating gas and the *Lusitania* had passed into
history a full month before, yet there lingers painfully
in my memory the recollection of a country-house
week-end party broken up because Englishwomen of
"class" objected to hearing a fellow-guest venture
the opinion that dear old England would better
"wake up" to the fact that calm alone, mighty an asset
as it was, could not "march to Berlin" against an
enemy like the Germans.  These ladies were interesting
as types.  Their name was legion, and many
of them, as an Irishman might say, were men.
Common sense, prized of Anglo-Saxon virtues, and
tolerance, its twin sister, lost their old-time hold on many
millions in these isles during the war.  The
"Anti-German Union," which was founded by well-meaning
noblemen and noblewomen for the purpose of organizing
hate of the Teuton and all his works, perhaps set
itself an unethical goal, but the psychology at the
bottom of the movement was wholesome; it was all to the
good, because it was sharpening the bulldog's teeth.
It committed uncouth excesses like sending interrupters
to the German Church service in Montpelier Place,
forgetting that my esteemed friend, the Reverend
Mr. Williams, the Anglican chaplain in Berlin, was never
prevented from assembling his uninterned flock for
worship at St. George's in Montbijou-Platz.  Far
less excusable than the "Anti-German Union's"
super-patriotic eccentricities was the smug intolerance of
enormous numbers of British toward elementary
questions of the war.  They would hear nothing
of the Germans unless it was discreditable.  I
would write in my "Germany Day by Day" column in
*The Daily Mail* that there were growing indications
(let us say) that the enemy was still at fighting
zenith--his stock of men, materials and provisions still
far from exhausted.  The next day's post would
invariably bring me denunciatory letters from
anonymous members of the public.  I was "pro-German."  I
was "a German agent."  I was "playing the enemy's
game."  Englishmen didn't "care to read the twaddle
of a man who was still so enamored of the Hun capital
where he so long lived."  And when I wrote of American
exasperation with British shipping practises in war,
an English patriot induced my editor to print a letter
in retort, "praying passionately for preservation from
the candid friend."  Other correspondents did not
confine their observations to supplication.  They were
the high privates, these human ostriches, of the Grand
Army of Truth-Hiders, who, commanded by great
editors in Fleet Street and ably abetted by the Censorship,
preferred palatable fiction to iron facts.  It is they
who kept John Bull lulled in complacent slumber for
most of the first year of the war and are doing their
diabolical best to administer sleeping-powder even now.

Yet, by and large, the section of the British public
which does its thinking above its gaiter-tops was
effectually roused from its dreams as Armageddon's initial
twelvemonth approached its finish.  It was the
sub-stratum which could not be roused from the stupor
of indifference.  The war had brought mourning and
desolation to the upper-class homes of England.  The
havoc wrought in the ranks of the peerage and other
dignities is poignantly summarized in the new *Debrett*.
Ten per cent. of the British officers who have died in
the war were in the pages of *Debrett's Peerage,
Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage*, and in the
issue for 1916, just published, the War Roll of Honor
of the dead comprises eight hundred names.  In it
appear one member of the Royal Family--Prince
Maurice of Battenberg; six peers, sixteen baronets, six
knights, and seven members of Parliament, one
hundred sixty-four knights companion, ninety-five sons of
peers, eighty-two sons of baronets, and eighty-four
sons of knights.  Two successive heirs to the earldom
of Loudoun fell, and the death of Lord Worsdey
affected the succession to three separate peerages, the
earldom of Yarborough and the baronies of
Fauconberg and Conyers.  Succession has been unduly
precipitated, or the normal descent changed, in over
one hundred instances by the casualties of the war.
The peer, the professional man, or the merchant,
had had an almost annihilating blow struck at his
fortune.  Things during the past year had dealt
these classes a vicious thrust.  But working-class and
lower-class Britain were actually profiting from the
war.  Wages were inordinately high--despite
trade-unionism's unceasing clamor.  Unemployment no longer
existed.  There were no soup-kitchens along the
Embankment.  The Salvation Army's poor-relief system
was almost without an excuse.  Families of clerks and
working men--many thousands of whom were
volunteers in Kitchener's armies--were, thanks to
generous separation allowances paid by the War Office,
almost better off than in the days when the bread-winner
was at home.  For the British proletariat Mars seemed
almost a savior.  He had brought it unwonted
prosperity.  The temper in which a vast portion of the
"downtrodden" looked upon their new-born affluence
was that self-preservation, being the first law of
nature, insistently demanded nothing from them which
would precipitately evict them from Easy Street.  The
Grand Fleet protected lower-class England from the
only blow which could conceivably have knocked sense
into it--invasion.  As that did not and could not occur,
Shepherd's Bush envisaged war not as an unmixed evil,
but as something better, somehow, than peace had
ever been.  It is all woefully at loggerheads with
Norman Angell's theories of the "devastating economic
influence of war."  But the immutable fact is that
working-class Britain, despite the havoc the war has
played with trade, incomes and high finance generally,
finds itself, despite even the higher cost of living, at
least on as prosperous a level as at any time in its
contemporary history.  It may be a myopic view, but it
explains, in my judgment, much of the proletariat's
amazing apathy toward the crucial national emergency.

The building of the New England is still in progress.
The melting-pot is full.  Years will elapse before the
finished product leaves the crucible.  The process of
transition, however, has made enormous strides.
Adversity is a wonderful reorganizer.  The physiognomy
of things long held unchangeable is altered almost
beyond recognition.  It is a better England already,
as well as a new one.  Above all, Democracy has not
failed in the supreme test.  The spectacle of three
million men, uncoerced, responsive and responsible to no
law but their own conscience, marching out to death
and glory that England may live, is a sublime picture,
which will blot out and overshadow much of the
bungling and many of the disasters and excrescences of
the past.

If I have seemed to dwell with insistence and even
cynicism upon "British calm" amid the thunders,
let me here and now subscribe unqualifiedly to the view
that it remains, when all is said and done, a
magnificent achievement second only to the demonstration
of Voluntaryism as a Democracy's first line of defense.
Britannia will continue to rule the waves mainly
because she was calm when they surged about her most
angrily.





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.. _`QUO VADIS?`:

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   CHAPTER XXII


.. class:: center medium

   QUO VADIS?

.. vspace:: 2

October, 1915.  The eighty-third day of the
second year of war.  A woman, writing in
*The Times*, suggests that England adopt as her
national prayer, "God help us win this war."  King
George V, emerging at length from the No Man's
Land of Constitutional Irresponsibility, appeals,
stirringly, "to my people" to save the sinking bark of
Voluntary military service.  It is the calm before the
Conscription storm.  The Sovereign discourses upon "the
grave moment in the struggle" and calls for "men of
all classes to come forward and take their share in the
fight in order that another may not inherit the free
Empire which their ancestors and mine have built."  The
King hints at "the darkest moment" which, from time
immemorial, "has ever produced in men of our race
the sternest resolve."

Britain's horizon is clouded, wherever one looks.
No forced optimism can blink iron facts.  In the East,
Russia is paralyzed for months to come, even if not
"crushed."  Her fortresses, "deemed impregnable,"
writes Lloyd-George in the preface of his compiled
war speeches, "are falling like sand castles before the
resistless tide of Teutonic invasion."  The
"steam-roller" must go into winter quarters.  In the West,
the great Anglo-French offensive in Artois and the
Champagne punctures the German front and advances
the Allied lines two or three miles.  The German losses
are her severest of the war--140,000, so the French
say, including vast heaps of dead, whole regiments of
maimed and at least 25,000 prisoners and 145 field-guns.
But the victory, substantial and promising as
it is, has been dearly bought.  The Germans claim that
the preliminary seventy-two-hour bombardment
represented an expenditure of 65,000,000 shells--mostly of
American production, so allege the "inspired"
war-correspondents at German headquarters, with sneering
references to "blood-smeared dollars."  The Allies'
casualties are not tabulated.  They are only known to
be cruelly heavy.  Englishmen fear there has been
another Neuve Chapelle.  Joffre and French have
demonstrated that the German front is not quite
impenetrable.  But the enemy, on his part, has shown that
for the Allies to "break through" in the West is a task
fraught with peril and toll sickening to contemplate.

General Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief at
the Dardanelles, has been recalled "to report."  Another
British general, unnamed, is dismissed for having
led an army into a shambles at Suvla Bay.  The
campaign in Gallipoli is a tacitly acknowledged failure.
General Sir Charles Monro is hurried to Turkey to
succeed Hamilton and retrieve the fortunes of an
expedition which has already cost 100,000 casualties, a trio
of battleships, a transport full of troops, and
heart-breaking incalculable.  There are ugly rumors that the
Allies, facing the inevitable, are about to abandon the
ill-starred Dardanelles venture, and try their luck
elsewhere.  Against the German-led Turks twelve miles
of precarious "front" with a back to the sea is all
Anglo-Colonial-French valor has been able to achieve.
But misfortune has dogged the Allies in fields remote
from the actual theaters of war.  While Germanic-Turko
armies have been wrecking their military hopes
East, West and Near East, Allied diplomacy has been
disastrously foiled in the pivotal Balkans.  Bulgaria,
deemed friendly, though venal, openly goes over to
the enemy.  Sir Edward Grey, like his fellow-idol,
Kitchener, is under withering fire.  He is
charged with permitting Berlin to score a victory which
might have been London's if British diplomacy had
been characterized by less tentativeness of policy and
greater impetuosity of deed.  It seems the old story--"too
late."  "Have we a Foreign Office?" bitterly asks
Fleet Street.  But the cup of disappointment is not full
even yet.  Greece, too, is recreant.  She mobilizes,
supposedly as a pro-Ally counterstroke to the pro-German
Bulgarian menace, for is not the King of the Hellenes
bound by solemn treaty to join Peter of Serbia in the
eventuality of attack by Ferdinand of Sofia?  But
Downing Street failed to reckon with King "Tino" of
Athens and his Hohenzollern consort, the Kaiser's
favorite sister, Sophia.  Premier Venizelos, the Allies'
hope, is forced to resign.  Greece remains "neutral,"
between German Charybdis and English Scylla, as King
Constantine himself describes his plight.  She shuts
her eyes to the nebulous Allied expeditionary force
landed at Salonica and "rushed" precipitately at the
eleventh hour to the relief of the Serbs, who are
even now threatened with annihilation between the
German-Austrians on the north and west, and the
back-stabbing Bulgars on the east.  Belgrade falls.  Uskub
is captured.  The Salonica line to Nish is cut.
Germany's "road to Constantinople" is open.  The Kaiser
can get there now before the Allies.  Diplomacy grasps
at a last straw.  Cyprus, annexed from Turkey by
Britain early in the war, is offered to Greece if she will
fling her army into the breach.  In Athens, it appears,
dictates of self-preservation govern.  Revealing a
highly-developed Missourian trait, Greece asks to be
"shown."  By active operations against the Germanic
Powers and Bulgaria, assisted by mere promises of
more Allied reinforcements via Salonica or the driblets
already sent, Greece fears to share Belgium and
Serbia's fate.  If the Allies will send 400,000 troops
to the Balkans--or about twice as many as have been
pounding fruitlessly at the Dardanelles--Greece might
change her mind.  The suggestion inspires little
enthusiasm in England.  Kitchener and French can
doubtless spare the men.  But the equipment of
another huge British army for operations in the Near
East in time to turn the tables is a taller order.
Meantime Mackensen and Gallwitz batter their way across
the Serbian ranges.  In London there are anxious
doubts whether there will even be any Serbian army to
"relieve" by the time the Allies place an effective
rescuing expedition in the decisive theater.  Serbia begins
to look uncomfortably like another Belgium--Salonica
like ill-starred Antwerp.  Blunder and procrastination
were ever the parents of disaster.

So much for the military and political situation,
which even the Truth-Hiders begin to see in its true
colors.  But if things were "messed" abroad--in the
West and in the Near East--muddle and bungle were
even more rampant at home.  Take the Zeppelins.
They first visited these shores in January, 1915.  In
October Press and Parliament commenced for the first
time seriously to investigate the adequacy of Britain's
"aerial defenses," with the result that chaotic
demoralization and systemless go-as-you-please were
found to prevail.  Sir Percy Scott, the country's
greatest gunnery expert, had been in charge of London's
defenses against the sky-pirates, but it appeared that
his guns were ineffective, his gunners untrained for
the highly specialized feat of hitting mile-high
targets flying in the dark, and things in general
unorganized and more or less futile.  The Press Bureau
condescendingly parted with an abstract story of the
latest and most disastrous raid of all over "the
London area."  People derived lively satisfaction from
its disclosure that the metropolis was "cool" and
unafraid under fire.  Only a few courageous
"alarmists" read the signs of the times aright and demand
that some life and efficiency forthwith be injected into
the "anti-aircraft" department, lest, when Count
Zeppelin's range-finding practise cruises across London are
finished, an armada of German airships sail across the
Channel and reduce the heart of the Empire, ever calm,
to a smoking ash-heap before Sir Percy Scotts'
defense is perfected.  There was anxious talk of
bringing over "expert gunners" from France--in October,
after nearly ten months and after twenty-five Zeppelin
raids over English territory!

The while the elephant-hided Censorship, as if Britannia's
troubles were not all-sufficient, insisted upon
making itself more of an international laughing-stock
and object of world contempt than ever.  It censored
Kipling's *Recessional* in a battle-story from France.
It deleted a quotation from Browning in another
narrative from the front.  It cut out a famous war
correspondent's tribute to the bravery of the enemy.  It
eliminated a reference to Chatham, England's greatest War
Minister, because it confused him with the famous
British naval base from which he took his title.  It
refused to let out a single notch in the muzzle it has
attached even to the benevolently neutral American
Press, as represented by its accredited and notoriously
Anglophile correspondents in England.  It reveled in
concealment, deception and grotesqueness, though
concealing nothing from the enemy and everything from
England, deceiving exclusively the British public, and
making nobody grotesque except its egregious self.
Calls for the light at home, ridicule and criticism from
abroad, alike left the Censor unmoved.  The sparrows
cried from the housetops in ever more insistent accents
that all was not well with England, but the Censorship,
magnificently blind even to the Royal pronouncement
that Britons unfailingly respond when the hour is dark,
maintained imperiously that what it was well for the
country to know was for it, and it alone, to decide.  If
the British public were a transgressor, its way could not
have been harder.

Came Mr. Montagu, the Financial Secretary of the
Treasury, the reputed "budget genius" of the Government.
Britons must be prepared, he told them, "during
the year ahead, to disgorge to the State *not less than
one-half of their entire income*, either in the form of
taxes or loans."  Lord Reading's borrowing commission
to America was still on the water, the ink on its
$500,000,000 "credit loan" in New York not yet dry.
"I estimate our expenditure for the year," said
Mr. McKenna, the Finance Minister, in the House of
Commons, at "seven billions, nine hundred fifty million
dollars" (only he spoke in pounds).  "As our total
estimated revenue, inclusive of new taxes, is one billion,
five hundred twenty-five million dollars, the deficit for
the year will be six billion, four hundred twenty-five
million dollars.  We have now to contemplate a Navy
costing for the current year $950,000,000, an Army
costing $3,575,000,000, and external advances to our
Allies (Russia, France, Italy, Serbia and Belgium)
amounting to $2,115,000,000."

Then the merciless Chancellor of the Exchequer
acquainted Parliament with his scheme for raising
a part of this Brobdingnagian revenue.  Free trade
must be partially shelved.  There will be a revenue
tariff on "luxury" imports.  Income-tax in 1916 will
be forty per cent. higher and will amount altogether
to about fifty cents on every five dollars earned.  Even
the man with $650 a year will pay, while "plutocrats"
with incomes above that figure will be mulcted even
more relentlessly.  He of $25,000 will pay $5,150, and
nabobs with $50,000, $100,000 and $500,000 per
annum (England has several in the latter category) will
contribute, respectively, $12,650, $30,150 and
$170,150.  War is hell.  No wonder a parliamentary wag,
on the day Mr. McKenna introduced "Conscription of
Wealth," interrupted with a merry "Why don't you
take it all?"

Up to December, 1915, the Government had asked
Parliamentary sanction for war credits aggregating
$6,500,000,000.  But even this staggering total (the
war was now costing $25,000,000 a day) was planned
to carry the campaign only up to the middle of
November.  The $500,000,000 loan transaction in the United
States only produced funds to be spent there, and it was
but half of what was asked.  It only indirectly relieves
the situation at home.  Allowing for the deficit carried
over from last year, the latest budget proposes taxes
amounting to $1,525,000,000 and loans aggregating
$6,425,000,000 for the fiscal year 1915-16.  But even
the most patriotic experts in Threadneedle Street
acknowledge the utter impossibility of raising
$6,425,000,000 of genuine money by public loan in Britain
per year.  They reluctantly predict that the Government
will soon be driven to extend its use of fictitious
money and paper--on the excoriated German model.
The war has already eaten toward the bottom of the
stockings and the strong-boxes of Britain where
American securities are stored.

As the financier not only of her own colossal
requirements in the war, but as banker for her allies,
England's money necessities are thus seen to be no less
urgent than her need of men and munitions.  They
comprise, these three M's, the trilogy on which the
existence of the Empire now depends.  British
performances in respect to the cash sinews of war have truly
been on a monumental scale.  History shows no
parallel for the achievement of raising at home in loans
and Treasury bills over $5,500,000,000 without
abandonment of the gold standard and without resort to
inconvertible paper, and yet keeping British credit at
an altitude which gives hard-headed Uncle Sam no
pause in taking John Bull's I-O-U for another half
billion.  It is an imperishable tribute to the stamina,
prestige, wealth and commercial fabric of the British
Empire and to the enterprise and ingenuity of the
merchants, manufacturers, shippers, bankers and traders
who have made their islands the center of the world's
exchanges and London the money-market of the universe.

.. _`Lord Northcliffe`:

.. figure:: images/img-380.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Lord Northcliffe

   Lord Northcliffe

But magnificent as has been the past, the financial
future can not be viewed except with anxiety.
Indebtedness has been piled up sky-high--out of every
twenty-five dollars spent since the war began, at least twenty
dollars has been borrowed.  That was possible
because of the superlative excellence of British credit.
"Our credit is now almost everything," explains *The
Economist*.  "It comes next to the Navy, and the two
can not be dissociated.  For if either suffer, our food
supplies would be in danger.  In one sense, credit is
at the mercy of the Government and of the Treasury,
for a great false step of policy or continuance in a false
course would bring disaster.  The responsibility of the
Prime Minister and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
and of the Cabinet, as a whole, is prodigious.
Whatever else we do, we must maintain our financial
equilibrium.  With that and the command of the seas,
we can not be defeated."

Manifestly Britain's economic problem is almost the
darkest spot on her overclouded war horizon--the
problem of meeting rising obligations out of falling
revenue.  The Empire suffers from no lack of men; its
physical resources are well-nigh inexhaustible.  If
patriotism does not send them to the trenches of their
own free will in adequate numbers, they will be
"fetched."  There is no longer any question of
shortage of munitions.  England's own vast industrial plant,
as well as that of France, is now occupied almost
exclusively in the production of man-killing merchandise
for the Allies and is turning it out at high pressure.  To
the manufacturing equipment of England and France
are harnessed, in addition, German bombs and
German-incited strikes to the contrary notwithstanding,
the limitless productive facilities of the United States
and Canada.  Britain's one and only nightmare is
money, and its corollary aspects, exchange and credit.

No estimate has so far appeared which fixes the
1916 deficit which England will have to meet at less
than $7,000,000,000, based on a total war cost for the
calendar year of $9,000,000,000.  How to grapple
with the gigantic task conjured up by such a prospect
is not engaging popular attention to any marked
degree, though upon its solution depends, primarily,
Britain's ability to conquer in this war of exhaustion.
With the palpable impossibility of raising the wind at
home by successive new public loans; with the
necessity to invoke such heroic measures as borrowing
$500,000,000 in America to bolster up sterling
exchange and keep British credit "intact"; with
Englishmen sacrificing their enormous holdings of American
securities for the same pious purpose; with the British
industrial plant so preoccupied with munitions that it
can neither, in accordance with tradition, pay for
British imports with British exports nor increase
British revenue by the same token; with national
expenditure advancing by gigantic leaps and national
income restricted as it never was before; with all these
immutable conditions staring at Englishmen, it is no
wonder that those of them who think, as distinguished
from those who merely hurrah, contemplate what
looms ahead with anxious concern.

But admittedly grave as the future is, it is by no
means hopeless.  Britain's plight is not "desperate," as
the Germans, seeking to hide their own, are so fond
of making believe.  Even the misgivings of Englishmen
themselves regarding their economic situation
would be promptly and legitimately resolved into
confidence if the community as a whole could be induced
to pull itself together and look facts in the face.  In its
incorrigible disinclination to do so alone lies danger.
The British Empire is not bankrupt.  It can hardly
ever become so.  A recent estimate assessed the income
of the Empire, including India, at something over the
fabulous sum of $20,000,000,000!  It may be
embarrassed--it is unquestionably that already--just as the
richest of men frequently are, in the midst of
titanic transactions which have outrun their
calculations.  But embarrassment seldom eventuates
in ruin, either for men or nations, if they come to grips
with it betimes.  Thus, disaster can only follow
tribulation in the case of Britain if her people, preferring
to wallow in happy-go-lucky nonchalance and drift,
postpone until too late those sagacious, clean-sweep
measures of reorganization and retrenchment which
alone, in the opinion of competent judges, can save the
situation.

In the preceding chapter I told of the introduction of
the Simple Life, of the dawn of the Economy Era in
war-time England; but it would be hyperbole to
intimate that it has been inaugurated on anything but a
superficial scale.  Luxury and self-indulgence are still
rife.  To vast numbers of people, in the classes as well
as the masses, the war, far from oppressing them, has
brought positive affluence, and with their new riches
they have gone in for spending instead of saving.
Spartanism in Britain remains a good deal of a theory;
it has not become a condition.  While Germany, shut off
by land and sea, contrives to remain at fighting zenith
without her customary imports of $2,500,000,000 a
year (she calls Jellicoe's blockade a blessing in disguise
because it has compelled her to spend at home what she
used to pay out abroad), England's imports of such
articles as oranges, cocoa, tea, coffee, tobacco, cheese, rice,
meats, pepper and onions have heavily exceeded her
importations of the same articles in corresponding peace
periods.[1]  The Prime Minister tells the country that
"victory seems likely to incline to the side which can
arm itself the best and stay the longest."  Mr. Asquith
declares that "that is what we meant to do."  But until,
for instance, Englishmen realize that by abstaining
from tobacco for a year, $40,000,000 of money would
be available for the smoke of battle; that if every man,
woman and child in the Kingdom puts away 25 cents
a week, a new treasure of $600,000,000 could be piled
up for war; and that unless waste, extravagance and
slothful habits generally are banished, by duke and by
docker, as if they were leprous disease, Mr. Asquith's
brave words will remain a hollow aspiration.  They
alone will not enable England to "stay the longest" in
the world's most destructive endurance competition.

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   [1] There are ugly rumors that Produce Exchange patriots who
   burnt *The Daily Mail* for exposing the "shells tragedy" are the
   importers of these excessively large stores and are selling them
   to "Holland"--and other "neutrals" adjacent to Germany at
   exorbitant profits.

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: medium

It is not change of governments, but ruthless change
of system, which England requires.  She has relegated
a vast deal since the cleansing process set in, in August
a year ago, but the scrap-heap clamors for more.  It
cries most insistently of all for obliteration of the
fetish that politicians, lawyers and other amateurs are fit
to conduct a government engaged in the most terrible
combat of human history.  Napoleon once said that a
nation of lions led by a stag would be beaten by a
nation of stags led by a lion.  Britons claim to be a
nation of lions.  They contemplate the first year
of the war and ask if they are to continue to be led
along the path of disaster by stags.  The Truth-Hiders
quote Lincoln and deprecate "swapping horses while
crossing a stream."  Lord Willoughy de Broke effectually
disposes of this "plea for incompetence in office"
by telling the House of Lords that "whether such a
course should be adopted depends on what sort of a
horse a man has beneath him.  If the horse is
standing in the middle of the stream and seems as if he
were going to lie down, the best thing is to get
another."  Englishmen admit that war like this demands
wholesale reconstruction of national life, yet their
government has substituted spasmodic patchwork for
reconstruction.  Instead of bold tearing-down and
rebuilding, there has been nibbling and tinkering, and
even then, too late.  The people have waited for
marching orders in countless directions, but the
Government band has played nothing but a hesitation waltz.
Take the drink evil, Britain's most malignant ulcer.
Russia is not commonly looked to for economic or
social inspiration, yet even she has wrestled with drink in
a manner which puts England to shame.  While the Czar
was banishing vodka absolutely for the pestilence that
it was, England's governors, fearful of Labor and "the
trade" alike, temporized and enacted makeshifts which
materially ameliorated the liquor menace without
throttling its power for evil.  They have made "treating" a
misdemeanor, closed the saloons, both public and
private, at 10 P.M., and restricted the hours when drink
may be sold in London and the industrial districts.  But
clubmen, artisans and soldiers can get drunk to their
heart's content as of yore.  They have had only to
rearrange their bibulous hours.  Take the air defense
muddle.  "I, for one," wrote a Briton in October,
protesting against the prevailing theory that the call of
the hour, in the midst of the Zeppelin peril was
"coolness," "am tired of being complimented on the
calmness with which I behave in the presence of danger.
It is no comfort to me that my death, if it occurs, will
have no military importance.  I want to be
congratulated not on the stoicism with which I go to my
funeral, but on my share in a system of government
which affords effective protection to my country."

Nothing could better stigmatize the epidemic of
Self-Sufficiency which, in the writer's deliberate judgment,
is primarily responsible for British failures in the war
thus far.  *There has been too much congratulation and
self-congratulation on the sang-froid with which John
Bull can take punishment*.  He is a mighty gladiator,
but cheery comfort from his seconds between rounds
has failed on many an occasion to prevent a champion
pugilist from being knocked out.  It is not that
England is *incapable* of defeating Germany.  It is that
she seems *unwilling* to do so by throwing into the
balance every atom of strength for which that prodigious
task calls.  For at least a decade before 1914 Britain's
political ostriches, disarmament-mongers, professional
pacifists and pro-Germans declined to recognize the
German danger even when it was approaching with
strides so brazen that almost the blind could see.  They
preferred the "valor of ignorance," thought Ballin and
Harnack instead of Tirpitz and Bernhardi typified
Modern Germany, continued to revel in the bliss of
contemptuous self-confidence, and attempted to parley
with a tiger which was crouching for the attack.  I
enter a modest claim to have done my own little share
for eight years in the futile work of arousing Britain
to the Teuton peril.  I refer merely to my work at
Berlin, in reporting military and naval developments--"Germany
laid all her cards on the table," as Admiral
von Tirpitz once said to me.  When the crash came,
Englishmen pinned their faith to their history.  They
were no match for "forty years of preparations," of
course; but they always "started late" and "muddled
through" their wars.  The Crimea began in terror and
ended in triumph.  The South African affair was the
same sort of thing.  War with Germany would be no
different.  The race which had finished off Napoleon
need have no qualms in tackling his pinchbeck
successor.  Britons admit that a year of war has
dissipated nearly all their comfortable illusions, but signs
are still wanting that there is nation-wide, deep-seated
realization of the immensity of the ordeal and the
dimensions of the sacrifices yet to be faced.  On
December 8, 1915, when the war was sixteen months old,
Admiral Lord Charles Beresford wrote this letter to
*The Times*:

.. vspace:: 2

"We are at present in a complex tangle of muddle
and mismanagement.  Our military campaigns are
being conducted without any objective or plan.  Policy
only has been considered.

"In war a policy has to be enforced by the Navy
and Army.  The War Staffs have not been consulted
as to whether they had the means in men and
material for enforcing the different policies inaugurated
by the Cabinet.  Individuals have been consulted;
combined opinion of War Staffs has not been sought.  The
result is disaster in nearly every direction.

"We have not taken full advantage of our mastery
of the sea.  In every department we observe doubt,
hesitation, and procrastination.  War requires quick
decisions and prompt actions.  The question of
supplying recruits for the Army has been postponed once,
and apparently may be postponed again.  Unless a
decision is come to immediately we shall be a year
before the recruits joined under any new scheme can
possibly be ready to take the field.

"The public is sick of the policy conveyed in the
sentence 'Wait and see.'  The danger to the Empire
becomes more apparent every day.  The country is
waiting for a strong, clear lead.  Our present methods will
prolong the war indefinitely.  If we continue
hesitating without making up our minds on any single
question connected with the war, we shall plunge straight
into disaster."

.. vspace:: 2

I, too, shall be a pessimist about England's chances
to win the war only so long as she neglects to *go to war*.
Mere command of the sea, it has been amply
demonstrated, can not crush Germany.  It can sorely
inconvenience her and compel her to live on the ration basis,
but it can not force what King George has called "a
highly organized enemy" prematurely to make peace.
When England has staked her all, I shall turn blithe
optimist, for I believe that nothing else in the world
can overthrow her savagely efficient antagonist.
Germany has staked her *all*.  Until England does likewise,
they will not fight on even terms.  When England, like
Germany, has relentlessly marshaled every tithe of her
national strength for war, subordinated all else to that
purpose, harnessed to the chariot of Mars every
conceivable resource at her command, pulverized caste
distinctions, banned politics and politicians, and made
the war and the winning of it the only thing the nation
eats for, works for, dreams of, or wastes thought
upon--then I shall feel constrained to feel assured that
victory will perch, however distant the hour, on Liberty's
and not on Tyranny's banners.  The Anglo-German
endurance test--into which the war will eventually resolve
itself--can have but one issue.  Germans know that.
Their analytical mind long ago taught them that the
dormant resources of the British Empire, *once
mobilized*, would be invincible.  But what is happening
is precisely what the Germans counted upon: the
irresolute British habit of mind, the "too late" system,
the century-old cult of comfort and ease, the
"Splendid Isolation" school of thought, which, when the
hour of trial came, might be relied upon to cripple the
effort to convert latent potentialities into an
inconquerable organism.  History will have names for all
these things.  It will call them Belgium, Serbia,
Dardanelles and Salonica.

The British people must triumph over themselves
before they can break the Germans.  Their inexhaustible
moral and material assets must be commandeered and
husbanded, if they are to accomplish their manifest
destiny, and not merely be bragged about in the clubs
of Pall Mall and the ostrich-farms of Fleet Street.  If
the world-wide realm on which the sun never sets can
produce armies calculable only in millions, as it most
assuredly is able to do, let them come forth, or be
brought forth.  If the wealth of the United Kingdom,
India and the dominions oversea represents riches
unmatched, as it does, let it be lavished exclusively on
war, and not squandered in any other single direction.
If common sense is the proudest of Anglo-Saxon
virtues, let it prevail and sweep away governments which
value votes more than men's lives and abolish a
Censorship which treats Britons as if they were
half-witted.  If there must be calm at all costs, let it be the
calm of high-pressure effort, and not the coolness of
impotent resignation or casual performance.  If faith
must be placed in the efficacy of "attrition," let the
process of "bleeding Germany white" be hastened by
British achievements afield, lest "attrition," when the
flags are furled, find the victor as emaciated as the
vanquished.

I forget neither Germany's wrecked military hopes
and economic disintegration, nor the magnitude of
Britain's service and accomplishment thus far.  I
regret only, along with England's other well-wishers,
that her sacrifices have not resulted, as they so richly
deserved to, in advancing the British cause farther
toward the goal.  I can not help thinking that, in many
respects, it is wasted achievement, for the object which
England and her Allies have set themselves is not
merely the pinioning of Germany to fronts in Russia,
France, Belgium and Greece beyond which she can not
thrust herself.  I am not unmindful of the glorious
response of Britain's noblest sons, who sleep by their
gallant thousands in the blood-manured soil of France,
Belgium, Turkey and the Balkans, nor of the Trojan
spirit in which the women of the Empire are giving
their best and bravest, and weeping not.  I mourn only
because death and suffering leave triumph still so
remote.  The remorselessness with which the Reaper has
stalked through the great families and homes of England
is saddening, yet inspiring, evidence that the heart
of Britain is sound.  The immortal deeds of the
Grenfells and the O'Learys and of all the one hundred
thirty who have won Victoria Crosses are only the
outstanding tokens of undying British heroism.  But
if sacrifice is not to continue to be cruelly in vain,
there must be relentless regeneration of the purely
material governance of British life, even more destructible
of tradition and institutions than anything which
has gone before.  Of bulldog British determination
to fight to a finish and to win there is no shadow of
doubt.  There is no Briton worthy of the name not
ready to be beggared to that end.  The sublimity of
the cause for which England is bleeding is a more
ennobling incentive than ever, for it has come to
comprehend life or death for herself, as well as the
liberation of Belgium.  Spirituality has forfeited none of its
pristine efficacy as an asset in war and bulwark in
stress, but in our machine-gun era it must be backed
by scientific efficiency and patriotism of deed before
there can be imposed upon Germany that peace which
is essential not only to British security, but to the
world's happiness.

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