[image]Soldiers in the making--aiming practiceThe 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 andHochswere rewarded. Surrounded by the members of his family, the Kaiser appeared at the balcony window facing the Cathedral across theLustgarten(this was more of the 1870 precedent) and, looking down upon the densest and most fervent crowd of his subjects he ever faced, addressed to them in the guttural, jerky, but wonderfully far-reaching tones which are his oratorical style, the following homily:"A fateful hour has fallen upon Germany. Envious people on all sides are compelling us to resort to just defense. The sword is being forced into our hand. If at the last hour my efforts do not succeed in maintaining peace, I hope that with God's help we shall so wield the sword that we shall be able to sheathe it with honor."War would demand of us enormous sacrifices in blood and treasure, but we shall show our foes what it means to provoke Germany, and now I commend you all to God. Go to church, kneel before God, and pray to Him to help our gallant army."Berlin went to bed on the night of July 31 hoarse withHochingand 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.CHAPTER VIIWAR"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 theGerman 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 askedhowready Germany was for eventualities, said, sententiously, "Allready." My Junker friend, Von G., of Kiel, himself a Prussian officer, would have snorted with scornful glee if I had ever suggested to him thatanyRussian 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 Lindenand theLustgarten, 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 theNew York WorldandLondon 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 militaryaide-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 theSchlossalmost unnoticed. Now instinctively certain of the nature of Bethmann Hollweg's errand, Tower and I made our way to theLustgarten, since early morning an endless vista of faces stretching nearly all the way from the Dom to the Brandenburg Gate end ofUnter 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 withExtrablättercontaining the fateful tidings:+----------------------------------+| || "UNIVERSAL MOBILIZATION OF THE || GERMAN ARMY AND NAVY!" || |+----------------------------------+Another two lines explained, breathlessly, that an order to that effect had just been promulgated by the Supreme War Lord. The twelve-hour period which Germany had granted to Russia for "the making of a loyal declaration" had been ignored. To-morrow, added the chief announcement in the most portentousExtrablatta German newspaper ever issued, would be the first mobilization day. All Sunday, Monday and Tuesday theFuror Teutonicuswould 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....[image]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 sangDeutschland, Deutschland über Allesand 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 inUnter den Lindenand theLustgartenmelted homeward, silently, immersed in anxious reflection. Before they waked from their next sleep, the first shot might be fired. On what new paths had the Fatherland entered? Would they lead to death or glory? Never before, I imagine, was the modern German, in his inimitable idiom, given so furiously to think.The war began early Sunday morning, August 2. Before nine o'clock "Extras" were in the streets with the following official news, the very first bulletin of the war:"Up to 4 o'clock this morning the Great General Staff has received the following reports:"1. During the night Russian patrols made an attack on the railway bridge over the Warthe near Eichenried (East Prussia). The attack was repulsed. On the German side, two slightly wounded. Russian losses unknown. An attempted attack by the Russians on the railway station at Miloslaw was frustrated."2. The station master at Johannisburg and the forestry authorities at Bialla report that during last night (1st to 2nd) Russian columns in considerable strength, with guns, crossed the frontier near Schwidden (southeast of Bialla) and that two squadrons of Cossacks are riding in the direction of Johannisburg. The telephone communication between Lyck and Bialla is broken down."According to the above, Russia has attacked German Imperial territory and begun the war."The "Russian mobilization menace" was now an accomplished fact, and the Cossack bogy, too, converted into an officially hall-marked actuality!Modern war, from the newspaperman's standpoint, consists principally of two things--censorship and rumors. Both had now set in with a vengeance. The first day in Berlin swarmed with irresponsible report. People believed anything. Official news was scarce and "far between." The second General Staff bulletin to be issued was a laconic announcement that troops of the VIII (Rhenish) army corps had occupied Luxemburg "for the protection of German railways in the Grand Duchy." Eydtkuhnen, the famous German frontier station opposite the Russian border town of Wirballen, was now reported occupied by Russian cavalry detachments. A Russian had been caught in the act of trying to blow up the Thorn railway bridge. Now France--like Russia, "without declaration of war"--had violated the sacredness of German territory. French aviators had flown into Bavaria and dropped bombs in the neighborhood of Nuremberg, evidently with the intent of destroying military railway lines. Canard succeeded canard. The famed "German war on two fronts" was no longer a figment of the imagination. It had become immutable fact. Monsieur Sverbieff, the Czar's ambassador, we heard, had already received his passports. He would leave Berlin in the evening in a special train to the Russian frontier. When would Monsieur Cambon, the French ambassador, the Republic's accomplished representative in Washington during our war with Spain, be givenhiswalking-papers? So far rowdies had yelledDeutschland, Deutschland über Allesonly 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 toThe Times--theLokal-Anzeigerreported 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 likeThe Daily News, Westminster GazetteandThe Nation. No intimation was permitted to reach the German public that voices likeThe Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Morning PostandDaily Telegraphwere 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 populationshould 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 thiscarte-blanchepermit 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 theExtrablätter. A "Russian spy" had been caught inUnter 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 thisIknow--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.Kulturgave 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 theNiederländisches Dankgebet, the famous hymn which proclaimed at Waterloo a century before the end of the Napoleonic terror.Nightfall found those seemingly immobile Berlin thousands still clustered, now almost beseechingly, round the Royal Castle. They hungered for an opportunity to show the Supreme War Lord that Kaiser and Empire were dearer than ever to German hearts in the hour of imminent trial. Just before dark, while his outlines could still be plainly distinguished even by the rearmost ranks of the crowd, William II, thunderously greeted, stepped out once more to the balcony from which he had told the populace two nights previous that the sword was being "forced" into his hand. He beckoned for silence. Men reverently removed their hats, and leaned forward on tiptoes, the better to hear the Imperial message. This is what the Kaiser said:"From the bottom of my heart I thank you for the expression of your love and your loyalty. In the struggle now impending I know no more parties among my people. There are now only Germans among us. Whichever parties, in the heat of political differences, may have turned against me, I now forgive from the depths of my heart. The thing now is that all should stand together, shoulder to shoulder, like brothers, and then God will help the German sword to victory!"No historian of Germany in war-time will be able to say that his people did not take the Kaiser's stirring admonition to heart.CHAPTER VIIITHE AMERICANSOn 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--theNew York Times, Philadelphia Public LedgerandChicago 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'sDaily Mailwould 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'sbête 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 Mailman," 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 thatMänner 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 inThe Daily Mailentitled "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 adossierof 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 thatAusländershould "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 theArabicinsult was after all swallowed as theLusitaniainfamy 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 torepresenthis 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 amagnum 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.[image]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:
[image]Soldiers in the making--aiming practice
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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 andHochswere rewarded. Surrounded by the members of his family, the Kaiser appeared at the balcony window facing the Cathedral across theLustgarten(this was more of the 1870 precedent) and, looking down upon the densest and most fervent crowd of his subjects he ever faced, addressed to them in the guttural, jerky, but wonderfully far-reaching tones which are his oratorical style, the following homily:
"A fateful hour has fallen upon Germany. Envious people on all sides are compelling us to resort to just defense. The sword is being forced into our hand. If at the last hour my efforts do not succeed in maintaining peace, I hope that with God's help we shall so wield the sword that we shall be able to sheathe it with honor.
"War would demand of us enormous sacrifices in blood and treasure, but we shall show our foes what it means to provoke Germany, and now I commend you all to God. Go to church, kneel before God, and pray to Him to help our gallant army."
Berlin went to bed on the night of July 31 hoarse withHochingand 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.
CHAPTER VII
WAR
"The Russian mobilization menace!" That was the great myth now irrevocably fastened on the German mind. "The Cossacks at our gate!" Thus was the Fatherland gulled by its war zealots into the belief that the tide of blood sweeping down from the East could no longer be stemmed. German war history was repeating itself. As 1870 was born in deceit, so was 1914. Bismarck doctored the Ems telegram forty-four years previous to extenuate the assault on France, and now the "Russian mobilization menace," the Cossack bogy, was invented as justification for precipitating and popularizing the conflict on which the Prussian War Party's heart was set. A "state of war" had been decreed by the Kaiser in accordance with the paragraph of the Imperial Constitution which authorizes him to declare martial law whenever the domains of the Empire or any part of them are in jeopardy. The Czar's hordes were gathered on the Eastern frontier, preparing to launch a murderous, burglarious attack on innocent, defenseless, peace-loving Germany. They had done more than that--and here was another Hohenzollern 1870 analogy; the Emperor of all the Russias had "insulted" the Kaiser by feloniously massing his legions on the German border while William II, at Nicholas' own request, was "working for peace." It was a pretty story, and German public opinion, shrewdly prepared, swallowed it whole. Germans, their Emperor's "honor" and their own safety now at stake, approved fervidly the ultimatum which they were told had been presented at St. Petersburg, demanding abandonment of the Czar's "provocative" military measures.
I have too much respect for the perfected might of the Teutonic war-machine to believe that any German soldier worthy of the name ever considered Russian military movements along the Prussian and Austrian frontiers at the end of July, 1914, a "menace." It was only a fortnight previous that theGerman 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 askedhowready Germany was for eventualities, said, sententiously, "Allready." My Junker friend, Von G., of Kiel, himself a Prussian officer, would have snorted with scornful glee if I had ever suggested to him thatanyRussian 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 Lindenand theLustgarten, 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 theNew York WorldandLondon 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 militaryaide-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 theSchlossalmost unnoticed. Now instinctively certain of the nature of Bethmann Hollweg's errand, Tower and I made our way to theLustgarten, since early morning an endless vista of faces stretching nearly all the way from the Dom to the Brandenburg Gate end ofUnter 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 withExtrablättercontaining the fateful tidings:
+----------------------------------+| || "UNIVERSAL MOBILIZATION OF THE || GERMAN ARMY AND NAVY!" || |+----------------------------------+
Another two lines explained, breathlessly, that an order to that effect had just been promulgated by the Supreme War Lord. The twelve-hour period which Germany had granted to Russia for "the making of a loyal declaration" had been ignored. To-morrow, added the chief announcement in the most portentousExtrablatta German newspaper ever issued, would be the first mobilization day. All Sunday, Monday and Tuesday theFuror Teutonicuswould 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....
[image]In front of the Royal Castle, Berlin, waiting for announcement of mobilization, August 1st, 1914.
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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 sangDeutschland, Deutschland über Allesand 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 inUnter den Lindenand theLustgartenmelted homeward, silently, immersed in anxious reflection. Before they waked from their next sleep, the first shot might be fired. On what new paths had the Fatherland entered? Would they lead to death or glory? Never before, I imagine, was the modern German, in his inimitable idiom, given so furiously to think.
The war began early Sunday morning, August 2. Before nine o'clock "Extras" were in the streets with the following official news, the very first bulletin of the war:
"Up to 4 o'clock this morning the Great General Staff has received the following reports:
"1. During the night Russian patrols made an attack on the railway bridge over the Warthe near Eichenried (East Prussia). The attack was repulsed. On the German side, two slightly wounded. Russian losses unknown. An attempted attack by the Russians on the railway station at Miloslaw was frustrated.
"2. The station master at Johannisburg and the forestry authorities at Bialla report that during last night (1st to 2nd) Russian columns in considerable strength, with guns, crossed the frontier near Schwidden (southeast of Bialla) and that two squadrons of Cossacks are riding in the direction of Johannisburg. The telephone communication between Lyck and Bialla is broken down.
"According to the above, Russia has attacked German Imperial territory and begun the war."
The "Russian mobilization menace" was now an accomplished fact, and the Cossack bogy, too, converted into an officially hall-marked actuality!
Modern war, from the newspaperman's standpoint, consists principally of two things--censorship and rumors. Both had now set in with a vengeance. The first day in Berlin swarmed with irresponsible report. People believed anything. Official news was scarce and "far between." The second General Staff bulletin to be issued was a laconic announcement that troops of the VIII (Rhenish) army corps had occupied Luxemburg "for the protection of German railways in the Grand Duchy." Eydtkuhnen, the famous German frontier station opposite the Russian border town of Wirballen, was now reported occupied by Russian cavalry detachments. A Russian had been caught in the act of trying to blow up the Thorn railway bridge. Now France--like Russia, "without declaration of war"--had violated the sacredness of German territory. French aviators had flown into Bavaria and dropped bombs in the neighborhood of Nuremberg, evidently with the intent of destroying military railway lines. Canard succeeded canard. The famed "German war on two fronts" was no longer a figment of the imagination. It had become immutable fact. Monsieur Sverbieff, the Czar's ambassador, we heard, had already received his passports. He would leave Berlin in the evening in a special train to the Russian frontier. When would Monsieur Cambon, the French ambassador, the Republic's accomplished representative in Washington during our war with Spain, be givenhiswalking-papers? So far rowdies had yelledDeutschland, Deutschland über Allesonly 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 toThe Times--theLokal-Anzeigerreported 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 likeThe Daily News, Westminster GazetteandThe Nation. No intimation was permitted to reach the German public that voices likeThe Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Morning PostandDaily Telegraphwere 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 populationshould 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 thiscarte-blanchepermit 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 theExtrablätter. A "Russian spy" had been caught inUnter 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 thisIknow--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.Kulturgave 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 theNiederländisches Dankgebet, the famous hymn which proclaimed at Waterloo a century before the end of the Napoleonic terror.
Nightfall found those seemingly immobile Berlin thousands still clustered, now almost beseechingly, round the Royal Castle. They hungered for an opportunity to show the Supreme War Lord that Kaiser and Empire were dearer than ever to German hearts in the hour of imminent trial. Just before dark, while his outlines could still be plainly distinguished even by the rearmost ranks of the crowd, William II, thunderously greeted, stepped out once more to the balcony from which he had told the populace two nights previous that the sword was being "forced" into his hand. He beckoned for silence. Men reverently removed their hats, and leaned forward on tiptoes, the better to hear the Imperial message. This is what the Kaiser said:
"From the bottom of my heart I thank you for the expression of your love and your loyalty. In the struggle now impending I know no more parties among my people. There are now only Germans among us. Whichever parties, in the heat of political differences, may have turned against me, I now forgive from the depths of my heart. The thing now is that all should stand together, shoulder to shoulder, like brothers, and then God will help the German sword to victory!"
No historian of Germany in war-time will be able to say that his people did not take the Kaiser's stirring admonition to heart.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AMERICANS
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--theNew York Times, Philadelphia Public LedgerandChicago 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'sDaily Mailwould 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'sbête 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 Mailman," 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 thatMänner 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 inThe Daily Mailentitled "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 adossierof 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 thatAusländershould "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 theArabicinsult was after all swallowed as theLusitaniainfamy 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 torepresenthis 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 amagnum 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.
[image]Mrs. Gerard.
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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: