The Assault Part 3

Prince Bulow, 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. Bulow'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 bl.u.s.ter in 1887 gave the War Party of that day its fillip, Bulow in 1907 supplied the spurred and helmeted zealots of his era with a flamboyancy no less vicious. They s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 Bulow 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 l.u.s.t 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 a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sociation 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 _fort.i.ter 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 leaders.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sociation 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 accomplis.h.i.+ng the pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sault 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 n.o.blewoman. 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 Delca.s.se 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_ ma.s.sacre, 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 Bulow'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-directors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionately that they ever drank to "the Day" in their battles.h.i.+p 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 La.s.son, also of Berlin, who proclaimed the doctrine that Germans' "cultural paramountcy over all other nations"

ent.i.tles 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 Delbruck, Zorn, Liszt, Edward and Kuno Meyer, Eucken, Haeckel, Harnack, or minor theorists like Munsterberg, 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 cla.s.s-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 const.i.tute "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 mult.i.tude 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 princ.i.p.al 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 s.h.i.+fters 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_.

CHAPTER V

SLOW MUSIC

July in Berlin of the red summer of 1914 began as placidly as a feast day in Utopia. The electric shock of Serajevo soon spent its force.

Germans seemed to be vastly more concerned over the effect of the Archduke's a.s.sa.s.sination on the health of the old Austrian Emperor than over resultant international complications. It was Sir Edward Goschen, British Amba.s.sador 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 a.s.sumed 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 circ.u.mstance of State obsequies, and William II remained in Berlin for honorary funeral services in his own cathedral in memory of the august departed. Some day a historian, who will have great things to tell, may relate the real reason for the baffling of the Kaiser's desire to play the role of chief mourner at spectacular death-rites in the other German capital. He had telegraphed the orphans of the murdered Archduke and d.u.c.h.ess 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 a.s.sert 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 Tromso 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 a.s.serted that these "representations" would be "friendly." Europe must under no circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.sa.s.sins and their accessories. The Serbian Government meantime remained imperturbable.

Princip and Cabrinovitch, the takers of the Archduke and d.u.c.h.ess' 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 a.s.sets 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 princ.i.p.ally in slowing down the strenuous life and extending mere nocturnal "b.u.mmeling" in home haunts to seash.o.r.e, 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 quant.i.ties 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 a.s.sembled 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, emba.s.sies, 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 att.i.tude. Was she counseling moderation in Vienna, or fis.h.i.+ng in troubled waters? Was she reminding her ally that while Serajevo was primarily an Austrian question, it was in its broad aspects essentially a European issue? Was the Kaiser really playing his vaunted role as the bulwark of _European_ peace, or was Herr von Tschirschky, his Amba.s.sador 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 "s.h.i.+ning 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 Wilhelmstra.s.se 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 a.s.sured. Germany's att.i.tude was that of an innocent bystander and interested witness, and nothing more. That was the version of the Fatherland's att.i.tude sedulously peddled out for both home and foreign consumption.

Behind us lay a week of tremor and unrest unknown since the days, exactly forty-four years previous, preceding the Franco-Prussian War.

The money universe, most susceptible and prescient of all worlds, rocked with nervous alarm. Its instinctive apprehension of imminent crisis was fanned into panic on the night of July 23, when word came that Austria had presented Serbia an ultimatum with a time limit of forty-eight hours. My own information of Vienna's crucial step was prompt and unequivocal. It was on its way to London and New York before seven o'clock Thursday evening, Berlin time. I was gratified to learn at the _Daily Mail_ office in London three weeks later that I had given England her first news of the match which had at last been applied to the European powder barrel. It was five or six hours later before general announcement of the Austrian ultimatum arrived in Fleet Street.

I was not surprised to learn that my startling telegram had aroused no little skepticism. During many days preceding it was the despair of the Berlin correspondents of British newspapers that they seemed utterly unable to impress their home publics with the fast-gathering gravity of the European situation. London was no less nonchalant than Paris and St.

Petersburg. England was immersed to the exclusion of everything else in the throes of the Irish-Ulster crisis. Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson loomed immeasurably bigger on the horizon than all Austria and Serbia put together. In the boulevards, cafes and government-offices of Paris the salacious details of the Caillaux trial absorbed all thought.

In St. Petersburg one hundred sixty thousand working men threatened an upheaval which bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the revolutionary conditions of 1905. But it was the invincible indifference of London, as it seemed in Berlin, which appealed to us most.