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 Frontisptecc.
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 GERMANY BEFORE THE OUTBREAK 
 AND ENGLAND IN WAR-TIME 
 
 A PERSONAL NARRATIVE 
 
 BY 
 
 FREDERIC WILLIAM WILE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "men AROUND THE KAISER" 
 
 ILLUSTRATiiD WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND FACSIMILES Oc 
 DOCUMENTS AND CARTOONS 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM HEINE MANN
 
 First Published, April, 19 16. 
 Second Impression, August. 1916. 
 New Edition, January, 19 17.
 
 TO 
 
 AMBASSADOR AND MRS. GERARD 
 
 LIFE-SAVERS 
 
 IN GRATITUDE
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 THIS is not a " war book." It has not been my privi- 
 lege at any stage of the Great Blood-Letting to 
 come into close contact with the spectacular clash and 
 din of the fray.* Abler pens than mine are immortal- 
 izing the terrible, yet irresistibly fascinating, scenes of 
 this most stupendous drama. But every drama has its 
 scenario and its prologue and its behind-the-curtain 
 scenes — none ever written was so rich in these pre- 
 liminaries and accessories as is Europe's tragedy. To 
 witness and live through some of these was vouchsafed 
 me ; and to take British readers with me do\\Ti the line 
 of my recollections and impressions is the sole object 
 of this unpretentious effort. History, Carlyle said, 
 was some one's record of personal experiences. To such 
 experiences, as far as possible, the pages of this book 
 are confined. 
 
 For thirteen years to the week — I have always had 
 a respectful horror of thirteen — I was a resident of 
 Berhn. During the first five years of that period my 
 identity was clear. I was the representative in Ger- 
 many of an American newspaper, the Chicago Daily 
 News. But in 1906 I become an international com- 
 pUcation, for it was then I joined the staff of 
 The Daily Mail, which converiied my status into 
 that of an American serving British journalistic interests 
 
 * Since this was written I have paid a visit to the British Front 
 on the Somme. 
 
 ix
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in Germany. It was not long afterward that welcome 
 opportunity presented itself to renew home professional 
 ties in connection with my British work, and for several 
 years prior to the outbreak of the war I carried the cre- 
 dentials of Berlin correspondent of the New York Times, 
 the Philadelphia Public Ledger, ^.nd the Chicago Tribune. 
 They were on my person, with my United States pass- 
 port, on the night of August 4, 1914, when the 
 Kaiser's police arrested me as an " English spy." 
 
 I have no higher aspiration, as far as this volume is 
 concerned, than that critics of it, hostile or friendly, 
 may pronounce it " pro-Ally " from start to finish. I 
 shall survive even the charge that it is '' pro-English." 
 I mean it to be all of that, as I have tried to breathe 
 sincerity into every line of it. But I shall not feel in- 
 clined to accept without protest an accusation that the 
 book is " anti-German." It is true that I regard this 
 essentially a German-made, or rather a Prussian-made, 
 war, and that I hold Prussian militarism and militarists 
 solely responsible for plunging the world into its 
 unending bath of blood and tears. It is true that T 
 wish to see Germany beaten. I wish her beaten for 
 the Allies' sake and for my own country's sake. A 
 victorious Germany would be a menace to international 
 liberty and become automatically a threat to the 
 happiness and freedom of the United States. My years 
 in Germany taught me that. But I cherish no scintilla 
 of hatred or animosity toward the German people as 
 individuals, who \vill be the real victims of the war. 
 I saw them with my own eyes literally dragged into the 
 fight against their will, fears and judgment. I know 
 from their own lips that they considered it a cruelly un- 
 necessary war and did not want it. They were joyful and 
 
 X
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 prosperous a year and a half ago — never more so. 
 They craved a continuance of the simple blessings of 
 peace, unless their tearful protestations in the fateful 
 month preceding the drawing of their mighty sword 
 were the plaints of a race of hypocrites, and I do not 
 think the percentage of hypocrisy much higher in 
 Germany, man for man, than elsewhere in the world. 
 The Germans' Gott strafe England cult, for example, 
 is no revelation to any man who has lived among them. 
 Their hatred for '* Perfidious Albion " was always 
 vigorous and purposeful. 
 
 During the war I have lived in Germany, England and 
 the United States — a week of it in Berlin, three months 
 at different periods in America, and the rest of the 
 time in London. My observations of Germany have 
 not been confined to the six and a half days the Prus- 
 sian police permitted me to tarry in their midst, for my 
 work in England has dealt almost exclusively with day- 
 by-day examination of that weird production which 
 will be known to history as the German war-time Press. 
 I am quite sure the perspective of the life and times 
 of the Kaiser's people in their " great hour " was 
 clearer from the vantage-ground of a nev/spaper desk 
 near Thames Embankment than it could possibly have 
 been had it been my lot to view the Fatherland at war 
 as an observer writing, under the hypnotic influence 
 of mass-suggestion, of Germany from within. 
 
 Though I deal with Britain in war-time, no pretence 
 is made of treating so vast a subject except in fleeting 
 impressions. Indeed, nothing but snap-shots of British 
 life are possible at the moment, so kaleidoscopic are its 
 developments and vagaries. I am conscious that my 
 pictures are, therefore, superficial, but no portrayal 
 
 xi
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of a people in a state of flux could well be otherwise. 
 Although the concluding chapters were wTitten in 
 October, conditions now (in mid-December) have 
 altered vitally in many directions. Sir John French 
 no longer commands the British Army in France and 
 Flanders. Serbia has gone the way of Belgium. 
 GaUipoli has been abandoned. The Coalition Govern- 
 ment, established at the end of May, is widely con- 
 sidered a failure at the end of the year. The Man in 
 the Street, that oracle of all-wisdom in these Isles, 
 is asking querulously whether the war can be won with- 
 out still another, and more sweeping, change of National 
 leadership. 
 
 I hope my British friends, and particularly my pro- 
 fessional colleagues of ten years' standing, will not find 
 my snap-shots too under-exposed. If the pictures 
 appear indistinct, I trust they may at least not be 
 criticized as in any respect due to the photographer's 
 lack of sympathy with the British cause. 
 
 F. W. W. 
 London, 
 
 December 20, 191 5. 
 
 xu
 
 FOREWORD* 
 
 GERMANY^S SUPREME EFFORT 
 
 Retrospect and Prospect 
 
 TO nothing has the war done greater violence than 
 to the reputations of seers and experts. Thus far 
 none but Lord Kitchener's prediction of a three years' 
 war has proved itself a sagacious prophecy. Prognosti- 
 cation as a fine art has failed, of course, not alone in 
 England. The Zukunftsmusih of the enemy has turned 
 out to be equally far off the key. Yet, unquestionably, 
 the great delusion of the war, overshadowing and com- 
 prehending all else, has been our child-like faith in 
 the '' collapse of Germany." Chroniclers of these 
 tragic times will depict that, if they read their signs 
 aright, as both the phenomenon and the pity of the era. 
 Within the limited scope of an additional chapter to 
 the second reprint of this volume I cannot hope to say 
 all that needs to be said to waken Britons from their 
 enervating dreams. I wrote a year ago, as reference to 
 these unexpunged chapters will show, in tones which 
 often seemed even to myself unwarrantedly gloomy. I 
 felt I had perhaps succumbed to the British national 
 malady of self-depreciation. I came gradually to the 
 conclusion that the depression and doubts of December, 
 * Written for new edition, December, 1916. 
 
 xiii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 1915 were, after all, the darkest hour before the dawn ; 
 that 1916 would, indeed, see Britain girded to the 
 zenith of her power and determination. Yet I find my- 
 self, a full year later, essaying the task of retrospect 
 and prospect at a moment when sovereign public 
 opinion, forced to the saddening realization that Britain 
 has not gone to war whole-heartedly, has successfully 
 demanded sweeping changes in her leadership lest bad 
 become \vorse, and worse transformed into disaster. 
 
 It is a moment instinct with hope and promise that 
 the giant's task of purging the cancer of complacency 
 from the British body politic is at last on the brink of 
 accomplishment. The fall of a regime which dallied 
 and fumbled and faltered — in diplomacy, in the field, 
 and at sea — and the rise of a Government clothed by 
 an impatient populace, itself thoroughly "war-worthy," 
 with a mandate to face facts and grapple with them, is 
 an event of incalculably good omen. 
 
 The measure of the nev/ Administration's capacity to 
 convert stalemate and deadlock into victory will be the 
 promptness and thoroughness with which it grasps the 
 meaning of Germany's new effort, and the perspicacity 
 with which it exploits the true inwardness of Germany's 
 frantic clamour for peace. Like universal National 
 service, food control, and other innovations which 
 the war is imposing upon England, the new Lloyd 
 George Government was " made in Germany," too. 
 I do not mean, of course, that the War Cabinet 
 and the subsidiary Ministry were fashioned either in 
 Berlin or to suit Berlin's book. I am certain, indeed, 
 that no crueller blow to German hopes has been struck 
 than the transfer of State leadership to the hest-strafed 
 Englishman of his time. " To all our wishes and offers 
 xiv
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 to end this sacrificial slaughter," lamented the Berlhier 
 Tageblatt the other day, '' England's answer, unfortu- 
 nately, is Lloyd George." What I do mean is that 
 the astounding speeding-up of Germany's war effort, 
 following the establishment of the Hindenburg dictator- 
 ship in August, concretely required the regeneration of 
 Whitehall and Downing Street. Hindenburgism in- 
 sistently called for Lloyd Georgeisiii. To outmatch the 
 super-challenge which Germany now offers is plainly 
 the duty entrusted to Britain's new captains. Let 
 them not enter upon it in that spirit of roseate 
 under-estimation of the enemy so reminiscent of the 
 sickening and somnolent past. 
 
 For chronological purposes one may roughly date the 
 birth of Germany^s new effort as midsummer, when it 
 dawned upon the chastened consciousness of her mili- 
 tary leaders that the great thrust at Verdun, after six 
 futile and sanguinary months, had failed—that the road 
 to Paris remained as effectually barred as Ypres and the 
 Yser barred the road to Calais. The Anglo-French 
 offensive on the Somme played an influential part, too, 
 in the reorganization of the German war-machine's 
 programme. Then the Prussian Buddha, the god of 
 efficiency, which is resourceful as well as ruthless, 
 ordained radical changes in men, methods, and 
 objectives. The sceptre of William IL himself was 
 transferred, in fact if not in name, to Hindenburg, 
 the national idol. Falkenhayn, because the nation's 
 depressed spirits required a powerful elixir, was swept 
 from the General Staff as unceremoniously as Tirpitz 
 was sacrificed a couple of months previously for the 
 expediency of continued '' friendship " with America. 
 Into his place a far less able soldier was precipitated, 
 
 XV
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 because there attached to Hindenburg's name that 
 magic and magnetism which alone could extort from a 
 much-spent people a reserve force of effort equal to, if 
 not more than, the greatest it had yet put forth. With 
 sagacity and self-suppression which few imagined that 
 the shallow and vainglorious Hohenzollern could con- 
 jure up, the Kaiser handed over the real Supreme W^ar 
 Lordship to the one man in Germany capable of 
 rallying her dormant strength and wielding it in one 
 concentrated, supreme, final throw for victory. 
 
 England is now in the presence of that Herculean bid 
 for her undoing and the undoing of the whole Alhed 
 cause. The Germans' abortive attempt to initiate a 
 German peace will not slacken — it will, indeed, in- 
 tensify — the enemy's effort to enforce a ''decision." 
 Rumania, the outstanding military achievement of all 
 Germany's campaigns since 1914, is hideous proof of 
 the reality and efficacy of Hindenburgism, and of the 
 political strategy of the altered German war programme : 
 a thrust to the East. The submarine menace is one of 
 its aspects of even deadlier significance for these sea- 
 girt shores. But the overshadowingly significant phase 
 of Germany's new effort, because it is not ephemeral 
 like the conquest of Rumania or repressible as Lord 
 Fisher believes the submarine danger to be, is the 
 harnessing of the whole adult male population of the 
 German Empire to the limitless purposes of Hinden- 
 burgism. I refer to the Levee en Masse which became 
 law in Germany at the end of November — the '' Patriotic 
 Auxiliary Service" Act, as it is called, in order to mask 
 its unprecedently drastic import. From the menace 
 of that super-mobilization of Germany's power for 
 xvi
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 offence and defence no extraneous issues of any sort 
 ought to divert this country's attention. 
 
 The essential purpose of the Levee en Masse is to 
 replenish the enormous gaps which two and a half 
 years of war have made in Germany's reserves of fighting 
 man-power. Hitherto, with that far-sightedness which 
 has characterized its domestic arrangements throughout 
 the war, the German Government has systematically 
 kept from the actual firing-line all able-bodied men 
 urgently required for war work '* behind the front." 
 It viras rightly reasoned that 50,000 or 150,000 skilled 
 artisans needed by Krupps or Schwartzkopffs or 
 Ehrhardts for manufacture of siege-artillery, torpedoes, 
 or machine-guns were as vitally useful to the Father- 
 land as they could possibly be as targets for Allied 
 bullets and shells in France or Poland. With a 
 desperate food problem to solve, too, the German 
 authorities depleted agricultural labour as gingerly as 
 possible, while solicitude for the requirements of the 
 mines, State railways, canals, and forests was as scien- 
 tifically scrupulous as the care taken not to denude the 
 farms needlessly. But the plans of even the alchemists 
 of the Great General Staff at Berlin were long ago upset 
 by what Hindenburg mournfully describes as "the refusal 
 of our enemies to acknowledge defeat." Germany's total 
 casualties (including men recovered from wounds and 
 eventually sent back to the trenches) are approximately, 
 on the evidence of officially published lists, 4,000,000. 
 With indefinite prolongation of the war in sight, 
 Hindenburg (and Ludendorff, whom well-informed 
 persons look upon as the active, though nominally 
 sleeping, partner of the Dictatorship combination, 
 as distinguished from the figure-head) decided that 
 
 b xvii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 man-power salvation lay only in the direction of whole- 
 sale combing-out, not only of war and auxiliary in- 
 dustries, but of the entire nation. Hence the prompt 
 enactment of a law whose sweeping intent is succinctly 
 epitomized in its opening paragraphs : 
 
 1. Every male German, from the completion of 
 his seventeenth to the completion of his sixtieth 
 year, is, in so far as he has not been summoned to 
 service with the armed forces, liable to patriotic 
 auxiliary service during the period of the war. 
 
 2. Patriotic auxiliary service consists, apart 
 from service in Government offices and official in- 
 stitutions, in particular in service in war industry, 
 in agriculture, in the nursing of the sick, and in 
 organizations of every kind of an economic 
 character connected with the war, as well as in 
 other undertakings which are immediately or in- 
 directly of importance for purposes of the conduct 
 of the war or the provision of the requirements of 
 the people. 
 
 "With the enforcement of patriotic auxiliary ser- 
 vice," declares the semi-official Cologne Gazette," the war 
 has entered upon its last phase. This calling-up of the 
 nation's whole strength in the service of the Fatherland 
 and the thoroughly enthusiastic response which the 
 project has evoked among the people, with the excep- 
 tion of the incorrigibles in the Social Democracy, 
 furnish fresh proof of Germany's bitter determination 
 to bring the struggle to an end as soon as possible — to 
 the only end we can afford to accept if our national life 
 henceforth is to be worth Hving." 
 
 In tones less boastful, but equally meaningful, 
 General Groner, the expert entrusted with the task of 
 xviii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 organizing the "home army," thus summarizes the 
 raison d'etre of the most radical miHtary enterprise in 
 the history of war : 
 
 *' It must be hammered mto the head and heart of every 
 German that he imist subordinate his will to the will of the 
 Fatherland. If we succeed in doing that, then we shall 
 have the guarantee that Germany's future is secure — a 
 future resting upon freedom, welfare, and morality." 
 
 The meaning of Hindenburgism, as exemplified by 
 the Mass Levy, is that Germany, after two and a half 
 years of fruitless thrust for "victory" and a ** decision," 
 has determined to throw into the scales every atom of 
 potential resources still at her command. The great 
 desideratum is to outstrip the Allies' production of 
 munitions. *' We must double our own output/' said 
 a German M.P., " if we are not to be outgunned and 
 outsheiled as we were on the Somme." Henceforth 
 every man, woman, and child in Germany is, in effect, 
 liable for war service. All forms of civilian rights and 
 liberty are abrogated. Labour, in particular, is now 
 under conscription like military service. Compulsion 
 for women and children is not formally enacted, but 
 it will be enforced in one guise or another. From the 
 hour of the war's outbreak, and on a scale entirely 
 unapproached even by the splendid performances of 
 British women, their sex in Germany has been drawn 
 upon for war purposes. To-day women in the enemy's 
 country are at work as navvies and ironmoulders, in 
 blast-furnaces, on the railway lines, in multitudes on 
 the farms, and in practically every occupation, no 
 matter how arduous, hitherto considered capable of 
 performance only by able-bodied men. It is the 
 women of Germany who are warring no less than their 
 
 xix
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers. They are soon 
 to be sent to the bases for "auxiHary service." I have 
 intimated that even German children are on war work. 
 Are not the very babes of Germany on meagre milk 
 rations, and thus doing their " bit," that lieh' Vaterland 
 may dnrchhalten (hold out) ? As for grown-up children, 
 if unfit for soldiering or munition ways, they are syste- 
 matically employed in such practical ways as gathering 
 fruit-stones, for the extraction of fats and oils suitable 
 for food-stuffs or ammunition. Tens of thousands 
 of children, long before their time, are engaged in 
 manual labour designed to relieve older people for 
 duty more directly related to the prosecution of the 
 war. Hindenburgism is letting no iota of human 
 strength go to waste. 
 
 Fairly entitled as we are to look upon the Mass 
 Levy as />n;;m-/aae evidence of Germany's desperation 
 and of her recognition that she is fighting with her 
 back to the wall, we have also to realize that, intensive 
 as has been her war effort so far, it will inevitably be 
 magnified in the months now to come. Even with the 
 more numerous physical units which Hindenburgism 
 will marshal (a grandiloquent Berlin writer speaks of 
 "the armies of new millions which we shall stamp out 
 of the German soil"), I doubt whether the new effort 
 can really be as effective as what has gone before. 
 The high-pressure exertions of Germany in 1914, 1915, 
 and igi6 took place, comparatively speaking, on a full 
 larder. The German stomach, most capacious recep- 
 tacle of its kind, has been far from satiated, but super- 
 organization of food as well as of raw materials has 
 enabled the nation to remain, to date, at the zenith of 
 economic productivity and battle efficiency. In this 
 
 XX
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 third bleak winter of war a radically different state of 
 affairs undoubtedly prevails. The German is hungrier 
 to-day than he has ever been before. It is from out 
 of the yawning depths of his under-nourished belly 
 that his anguished cry for peace wells up. Hinden- 
 burgism can mobilise the latent human resources of 
 Germany, but even its magic influence and sweeping 
 powers cannot butter war bread, nor put potatoes and 
 meat in empty pantries, nor increase the milk doles of 
 under-nourished women and children. It may drive 
 hundreds of thousands of fresh hands into the shell 
 factories, and as many new men into the trenches, but 
 it cannot fill dinner-pails or sweeten black coffee. 
 Neither can it put more warm clothes on people's 
 backs, nor raise their paraffin allowance so as to 
 brighten up their gloomy homes. Neither will it pile 
 more coal into their impoverished bins, nor make under- 
 heated workmen's trains more comfortable these wintry 
 nights and mornings. Above all, Hindenburgism's 
 alchemy is incapable of furnishing to the '"home army" 
 which it is now calling up that commodity so all- 
 essential to the German working man or woman — fats. 
 Thus, while one may envisage division upon division 
 of new recruits to the German fighting cause both 
 ** behind the front " and in the trenches, they will 
 constitute a host lamentably lacking in that " caloric " 
 stamina which alone enables human hands and heads 
 to produce and human hearts to endure. I have 
 never doubted the German people's readiness to make 
 supreme sacrifices for the Fatherland. History, I 
 think, will not fail to acclaim their spirit and morale 
 during the Great War. But empty-stomached patri- 
 otism can render only second-rate national service. 
 
 xxi
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 That inferior brand is the best that Hindenburgism 
 will be able to extort from its dragooned votaries. 
 
 Yet one would do a distinct disservice to the Allied 
 cause in general, and to Great Britain in particular, if 
 one were to convey the comforting impression that 
 Germany, from inherently disintegrating conditions, 
 is defeating herself; that her enemies henceforth have 
 little to do but patiently to wait for the corroding 
 pressure of domestic demoralization to accomplish its 
 own work. That process is immutably under way, but 
 it can at best be of only auxiliary assistance in the real 
 task of encompassing Germany's overthrow on land 
 and sea. The fad of their defeat will have to be brought 
 home to Germans at the cannon's mouth and the bayonet's 
 point. Their military and naval resistance will have to 
 be beaten down by the smashing of their armies in the 
 field and the destruction or disarmament of their naval 
 squadrons. Berlin and Munich, Dresden and Stuttgart, 
 Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, will have to resound to the 
 victorious tramp of Allied soldiery before the stolid 
 German, however hungry, will be convinced that the 
 Hohenzollerns have led the Empire to disaster. The 
 German is trained from the cradle to the grave to 
 believe what authority tells him and shows him. 
 Authority — now Hindenburgism — short of octdar 
 demonstraiion of Germany's poiz'erlessness, will dangle 
 before the disciplined German's eyes " the military 
 map." As long as that continues to be desecrated 
 by the black-white-red flags of Germany in one 
 grand, uninterrupted sweep across Central Europe 
 from Antwerp to Constantinople, from Zeebrugge to 
 Constanza, from Libau to Cettinje, I am very much 
 afraid that it will be difficult to persuade even an 
 xxii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 emaciated Prussian that he has been *' defeated." I 
 ask Englishmen if they would knuckle under, were 
 conditions reversed. 
 
 Granted that hunger and the semi-slaver\' of the 
 Mass Levy are sapping both the fight and the joy of 
 the fight still left in the enemy, the call for maximum 
 employment of the only thing in the world which 
 Germans respect — force — was never more urgent. In 
 every direction superiority of potential fovcc rests with 
 the Allies. When it is invoked as exhaustively as 
 Germany is drawing upon her inferior resources, the 
 knell of her undoing will have begun to tinkle. She is 
 doomed beyond the power of recuperation, but, as 
 Mr. Bonar Law has pointed out, even Allied resources 
 can hardly stand indefinitely the strain which German 
 powers of resistance are imposing upon them. It 
 becomes, therefore, crystal-clear that nothing short of 
 the most immediate and stupendous pressure which 
 the Allies in combination can bring to bear will hasten 
 Germany's downfall. She can never win. Her bolt, as 
 far as "victory" is concerned, was shot w^hen she lost 
 command of the sea. But unless Great Britain and 
 her friends are themselves eventually to become as 
 dry-sucked a lemon as Germany is, there must be an 
 aggressiveness and unity of effort as different in applied 
 remorselessness from the caution, tentativeness and 
 dilatoriness of the past as sunshine from fog. Germany 
 has battened on Allied languor and laisses faire. A 
 diplomacy which lost Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, and 
 temporizes with " neutrals," and a blockade which even 
 to-day is a semi-misnomer, are factors which paralyze 
 the efforts of whole armies and navies of heroes, and 
 
 xxiii
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 render cruelly ineffective the most imperishably glorious 
 of human sacrifices. 
 
 Until the Allied peoples, and primarily the British 
 nation as their acknowledged captain, rouse themselves 
 to realize that Governmental inertia plus lack of 
 co-ordination of aim and activity have hitherto been as 
 invincible and pernicious an enemy as Germany herself, 
 Europe's agony is condemned to prolongation dreadful 
 to contemplate. 
 
 When Lloyd Georgeism has infected Britain from 
 stem to stern ; when it has obliterated the week-end 
 habit of mind, the casual attitude toward the war, as if 
 it were a pestilence ; when Bishops find more pressing 
 reforms to advocate at such an hour as this than man- 
 kind's era-old frailties ; when Generals fume over 
 worthier things than revue humour; when people feel 
 impelled by their common-sense, if not by their 
 patriotism, to banish splurge and luxury in war-time ; 
 when all and sundry in these unravished islands are 
 pleased to comport themselves in tune with the awful 
 gravity of the hour — then Hindenburgism will totter to 
 its knees, and Allied Europe be within sight of a victory 
 dearly bought and criminally long postponed. 
 
 London, 
 Christ mas y 191 6. 
 
 XXIV
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTSR 
 
 I. THE CURTAIN RAISER 
 
 II. THE FIRST ACT . - . _ 
 
 III. THE PLOT DEVELOPS . . - 
 
 IV. THE STAGE MANAGERS - - - 
 V. SLOW MUSIC 
 
 VI. THE CLIMAX ----- 
 
 VII. WAR 
 
 VIII. THE AMERICANS . . _ . 
 
 IX. AUGUST FOURTH - - - - 
 
 X. THE WAR REACHES ME - 
 
 XI. THE LAST FAREWELL . - . 
 
 XII. SAFE CONDUCT .... 
 
 XIII. COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 XIV. PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 XV. THE HELMSMEN - - - - 
 
 XVI. THE GENERAL AND THE ADMIRAL 
 XVII. " YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 XVIII. WAR IN THE DARK - - - - 
 
 XIX. THE "INTERNAL FOE '' 
 XX. THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND - - - - 
 XXII. QUO VADIS ? 
 
 ?Ace 
 
 I 
 
 7 
 
 15 
 27 
 
 47 
 62 
 
 78 
 
 93 
 
 108 
 
 126 
 
 171 
 
 193 
 
 207 
 
 222 
 239 
 251 
 272 
 290 
 311 
 333 
 358 
 
 XXV
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 FACING fAGE 
 
 THE AMERICAN AMBASSADOR IN BERLIN (MR. JUSTICE 
 
 JAMES WATSON GERARD) - - frontispiece 
 
 MRS. GERARD --..--.. 98 
 
 STORMING OF THE BRITISH EMBASSY BY THE BERLIN MOB 
 
 ON THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 4, I914 - - -134 
 
 FACSIMILE OF ORIGINAL DENUNCIATION OF THE AUTHOR 
 
 AS AN " ENGLISH SPY " - - - - - I4O 
 
 FACSIMILE OF GERMAN PASSPORT PERMITTING THE AUTHOR 
 
 TO LEAVE GERMANY - - - - - - 1 68 
 
 SIR W. E. GOSCHEN, BART. (LATE BRITISH AMBASSADOR IN 
 
 BERLIN) - - - - - - - - 172 
 
 AMERICAN WAR " REFUGEES " BEFORE THE U.S. CON- 
 SULATE-GENERAL IN LONDON, AUGUST, I9I4- - 188 
 
 RIGHT HON. LLOYD GEORGE 
 
 224 
 
 LORD NORTHCLIFFE .-.---. 3^6 
 
 XXVll
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE CURTAIN RAISER 
 
 COUNTESS HANNAH VON BISMARCK missed 
 her aim. The beribboned bottle of " German 
 champagne " with which she meant truly well to bap- 
 tize the newest Hamburg-American leviathan of sixty 
 thousand-odd tons on the placid Saturday afternoon 
 of June 20, 1914, went far wide of its mark. The 
 Kaiser, impetuous and resourceful, came gallantly and 
 instantaneously to the rescue. Grabbing the bottle 
 while it still swung unbroken in midair by the black- 
 white-red silken cord which suspended it from the 
 launching pavilion. Imperial William crashed it with 
 accuracy and propelling power a Marathon javehn- 
 thrower might have envied squarely against the vast 
 bow. The granddaughter of the Iron Chancellor, a bit 
 crestfallen because she had only thrown like any v/o- 
 man exclaimed : ''I christen thee, great ship, Bis- 
 marck !'' and the milky foam of the Schaumwein trickled 
 in rivulets dov^Ti the nine or ten-storey side of the most 
 Brobdingnagian product which ever sprang from ship- 
 wrights' hands. Then, with ten thousand awestruck 
 others gathered there on the Elbe side, I w^atched the 
 huge steel carcass, released at last from the stocks which 
 had so long held it prisoner glide and creak majestically 
 down the greasy ways midst our chanting of Deutsch- 
 land, Deutschlami . iiber Alles. Half a minute later the
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Bismarck was resting serenely, house -high, on the sur- 
 face of the murky river five hundred yards away. The 
 Kaiser and Herr BalHn shook hands feehngly, the royal 
 monarch smiling benignly on the shipping king. The 
 military band blared forth Heil dir im Siegerkranz, 
 and the last fete Hamburg was destined to know for 
 many a troublous month had passed into history. 
 
 Countess von Bismarck had missed her aim ! I 
 wonder if there are not many, like myself, who wit- 
 nessed the ill-omened launch and who endow it now 
 with a meaning which events of the intervening year 
 have borne out ? For, surely, when the great General 
 Staff at Berlin reviews dispassionately the beginnings 
 of the war, as it some day will do, there will be an ab- 
 sorbingly interesting explanation of how the machine 
 which Moltke, the Organizer of Victory, handed down 
 to an incompetent namesake and nephew missed its 
 aim, too — the winning of the war by a series of short, 
 sharp and staggering blows which should decide the issue 
 in favour of the Germans before the next snow. The 
 argument has been advanced, in vindication of Ger- 
 many's innocent intentions, that the Hamburg- Am.eri- 
 can line would never have launched the mighty Bis- 
 marck if the Fatherland was planning or contemplating 
 war. But the ship was not to have made her maiden 
 transatlantic voyage until April i, 19 15, the centenary 
 of her great patronym's birth. The German Staff ex- 
 |>ected to dictate a glorious peace long before that time, 
 and might have done so but for Belgium, Joffre, *' that 
 contemptible little British army," and other miscalcu- 
 lations. If the Staff, like Countess von Bismarck, had 
 not missed its aim, the Bismarck would have poked her 
 gigantic nose into New York harbour on scheduled time, 
 2
 
 THE CURTAIN RAISER 
 
 a mammoth symbol of Germany, the World Power 
 indeed, and fitting incarnation of the new Mistress of 
 the Seas. Who knows but what perhaps grandiose 
 visions of that sort were in the far-seeing Herr Ballin's 
 card-index mind ? 
 
 The Kaiser customarily visits the Venice of the North 
 on his way to Kiel Week, the yachting festival invented 
 by him to outrival England's Cowes, and the launch 
 of the Bismarck was timed accordingly. From Ham- 
 burg the Emperor proceeds aboard the Imperial yacht 
 Hohenzollern up the Elbe to Brunsbiittel for the annual 
 regatta of the North German Yacht Squadron, a club 
 consisting for the most part of Hamburg, Bremen and 
 Liibeck patricians with the love of the sea inborn in 
 their Hanseatic veins. There was no variation from 
 the time-honoured programme in 1914. William. II even 
 adhered to his unfailing practice of delivering an 
 apotheosis of the marine profession at the regatta - 
 dinner of the N. G. Y. S. aboard the Hamburg- Ameri- 
 can steamer on which Herr Ballin is wont to entertain 
 for Kiel Week a party of two or three hundred German 
 and foreign notables. There was no glimmer of coming 
 events in the guest -list of s.s. Victoria Luise, for it 
 included Mr. John Walter, one of the hereditary pro- 
 prietors of The Times, and several other distinguished 
 Englishmen soon to be Germany's hated foes. 
 
 By that occult agency which determines with dia- 
 bolical delight the irony of fate, it was ordained that 
 Kiel, 1 9 14, should be the occasion of a spectacular 
 Anglo-German love-feast, with a squadron of British 
 super-dreadnoughts anchored in the midst of the peace- 
 ful German Armada as a sign to all the world of the 
 non-explosive warmth of EngHsh-German " relations.'* 
 
 3
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 That, at any rate, was the design of that unfortunately 
 nebulous element in Berlin, headed by Doctor von 
 Bethmann Hollweg, known as the Peace Party; for 
 had certain highly-placed Germans acting under the 
 Imperial Chancellor's inspiration had their way, the 
 British Admiralty yacht Enchantress, the official craft 
 of the First Lord of the Admiralty and actually bearing 
 that dignitary, Mr. Winston Churchill, M.P., would 
 have been convoyed to Kiel by Vice- Admiral Sir George 
 Warrender's ironclads. The Kaiser's approval of the 
 Churchill project — as I happen to know — had been 
 sought and secured. Eminent friends of an Anglo- 
 German rapprochement in London had done the neces- 
 sary log-rolling in England. Matters were regarded 
 in Germany so much of difait accompli that an anchorage 
 diagram issued by the naval authorities at Kiel only a 
 fortnight before the " Week " indicated the precise 
 spot at which Mr. Churchill and the Enchantress would 
 make fast in the harbour of Kiel Bay. 
 
 But Mr. Churchill did not come. I know why. 
 Grand- Admiral von Tirpitz, to whom the half- American 
 enfant terrible of British politics was a pet aversion, did 
 not want him at Kiel. Mr. Churchill's visit n.igirc have 
 resulted in some sort of an Anglo-German naval modus 
 Vivendi, or otherwise postponed "The Day." The 
 German War Party's plans, so soon to materialize, 
 would have been sadly thrown out of gear by such an 
 untimely event, and von Tirpitz is not the man to brook 
 interference with his programmes. Had not the Ger- 
 man Government, under the Grand-Admirars invin- 
 cible leadership, persistently rejected the hand of naval 
 peace stretched out by the British Cabinet ? Was it 
 not Mr. Churchill's own proposals to which Berlin had 
 4
 
 THE CURTAIN RAISER 
 
 repeatedly returned an imperious No ? Could Germany 
 afford to run the risk of being cajoled, amid the festive 
 atmosphere of Kiel Week, into concessions which she 
 had hitherto successively withheld ? Von Tirpitz said 
 No again. For years he had been saying the same 
 thing on the subject of an armaments understanding 
 with Britain. He said No to Prince Biilow when the 
 fourth Chancellor suggested the advisability of modera- 
 ting a German naval policy certain to lead to conflict 
 with Great Britain. He said No to Doctor von Beth- 
 mann Hollweg when Billow's successor timorously 
 suggested from time to time, as he did, the f oolhardiness 
 of a programme which meant, in an historic phrase of 
 Billow's, " pressure and counter-pressure." Von Tir- 
 pitz had had his way with two German Chancellors, his 
 nominal superiors, in succession. He never dreamt of 
 allowing himself to be bowled over now by an amateur 
 sailor from London, who, if he came to Kiel, would only 
 come armed with a fresh bait designed to rob the Father- 
 land of its " future upon the water." 
 
 Until a bare two weeks before the date of the arrival 
 of the British Squadron in German waters, nothing was 
 publicly known either in London or Berlin of the pro- 
 jected trip of Mr. Churchill to Kiel. Von Tirpitz there- 
 upon had resort to the weapon he wields almost as 
 dexterously as the submarine — publicity — to depopu- 
 larize the scheme of the misguided friends of Anglo- 
 German peace. It was not the first time, of course, 
 that the Grand-Admiral had deliberately crossed the 
 avowed policy of the German Foreign Office. Von 
 Tirpitz now caused the Churchill-Kiel enterprise to be 
 " exposed " in the press, in the confident hope that pre- 
 mature announcement would effectually kill the entire 
 
 5
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 plan. It did. Tirpitz diplomacy scored again, as it 
 was wont to do. Whereof I speak in this highly perti- 
 nent connection I know, on the authority of one of von 
 Tirpitz's most subtle and trusted henchmen. To the 
 latter's eyes, I hope, these reminiscences may some day 
 come. He, at least, will know that history, not fiction, 
 is recited here.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 THE FIRST ACT 
 
 ' T AM simply in my element here !" exclaimed the 
 A Kaiser ecstatically to Vice-Admiral Sir George 
 Warrender, as the twain stood surveying the glittering 
 array of steel-blue German and British men-of-war 
 facing one another amicably on the unruffled bosom of 
 Kiel harbour at high noon of June 25. From my perch 
 of vantage abaft the forward thirteen-and-one-half-inch 
 guns of his Britannic Majesty's super-dreadnought 
 battleship King George V, whither the quartette of 
 London correspondents had been banished during 
 William IFs sojourn in the flagship, I could " see " him 
 talking on the quarter-deck below, speaking with those 
 nervous, jerky right-arm gestures which are as impor- 
 tant a part of his staccato conversation as uttered 
 words. 
 
 The Kaiser was inspecting his flagship, for when he 
 boarded us, almost without notice in accordance with 
 his irrepressible love of a surprise, Sir George Warren- 
 der's flag came down and the emblem of the German 
 Emperor's British naval rank, an Admiral of the Fleet, 
 was hoisted atop all the British vessels in the port. For 
 the nonce the Hohenzollern War Lord was Britannia's 
 senior in command. Aboard the four great twenty- 
 three-thousand-ton battleships, King George V, Auda- 
 cious, Centurion and Ajax and the three fast " light 
 cruisers " Birmingham, Southampton and Nottingham 
 
 7
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 there was, for the better part of an hour, no man to say 
 him nay. I wonder if he, or any of us at Kiel during 
 that amazing week, let our imaginations run riot and 
 conjure up the vision of the Birmingham in action 
 against German warships off Hehgoland within ten 
 short weeks. 
 
 Warrender's squadron had come to Kiel two days 
 before. Another British squadron was at the same 
 moment paying a similar visit of courtesy and friend- 
 ship to the Russian Navy at Riga. The English said 
 then, and insist now, that their ships were dispatched 
 to greet the Kaiser and the Czar as sincere messengers 
 of peace and good- will. The Germans, in the myopic 
 view they have taken of all things since the war began, 
 are convinced that the White Ensign which floated at 
 Kiel six weeks before Great Britain and Germany went 
 to war was the emblem of deceit and hypocrisy, sent 
 there to flap in the Fatherland's guileless face while 
 Perfidious Albion was crouching for the attack. They 
 say that to-day, even in presence of the incongruous 
 fact that Serajevo, which applied the match to the 
 European powder-barrel, wrote its red name across 
 history's page while the British squadron was still riding 
 at anchor in Germany's war harbour. 
 
 It was exactly ten years to the week since British 
 warships had last been to Kiel. I happened to be there 
 on that occasion, too, when King Edward VII, convoyed 
 by a cruiser squadron, shed the lustre of his vivacious 
 presence on the gayest " Week " Kiel ever knew. 
 Meantime the Anglo-German political atmosphere had 
 remained too stubbornly clouded to make an inter- 
 change of naval amenities, of all things, either logical 
 or possible It was the era in which Germania was 
 8
 
 THE FIRST ACT 
 
 preparing her grim battle-toilet for "The Day " — for 
 all the world to see, as she, jiistly enough, always in- 
 sisted. They were the years in which her new dread- 
 nought fleet sprang into being. It was the period in 
 which offer after offer from England for an "understand- 
 ing " on the question of naval armaments met nothing 
 but the cold shoulder in Tirpitz-ruled Berlin. Not 
 until the summer of 19 14 had it seemed feasible for 
 British and German warships to mingle in friendly 
 contact. Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg quite legiti- 
 mately accounted the arrangement of the Kiel love- 
 feast as an achievement of no mean magnitude, viewed 
 in the light of the ten acrimonious years which preceded 
 it. The War Party, realizing its harmlessness, and, 
 indeed, recognizing its value for the party's stealthy 
 purposes, blandly tolerated it. Even Grand- Admiral 
 von Tirpitz was on hand to do the honours, and no one 
 performs them more suavely than Germany's fork- 
 bearded sailor-statesman. 
 
 The day after Sir George Warrender's vessels crept 
 majestically out of the Baltic past Friedrichsort, at the 
 mouth of Kiel harbour, to be w^elcomed by twenty-one 
 German guns from shore batteries, the symptomatic 
 event of the " Week " was enacted — the formal open- 
 ing of the reconstructed Kaiser Wilhelm Canal. I 
 place that day, June 24, not far behind the sanguinary 
 28th of June, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand fell, in 
 its direct relationship to the outbreak of the war. 
 When the giant locks of Holtenau swung free, ready 
 henceforth for the passage of William II's greatest 
 warships, the moment of Germany's up-to-the-minute 
 preparedness for Armageddon was signalized. 
 
 For ten plodding years tens of thousands of hands 
 
 9
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 had been at work converting the waterway which links 
 Baltic Germany with North Sea Germany (Kiel with 
 Wilhelmshaven) into a channel wide and deep enough 
 for navigation by battleships of the largest bulk. 
 After an expenditure of more than ten million pounds 
 the canal, dedicated with pomp and ceremony in 1892 
 to the peaceful requirements of European shipping, 
 was now become a war canal, pure and simple, raised 
 to the war dimension and destined, as the German War 
 Party knew, to play the role for which it was rebuilt 
 almost before its newly-banked stone sides had settled 
 in their foundations. When I watched proud William II, 
 standing solemn and statue-like on the bridge of his 
 Imperial yacht Hohenzollern, as her gleaming golden 
 bow broke through the black-white-red strand of ribbon 
 stretched across the locks, I recall distinctly an in- 
 vincible feeling that I was witness of an historic 
 scene. Germany's army, I said to myself, had long 
 been ready. Now her fleet was ready, too. With an 
 inland avenue of safe retreat, invulnerably fortified 
 at either end. Teuton sea strategists had always 
 insisted that the Fatherland's naval position would 
 be well-nigh impregnable. That hour had arrived. 
 There was the Kaiser, before my very eyes, leading the 
 way through the War Canal for his twenty-seven-thou- 
 sand-five-hundred-ton battleships and battle cruisers, 
 and even for his thirty-five-thousand-ton or fifty- 
 thousand-ton creations of some later day, for the War 
 Canal was made over for to-morrow, as well as for 
 to-day. The German war machine tightened up the 
 last bolt when William of Hohenzollern emerged from 
 Holtenau locks into the harbour of Kiel, spectacular 
 symbol of the fact that German ironclads of any 
 10
 
 THE FIRST ACT 
 
 dimensions were now able to sally back and forth from 
 the Baltic to the North Sea and hide for a year, as the 
 world has meantime seen, even from the Mistress of the 
 Seas. No wonder a British bluejacket, forming the 
 link of an endless chain of his fellows dressing ship round 
 the rail of the Centurion in honour of the War Lord, 
 whispered audibly to a mate, as the Hohenzollern 
 steamed down the line to her anchorage, '' Say, Bill, 
 don't he look jest like Gawd !" Perhaps the Divinely- 
 Anointed felt that way, too. 
 
 When the Kaiser had left the King George V after 
 a politely cursory " inspection " — the only real " under- 
 standing " effected between England and Germany 
 at Kiel was a tacit agreement on the part of officers and 
 men to do no amateur spying in one another's ships — 
 Sir George Warrender summoned us from the turret 
 and told us some details of the All-Highest visitation. 
 The Emperor had been " delighted to make his first 
 call in a British dreadnought aboard so magnificent a 
 specimen as the Ki^ig George V " (she and her sisters 
 being at the time the most powerful battleships flying 
 the White Ensign). He wanted the Vice- Admiral to 
 assure the British Government what pleasure it had 
 done the German Navy " in sending these fine ships 
 to Kiel." He hoped nothing was being left undone to 
 " complete the English sailors' happiness " in German 
 waters. That extorted from Sir George Warrender 
 the exclamation that German hospitality, like all else 
 Teutonic, was seemingly thoroughness personified, 
 for somebody had even been thoughtful enough to 
 lay a submarine telephone cable from the Seebade- 
 Anstalt Hotel to the Vice-Admiral's flagship, so that 
 Lady Maude Warrender might talk from her apart- 
 
 II
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 ments on shore directly to her husband's quarters 
 afloat. 
 
 " Yes," continued the Kaiser, who is a genial con- 
 versationalist and raconteur, " I am in my element in 
 surroundings like these. I love the sea. I like to go 
 to launchings of ships. I am passionately fond of 
 yachting. You must sail with me to-morrow, Admiral, 
 in my newest Meteor, the fifth of the name. I race 
 only with German crews now. Time was when I had 
 to have British skippers and British sailors. You see, 
 my aim is to breed a race of German yachtsmen. As 
 fast as I've trained a good crew in the Meteor, I let it 
 go to the new owner of the boat. I am the loser by that 
 system, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that I 
 am promoting a good cause." The confab was ap- 
 proaching its end. " Oh, Admiral, before I forget, how 
 
 is Lady and the Duchess of 
 
 I know so many of your handsome Englishwomen." 
 
 Sir George Warrender's captains and the officers of 
 the flagship were now grouped around him for a farewell 
 salute to their Imperial senior officer. The Kaiser 
 spied the King George V's chaplain, and leaning over 
 to him inquired, gaily, *' Chaplain, is there any swearing 
 in this ship !" " Oh, never, Your Majesty, never any 
 swearing in a British dreadnought !" The War Lord 
 liked that, for we who were hidden in the Olympian 
 heights for'd heard him laugh aloud at this veracious 
 tribute to Jack Tar's world-famed purity of diction. 
 
 Kiel Week thenceforward was an endless round of 
 Anglo-German pleasantries. A Zeppelin, harbinger 
 of coming events, hovered over the British squadron 
 at intervals, her crew wagging cheery greetings to the 
 ships while acquainting themselves at close range with 
 
 12
 
 THE FIRST ACT 
 
 the looks of English dreadnoughts from the sky. British 
 sailormen paid fraternal visits to German dreadnoughts 
 and German sailormen returned their calls. The crew 
 of the Ajax gave a music-hall smoker in honour of the 
 crew of the big battle-cruiser Seydlitz, the Teuton tars 
 being no little awestruck by the complacency with which 
 two heavyweight British boxers pommelled each other 
 a sea-green for six rounds and then smilingly shook 
 hands when it was all over. Germans never punch 
 one another except in gory hate, and they seldom fight 
 with their fists. The Kaiser was host nightly at 
 splendid State dinners in the Hohenzollem and Vice- 
 Admiral Warrender returned the fire with state ban- 
 quets aboard the King George V. The atmosphere was 
 fairly thick with brotherly love. It was not so much 
 as ruffled even when the octogenarian Earl of Brassey, 
 who wards off rheumatism by an early morning pull 
 in his row-boat, was arrested by a German harbour- 
 policeman as an " Enghsh spy " for approaching the 
 forbidden waters of Kiel dockyard. German diplomacy 
 was typically represented by Lord Brassey's zealous 
 captor, for the master of the famous Sunbeam brought 
 that venerable craft to Kiel to demonstrate that English- 
 men of his class sincerely favoured peace, and, if possible, 
 friendship with Germany. Wilhelmstrasse tact was 
 exemplified again when, by way of apology to Lord 
 Brassey, the Kiel police explained that there was, 
 of course, no intention of charging him with espionage. 
 The policeman who arrested him merely thought he 
 was nabbing a smuggler ! At dinner that night in the 
 Hohenzollem, the Kaiser chuckled jovially at Lord 
 Brassey's expense. England's greatest living marine 
 historian stole away from Kiel with the Sunhea-m. in 
 
 13
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the grey dawn of the next day, with new ideas of 
 German courtesy to the stranger within the gate. He 
 had intended to stay longer. 
 
 Of ail the billing and cooing at Kiel there is photo- 
 graphed most indelibly on my mem.ory the glorious 
 frolic of the sailors of the British and German 
 squadrons in the big assembly hall at the Imperial 
 dockyard on the Saturday night of the " Week." 
 There were free beer, free tobacco, free provender for 
 everybody, in typical German plenty. A ship's band 
 blared rag-time and horn-pipes all night long. Only 
 the supply of Kiel girls fell short of the demand, but 
 that only made merrier fun for the bluejackets, who, 
 lacking fair partners, danced with one another, and 
 when the hour had become really hilarious, they tripped 
 across the floor, when they were not rolling over it, 
 embracing in threes, bunny-hugging, grotesquely tango- 
 ing, turkey-trotting and fish -walking more joyously 
 than men ever revelled before. 
 
 There, I thought, was Anglo-German friendship in 
 being — not an ideal, but an actuality. I am sure the 
 British and German tars at Kiel that boisterous Satur- 
 day night which melted into the Sunday of Serajevo 
 little dreamt that when next they would be locked in 
 one another's arms, it would be at grips for hfe or death. 
 
 14
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE PLOT DEVELOPS 
 
 VON G. is a Junker. He is also Germany's ablest 
 special correspondent. A Junker, let the un- 
 initiated understand, is a Prussian land baron, or one 
 of his descendants, who considers dominion over the 
 earth and all its worms his by Divine Right. If, like 
 von G., a Junker is an army officer besides, active or 
 ausser Dienst, and had a grandfather who belonged to 
 Moltke's headquarters in 1870-71, he is the superla- 
 tively real thing. So, as my mission in Germany was 
 study of the Fatherland in its characteristic ramifica- 
 tions, I always felt myself richly favoured by the friend- 
 ship and professional comradeship of von G. He was 
 Junkerism incarnate. Several years' residence in the 
 United States had signally failed to corrode von G.'s 
 Junker instincts. Indeed, it intensified them, for he 
 was ever after a confirmed believer in the ignominious 
 failure of Democracy. It was he who popularized 
 " Dollarica " as a German nickname for " God's 
 country." 
 
 Von G. and I roomed together at Kiel, sharing apart- 
 ments and a bath in the harbourmaster's flat above the 
 Imperial Yacht Club post-office, whose two storeys of 
 brick and stucco serve as " annex " to the always over- 
 crowded and palatial Krupp hotel, the Seebade-Anstalt, 
 at the other end of the flowered club grounds. That 
 bath, which I mention in no spirit of ablutionary arro- 
 
 15
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 gance, has to do with the story of von G., for it was to 
 bring me on a day destined to be historic in violent con- 
 flict with Junkerism. Von G. and I regulated the bath 
 situation at Kiel by leaving word on our landlady's slate 
 the night before which of us would bathe first next 
 morning and at what hour. The bath happened to 
 adjoin my sleeping quarters and von G. could not reach 
 it except by crossing my bedroom, which he always 
 entered without knocking. On Sunday, June 28, fate- 
 ful day, von G. was timed to bathe at eight a.m., I at 
 nine — so read the schedule inscribed by our respective 
 hands on the good Frau Hafenmeister's tablet. At 
 seven-thirty I was roused from my feathered slumbers 
 by her soft footsteps — the softest steps of German har- 
 bourmasters wives are quite audible — as she trundled 
 across the room to arrange Herr von G.'s eight o'clock 
 dip. Junkers are punctual people, but that morning 
 mine was late. Eight, eight-thirty, eighty-forty-five 
 passed, and there was no sign of him.. When nine 
 o'clock came, I thought I might reasonably conclude, 
 in my rude, inconsiderate American way, that von G. 
 had overslept or postponed his bath, so I made for the 
 tub at the hour I had intended to. I was just stepping 
 one foot into it when — it was nine-ten now — von G., 
 rubbing his eyes, bolted in. 
 
 " What do you mean by taking my bath ?" he yelled 
 at me. " That's some of your damned American im- 
 pudence 1" 
 
 Whereupon, imperturbably pouring the rest of me 
 into the bath, I ventured to suggest to Field-Marshal 
 von G., that if he would drop the barrack-yard tone 
 and remember that I was neither a Dachshimd nor a 
 Pomeranian recruit, I would deign to hold converse 
 j6
 
 THE PLOT DEVELOPS 
 
 on the point under debate. I am not sure I spoke as 
 calmly as that sounds, for to gain a conversational 
 lap on a German you must outshout him. At any rate, 
 von G., abandoning a.buse, stalked whimperingly from 
 the room, fired some rearguard shrapnel about " just 
 like an American's ' nerve '," and bathed later in the 
 day. 
 
 I did not see him again until about five o'clock that 
 afternoon. He bolted into my room this time, too, 
 but in excitement, not anger. 
 
 " The x\rchduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife have 
 been assassinated !" he exclaimed. 
 
 " Good God !" I rejoined, stupefied. 
 
 " It's a good thing," said von G. quietly. 
 
 For many days and nights I wondered what the 
 Junker meant. I think I know now. He meant that 
 the War Party (of which he was a very potent and 
 zealous member) had at length found a pretext for 
 forcing upon Europe the struggle for which the Germrn 
 War Lords regarded themselves vastly more ready than 
 any possible combination of foes. The first year of the 
 war has amply demonstrated the accuracy of their 
 calculations. Germany's triumphs in the opening 
 twelvemonth of Armageddon were the triumphs of the 
 s\iperlatively prepared. If Serajevo had not come 
 along when it did — with the German military establish- 
 ment just built up to a peace-footing of nearly one mil- 
 lion officers and men and rearmed in every direction 
 at a cost of fifty million pounds; with von Tirpitz's 
 Fleet at the acme of its efficiency ; with the Kiel Canal 
 reconstructed for the passage of super-dreadnought 
 ironclads — Germany's readiness for war might have 
 proved fatally inferior to that of her enemies-to-be, 
 
 c 17
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 The Fatherland was ready, armed to the teeth, as 
 nation never was before. The psychological moment 
 had dawned. 
 
 This was the reassuring state of affairs at home. 
 What did the War Party see when it put its mailed 
 hand to the vizor and looked abroad, across to England, 
 west over the Rhine to France, and toward Russia ? 
 It saw Great Britain on what truly enough looked to 
 most of the world like the brink of revolution in Ireland. 
 It saw a France, of which a great Senator had only a 
 few days before said that her forts were defective, her 
 guns short of ammunition, and her army lacking in 
 even such rudimentary war sinews as sufficient boots 
 for the troops. It saw a Russia stirred by industrial 
 strife which seemed to need only the threat of grave 
 foreign complications to inflame her always rebelHous 
 proletariat into revolt. For the War-Makers Serajevo 
 had all the earmarks of providential timeliness. 
 
 " It's a good thing," said the sententious von G. 
 
 The " trippers " from Hamburg and nearer-by points 
 in Schleswig-Holstein, whom the Sunday of Kiel Week 
 attracts by the thousand, were far more stunned than 
 von G. by the news from Bosnia, which put so tragic an 
 end to their seaside holiday. The esplanade, which had 
 been throbbing with bustle and glittering with colour, 
 did not know at first why all the ships in the harbour, 
 British as well as German, had suddenly lowered their 
 pennants to half-mast, or why the Austrian royal 
 standard had suddenly broken out, also at the mourn- 
 ing altitude. The Kaiser was racing in the Baltic. 
 " Old Franz Josef," some said, " has died. He's been 
 going for many a day." Presently the truth percolated 
 through the awestruck crowds. The sleek white naval 
 i8
 
 THE PLOT DEVELOPS 
 
 dispatch-boat Sleipner tore through the Bay, Baltic - 
 bound. She carries news to WiUiam II when he governs 
 Germanj^ from the quarter-deck of the Hohenzollern. 
 Sleipner dodged eel-hke through the hues of British 
 and German men-of-war, ocean hners, pleasure-craft 
 and racing-yachts anchored here, there and everywhere. 
 In fifteen minutes she was alongside the Emperor's swift 
 schooner, Meteor V, w^hich had broken off her race on 
 receipt of wireless tidings of the Archducal couple's 
 murderous fate. The Hohenzollern had already " wire- 
 lessed " for the fastest torpedo-boat in port to fetch the 
 Kaiser and his staff off the Meteor, and the destroyer 
 and Sleipner snorted up, foam-bespattered, almost 
 simultaneously. The Emperor clambered into the 
 torpedo-boat and started for the harbour. 
 
 It was the face of a William II, blanched ashen-grey, 
 which turned from the bridge of the destroyer to ac- 
 knowledge, in solemn gravity, the salutes of the officers 
 and crew of the British flagship, as the Kaiser's craft 
 raced past the King George V . Always stern of mien, 
 the Emperor now looked severity personified. His 
 staff stood apart. He seemed to wish to be alone, 
 absolutely, with the overwhelming thoughts of the 
 moment. Three minutes later, and he stepped aboard 
 the Hohenzollern. Now another pennant showed at 
 the mainmast of the Imperial yacht — the blue and 
 yellow signal flag which means : " His Majesty is aboard, 
 but preoccupied." I wonder if posterity will ever know 
 what monumental reflections flitted through the Kaiser's 
 mind in that first hour after Serajevo ? Did he, like 
 von G., think it was " a good thing," too ? 
 
 I suppose the first stars and stripes to be half-masted 
 anywhere in the world that dread sundown were those 
 
 19
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 which drooped from the stern of Vtowana, Mr. Allison 
 Vincent Armour's steam-yacht, anchored in the Bay 
 off Kiel Naval Academy. A puffing little launch took 
 me out to the Utowana as soon as I had gathered some 
 coherent facts, which I w^anted to present to Mr. Armour 
 and his guests, American Ambassador and Mrs. James 
 W. Gerard, of Berhn, who had motored to Kiel the day 
 before. Mrs. Gerard's sister, Countess Sigray, is the 
 wife of a Hungarian nobleman, and the Ambassador's 
 wife, if my mem.ory serves me correctly, once told me 
 of her sister's acquaintance with both of the assas- 
 sinated Royalties. We Americans discussed the im- 
 mediate consequences of the day's event — how the 
 Kaiser would take it, how it w^ould affect poor old 
 Emperor Francis Joseph. William H and Admiral 
 von Tirpitz had been the Archduke's guests at Kono- 
 pischt in Bohemia only a few weeks before. The Kaiser 
 and the future ruler of Austria-Hungary had become 
 great friends. They were not always that. There had 
 been a good deal of the W^ilham H in Franz Ferdinand 
 himself. People often said it was a case of Greek meet 
 Greek, and that two such insistent personalities were 
 inevitably bound to clash. Others said that the Arch- 
 duke, inspired by his brilliantly clever consort, always 
 insisted that German overlordship in Vienna would 
 cease when he came to the throne. Still others knew 
 that despite antipathies and antagonisms, the two men 
 had at length come to be genuinely fond of each other, 
 and that their ideas and ideals for the greater glory of 
 " Central Europe " coincided. 
 
 These things we chatted and canvassed, irrespon- 
 sibly, on Utowana^ s immaculate deck. All of us w^re 
 persuaded of the imminency of a crisis in Austro- 
 20
 
 THE PLOT DEVELOPS 
 
 Serbian relations in consequence of Princip's crime. 
 But I am quite sure not a soul of us held himself capable 
 of imagining that, because of that remote felony, Great 
 Britain and Germany would be at war five weeks later. 
 Beyond us spread the peaceful panorama of British 
 and German war-craft, anchored side by side, and the 
 thought would have perished at birth. 
 
 Returned to the terrace of the Seebade-Anstalt, one 
 found the atmosphere heavily charged \vith suppressed 
 excitement. Immaculately-groomed young diplomats, 
 down from Berlin for the Sunday, were twirling their 
 walking-sticks and yellow gloves which were not, after 
 all, to accompany them to Grand-Admiral Prince 
 Henry of Prussia's garden-party. That, like every- 
 thing else connected with Kiel Week, had suddenly 
 been called off. 
 
 A party of Americans flocked together at the en- 
 trance to the hotel to exchange low-spoken views on 
 the all-pervading topic. There was big Lieutenant- 
 Commander Walter R. Gherardi, our wide-awake 
 Berhn Naval Attache, resplendent in gala gold-braided 
 imiform, and Mrs. Gherardi, who had motored me 
 around the environs of Kiel that morning; Albert Bill- 
 ings Ruddock, Third Secretary of the Embassy, and 
 his pretty and clever wife; and Lanier Winslow, Am- 
 bassador Gerard's private secretary, his effervescent 
 good nature repressed for the first time I ever re- 
 membered observing it in that unbecoming and 
 unnatural condition. Secretary Ruddock's father, 
 Mr. Charles H. Ruddock, of New York, completed 
 the group. 
 
 I met Mr. Ruddock, Sr., six months later in New 
 York. " Do you remember what you told me that 
 
 21
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 afternoon at Kiel, when we were discussing Sara- 
 jevo ?" he asked. I pleaded a lapse of recollection. 
 " You said," he reminded me, " ' this means war.' " 
 
 The aspect of Kiel became in the twinkling of an eye 
 as funereal as Serajevo and Vienna themselves must 
 have been in that blood-bespattered hour. Bands 
 stopped playing, flags not lowered to half-mast were 
 hauled dowTi altogether, and beer-gardens emptied. 
 " Hohenzollern weather," Teuton synonym for invin- 
 cible sunshine, vanished in keeping with the drooping 
 spirits of everybody and everything, and bleak thunder- 
 showers intermingled with flashes of heat-lightning 
 to complete the mise en scene. A week of gaiety un- 
 surpassed evaporated into gloom and foreboding. 
 
 For myself it had been a week crowded with great 
 recollections. Special correspondents telegraphing to 
 influential foreign newspapers, particularly if they 
 were English and American newspapers, were always 
 persona gratissima with German dignitaries, even of 
 the blood royal. The group of us on duty at what, 
 alas ! was to be the last Kiel Week, at least of the old 
 sort, for many a year, were the recipients, as usual, of 
 that scientific hospitality wliich foreign newspapermen 
 always receive at German official hands. Before we 
 were at Kiel twenty-four hours we were deluged with 
 invitations to garden-parties at the Commanding Ad- 
 miral's, to soirees innumerable ashore and afloat, to 
 luncheons at the Town Hall, to the grand balls at the 
 Naval Academy, and to functions of lesser magnitude 
 for the blue-jackets. Grand-Admiral von Tirpitz had 
 left his card at my lodgings and so had Admiral von 
 Coerper, the Commander of the Baltic Station, 
 who will be pleasantly remembered by London friends 
 
 22
 
 THE PLOT DEVELOPS 
 
 when he was Naval Attache and found an Enghsh 
 wife there. Captain Lohlein, the courteous chief 
 of the Press Bureau of the Navy Department at Berhn, 
 had equipped me wdth credentials which practically 
 made me a freeman of Kiel harbour for the time being. 
 In no single direction was effort lacking, on the part of 
 the authorities who have the most practical conception 
 of any Government in the world of the value of adver- 
 tising, to enable special correspondents at Kiel to prac- 
 tise their profession comfortably and successfully. I 
 must not forget to mention the visit paid me by Baron 
 von Stumm, chief of the Anglo-American division of 
 the German Foreign Office ; for Stumm's opinion of me 
 underwent a kaleidoscopic and mysterious change a few 
 vA-eks later. Treasured conspicuously in my memories 
 of Kiel, too, will long remain the call I received from 
 Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach's private secre- 
 tary, and the message he brought me from the Master 
 of Essen. It seems less cryptic to me now than then. 
 I sought an interview from the Cannon Queen's consort 
 about the visit he and his staff of experts had just paid 
 to the great arsenals and dockyards of Great Britain. 
 
 " Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach presents his 
 comphments," said the secretary, '* and asks me to say 
 how much he regrets he cannot grant an interview, as 
 the matters which took him to England are not such 
 as he cares to discuss in pubhc." 
 
 I wonder how many English newspaper readers, 
 in the hurly-burly of the fast-marching events which 
 preceded and ushered in the war, remember the little 
 army ol eminent and expert " investigators '' who hon- 
 oured England with their company on the very thresh- 
 old of hostilities ? June saw the presence in London, 
 
 23
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 ostensibly for " the season," of Herr Krupp von Boh- 
 len und Halbach, accompanied not only by his pluto- 
 cratic wife, but by his chief technical expert, Doctor 
 Ehrensberger of Essen, an old-time friend of Ameri- 
 can steel men like Mr. Schwab and ex- Ambassador 
 Leishman, and by Herr von Biilow, a kinsman of the 
 ex-Imperial Chancellor, who was the Krupp general 
 representative in England. With a naivete which 
 Britons themselves now regard almost incomprehen- 
 sible, the Krupp party was shown over practically all 
 of England's greatest weapons-of-war works at Birk- 
 enhead, Barrow-in-Furness, Glasgow, Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne and Shefheld. They saw the world-famed plants 
 of Firth, Cammell-Laird, Vickers-Maxim, Brown, 
 Armstrong- Whit worth and Hadfield. Not with the 
 eyes of Cook tourists, but with the practised gaze of 
 specialists, they were privileged to look upon sights 
 which must have sent them away with a vivid, up-to- 
 date and accurate impression of Britain's capabilities 
 in the all-vital realm of production of war materials for 
 both army and nav3^ It was from this personally con- 
 ducted junket through the zone of British war indus- 
 try that Herr Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach re- 
 turned — not to Essen, but to Kiel (where he has his 
 summer home) and to the Kaiser and von Tirpitz. 
 It was to them his report was made. I think I under- 
 stand better now why he could not see his way to 
 letting me tell the British public what he saw and 
 learned in England. I was guileless when I sought 
 the interview. Let this be my apology to Herr 
 Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach for attempting to 
 penetrate into matters obviously not fit " to discuss in 
 public." 
 24
 
 THE PLOT DEVELOPS 
 
 During July England entertained three other im- 
 portant German emissaries, each a specialist, as be- 
 fitted the country of his origin and the object of his 
 mission. Doctor Dernburg came over. He spent ten 
 strenuous days " in touch " with financial and economic 
 circles and subjects. No man could be relied upon to 
 bring back to Berlin a shrewder estimate of the Brit- 
 ish commercial situation. A few days later Herr 
 Ballin, the German shipping king, crossed the channel. 
 I recall telegraphing a Berlin newspaper notice which 
 explained that the astute managing director of the 
 Hamburg- American line went to England to '* look into 
 the question of fuel-oil supplies." Herr Ballin, hke 
 Doctor Dernburg, also kept " in touch " with the Brit- 
 ish circles most important and interesting to himself 
 and the Fatherland. He must have dabbled in high 
 politics a bit, too, for only the other day Lord Haldane 
 revealed that he arranged for Herr Ballin to " meet a 
 few friends " at his lordship's home at Queen 
 Anne's Gate. Germans always felt a proprietary 
 right to seek the hospitality of the Scotch statesman 
 who acknowledged that his spiritual domicile was 
 in the Fatherland. 
 
 Then, finally, came another German, far more 
 august than Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach, Dern- 
 burg and Ballin — Grand-Admiral Prince Henry of 
 Prussia. His visit fell within a week of Germany's 
 declaration of war against France and Russia. The 
 Prince, who enjoyed many warm friendships in Eng- 
 land and visited the country at frequent intervals, also 
 spent a busy week in London. He saw the King, 
 called on Prince Louis of Battenburg, the then 
 First Sea Lord, and paid his respects to Mr. Winston 
 
 25
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty. Englishmen 
 only conjecture how he put in the rest of his time. 
 
 Perhaps an episode in the trial of Karl Lody, the 
 German naval spy who was executed at the Tower of 
 London on November 6, has its place in the unre- 
 corded history of Prince Henry of Prussia's epochal 
 visit to the British Isles. Lody confessed to his mili- 
 tary judges at Middlesex Guildhall that he received 
 his orders to report on British naval preparations from 
 " a distinguished personage." 
 
 " Give us his name," commanded Lord Cheylesmore, 
 presiding officer of the court. 
 
 " I would rather not tell it in open court," pleaded 
 the prisoner, whom Scotland Yard, the day before, 
 had asked me to look at, with a view to possible identi- 
 fication with certain Berlin affiliations. 
 
 " I will write his name on a piece of paper for the 
 court's confidential information," Lody added. His 
 plea was granted. 
 
 When we were officially notified that the Kaiser 
 would proceed next morning by special train to Berlin, 
 we made our own preparations to depart. The British 
 squadron had still a day and a half of its scheduled 
 visit to complete, and Vice-Admiral Warrender told 
 us he would remain accordingly. The German Ad- 
 miralty had extended him the hospitality of the new 
 War Canal for the cruise of his fleet into the North 
 Sea, but he decided to send only the light cruisers by 
 that route and take his battleships home, as they had 
 come, by the roundabout route of the Baltic. 
 
 On Monday noon, June 29, I went back to Berlin, 
 to live through five weeks of finishing touches for 
 the grand world blood-bath. 
 26
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 ARMAGEDDON was plotted, prepared for and 
 precipitated by the German War Party. It was 
 not the work of the German people. What is the 
 '' War Party "? Let me begin by explaining what it is 
 not. It is not a party in the sense of the Prime 
 Minister's organization or Mr. Bonar Law's Unionists. 
 It maintains no permanent headquarters or National 
 Committee, and holds no congresses. The only 
 "barbecue" it ever organized is the one which plunged 
 the world into gore and tears in August, 1914, though 
 its attempts to drench Europe with blood are decade- 
 old. You would search the German city directories 
 in vain for the War Party's address or telephone 
 number. No German would ever acknowledge that 
 he belonged to Europe's largest Black Hand league. 
 You could, indeed, hardly find anybody in Germany 
 who would be willing to acknowledge that the War Party 
 even existed. Yet, unseen and sinister, its grip was 
 fastened so heavily upon the machinery of State that 
 when it deemed the moment for its sanguinary purposes 
 at length ripe, the War Party was able to tear the 
 whole nation from its peaceful pursuits and fling it, 
 armed to the teeth, against a Europe so flagrantly 
 unready that more than a year of strife finds Germany 
 not only unbeaten but at a zenith of fighting efficiency 
 which her foes have only begun to approach. 
 
 27
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 When the Gennan War Party pressed the button 
 for the Great Massacre, the Fatherland had, roundly, 
 sixty-seven million five hundred thousand inhabitants 
 within its thriving walls. At a liberal estimate, no 
 one can ever convince me that more than one million 
 five hundred thousand Germans really wanted war. 
 They were the " War Party." Sixty-six millions of 
 the Kaiser's subjects, immersed in the most abundant 
 prosperity any European country of modern times 
 had been vouchsafed, -longed only for the continuance 
 of the conditions which had brought about this state 
 of unparalleled national weal. I do not believe 
 that William II, deep down in his heart, craved for 
 war. I can vouch for the literal accuracy of a hitherto 
 unrecorded piece of ante-bellum history which bears 
 out my doubts of the Kaiser's immediate responsibility 
 for the war, though it does not acquit him of supine 
 acquiescence in, and to that extent abetting, the War 
 Party's plot. 
 
 On the afternoon of Saturday, August i, 1914, the 
 wife of Lieutenant-General Helmuth von Moltke, then 
 Chief of the Great German General Staff, paid a visit 
 to a certain home in Berlin, which shall be nameless. 
 The Fran Generalstabschef was in a state of obvious 
 mental excitement. 
 
 " Ach, what a day I've been through, Kinder I" she 
 began. " My husband came home just before I left. 
 Dog-tired, he threw himself on to the couch, a total 
 wreck, explaining to me that he had finally accom- 
 plished the three days' hardest work he had ever done 
 in his whole life — he had helped to induce the Kaiser 
 to sign the mobilization order !" 
 
 There is the evidence, disclosed in the homeliest, yet 
 28
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 the most direct, fashion, of the German War Party's 
 unescapable culpability for the supreme crime against 
 humanity. The " sword " had, indeed, been " forced " 
 into the Kaiser's hand. This is no brief for the 
 Kaiser's innocence. No man did more than William II 
 himself, during twenty-six years of explosive reign, 
 to stimulate the military clique in the belief that 
 when the dread hour came the Supreme War Lord 
 would be " with my Army." Yet German officers, 
 in those occasional moments when conviviality bred 
 loquacity, were fond of averring, as more than one 
 of them has averred to me, that " the Kaiser lacked 
 the moral courage to sign a mobilization order." Die 
 Post, a leading War Party organ, said as much during 
 the Morocco imbroglio in 191 1. Perhaps that is why 
 General von Moltke had to force the pen, which for 
 the nonce was mightier than the sword, into the re- 
 luctant hand of William II. 
 
 The Kaiser was constitutionally addicted to swag- 
 gering war talk, but, in my judgment, he preferred 
 the bark to the bite. He likes his job. Like our 
 Roosevelt, he has a " perfectly corking time " wielding 
 the sceptre. Raised in the belief that the Hohenzol- 
 lerns were divinely appointed to their Royal estate, 
 Willi'im II dearly loves his trade. He does not want 
 to lose his throne. In peace there was little danger of 
 its ever slipping from under him, thanks to a Socialist 
 " movement " which was noisy but never really 
 menacing. In war Hohenzollern rule is in perpetual 
 peril. Hostile armies, if they ever battered their w^ay 
 to Potsdam, would almost surely wreck the dynasty, 
 even if the mob had not already saved them that 
 trouble. The Kaiser, sagacious like every man when 
 
 29
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 his livelihood is at stake, always had these dread 
 eventualities in mind. His personal interests, the for- 
 tunes of his House, all lay along the path of manifest 
 safety — peace. Meantime his concessions to the War 
 Party were generous and frequent. He rattled the 
 sabre on its demand. He donned his " shining armour" 
 at Austria's side when the Germanic Powers coerced 
 Russia into recognition of the Bosnian annexation in 
 1909. He sent the Panther to Agadir harbour in 191 1 
 because the War Party howled for " deeds " in Morocco. 
 It hoped that history would repeat itself in North- 
 western Africa — that the Triple Entente would yield to 
 German bluff as it yielded in South-Eastem Europe 
 two years previous. It did not, and it was then that 
 the German War Party swore a solemn vow of " Never 
 Again !" The days of the Kaiser who merely threat- 
 ened war were numbered. Next time the sword would 
 be " forced " into his hand. " Before God and history 
 my conscience is clear. I did not will this war. One 
 year has elapsed since I was obliged to call the German 
 people to arms." Thus William of Hohenzollem*s 
 manifesto to his people from Main Headquarters on 
 the first anniversary of the war, August i, 19 15. 
 Herewith I place Frau Generalstabschef von Moltke 
 on the stand as chief witness in the Kaiser's defence. 
 
 I have said that sixty-six million Germans wanted 
 peace and one million five hundred thousand demanded 
 war. But in Germany minority rules. It rules su- 
 preme when the issue is war or peace, and when the 
 German War Party insisted upon deeds instead of 
 speeches the nation, Kaiser and all, Reichstag and 
 Socialist, Prince and peasant, had but one alternative 
 — to yield. In July, 1914, the War Party imperiously 
 30
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 asked for war, and war ensued. That is the inefface- 
 able long and short of Armageddon. I am persuaded 
 that William II on July 31 was confronted with some- 
 thing strangely like an abrupt alternative of mobiliza- 
 tion or abdication. 
 
 Assertions of the German people's consecration to 
 peace may strike the reader as incongruous in face of 
 the magnificent unanimity with which the entire 
 Fatherland has waged and is still waging the war. 
 But such a view leaves wholly out of account the most 
 prodigious and amazing of all the German War Party's 
 preparations — the skilful manipulation of public opinion 
 for " The Day." In ten brief days — those fateful hours 
 between July 23, when Austria launched her brutal 
 ultimatum at Serbia, and August i, when mobilization 
 of the German Army and Navy made a European con- 
 flagration a certainty — Germany's vast peace majority, 
 by deception which I shall outline in a subsequent 
 chapter, was converted into a multitudinous mob mad 
 for war. 
 
 I count the merely material preparations of the War 
 Party — the steady expansion of Krupps, the develop- 
 ment of the Fleet, the invention of the forty-two 
 centimetre gun, the vast secret storage of arms and 
 ammunition, the 1913 increase of the Army, the accu- 
 mulation of a war-chest of gold, the stealthy organiza- 
 tion of every conceivable instrument and resource of 
 war down to details too minute for the ordinary mind 
 to grasp ; all these, I count as nothing compared to the 
 hypnotization of the German national mind extending 
 over many years. 
 
 In England and America the name of Bernhardi 
 was on everybody's lips as the archpriest of the war. 
 
 31
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 I doubt if one man in ten thousand in Germany ever 
 heard of Bemhardi before August, 1914. He became 
 an international personality mainly through the graces 
 of foreign newspaper correspondents in Berlin, who, 
 recognizing his book, Germany's Next War, as classic 
 proclamation of the War Party's designs on the world, 
 dignified it with commensurate attention, not because 
 of its authorship, but because of its innate author it ative- 
 ness. The result was the translation of Germany's Next 
 War into the English language, and subsequently, I 
 suppose, into every other civilized language in the 
 world. Perhaps I am myself to some extent responsible 
 for Bemhardi's vogue in the United States. He was 
 going to cross our country en route back to Europe from 
 the Far East, and wrote to ask me to suggest to him the 
 name of an American translator and publisher for his 
 books. Bemhardi, a mere retired general of cavalry 
 with a gift for incisive writing, woke up to find himself 
 famous. But nothing could be more beyond the mark 
 than to imagine that he was the pioneer of German 
 war-aggression. He was merely its most plain-spoken 
 prophet. The way had been paved for decades before 
 he appeared upon the scene. After Bemhardi was 
 successfully launched on the bookshelves of the 
 world, the German War Party took him up, and it was 
 not long before Die Post, the Deutsche Tagcszeittwg 
 and other organs of blood-and-iron were able to make 
 " the highly gratifying " announcement that Bem- 
 hardi' s manual had been compressed into a fifty-pfennig 
 popular edition, so that the German masses might be 
 educated in the inspiring doctrine of manifest Teuton 
 destiny, as Bernb rdi so unblushingly set it foith. 
 
 The German War Party's certificate of incorpora- 
 32
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 tion ii dated Versailles, January i8, 187 1, when, on 
 the one hundred and seventieth anniversary of the 
 creation of the kingdom of Piiissia, Bismarck and 
 Moltke crowned victorious William I of Prussia Ger- 
 man Emperor. Cradled in Prussianism, the German 
 War Party has always been Prussian, rather than 
 German. To the credit of Bavaria, Saxony, Baden and 
 Wiirttemberg be that for ever remembered. Denmark 
 and Austria, during the seven years preceding Ver- 
 sailles, had had their lessons. Now France lay pros- 
 trate, despoiled of her fairest provinces and financially 
 bled white, as the conqueror imagined. Germany's 
 preliminary wars were won. From that moment the 
 Prussian head began swelling with invincible self- 
 esteem, to emerge in the succeeding generation in an 
 insensate and megalomaniac conviction that to the 
 race which had accomplished what the Germans had 
 achieved nothing was im.possible. " World Power " 
 became the national slogan. 
 
 In the reconstruction years following the 1870-71 
 campaign non-military Germany was bent on laying 
 the foundations of industrial greatness. The pro- 
 ject was vouchsafed no support from the helmeted 
 hotspurs who, within ten years of Sedan and Paris, 
 did their utmost to force Bismarck into giving hum- 
 bled France a fresh drubbing, that her power to rise 
 from the dust might be crushed for all time. Then 
 the Prussian War Party demanded that the scalp of 
 Russia be added to its insatiable belt. Bismarck pro- 
 pitiated the Bernhardis of that day by thundering in 
 the Reichstag that '* We Germans fear God, and noth- 
 ing else in the world !" When the Chancellor of Iron 
 burnt that piece of bombast into the German soul in 
 
 D 33
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 1887, a year before William the Speechmaker was 
 enthroned, he wrote the German War Party's " plat- 
 form." Since then many planks have been added to 
 it, but all of them have rested squarely and firmly on 
 the concrete upon which they were imbedded, viz., 
 that Furor Teutonicus was a power which, when it 
 went forth to slay and conquer, was invincible because 
 it was filled with naught but the fear of God. Nouveau 
 riche Germany, with France's two hundred and 
 fifty million pounds of gold indemnity in its pocket, 
 ceased to be the Fatherland of homely virtues, cele- 
 brated in song and story, and became the plethoric 
 Fatherland, drunk with power and wealth won by 
 arms, the Fatherland which was to adopt the gospel 
 of political brutality as a new national Leitmotif. 
 " We, not the Jews, are God's chosen people. Our 
 military prowess and our intellectual superiority make 
 German Weltmacht manifest destiny. Full steam 
 ahead !" Thus it was, a generation ago, that the 
 German War Party was launched on its mad career. 
 
 During the war the English-reading world has heard 
 much of Treitschke and Nietzsche, just as it has had 
 its ears dinned full of Bernhardi. Germans with scars on 
 theii' faces and other marks of a collegiate education — 
 a gentry^ numbering several millions — know and vener- 
 ate their Treitschke and Nietzsche, and to their per- 
 nicious dogma is due in large degree the war lust oi 
 so-called cultured Germany ; yet to the German masses 
 these reno\Mied apostles of Might is Right are little 
 more than names. Of far more importance for the 
 purpose of tracing the origin of Armageddon are the 
 living captains of the " War Party," not its deceased 
 intellectual sponsors. Historians of the present era 
 34
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 will gain a far more illuminating perspective by relegat- 
 ing Nietzsche, " that half-inspired, half-crazy poet- 
 philosopher," and Treitschke, his more modern kindred 
 spirit, to the dead past and elevating Tirpitz and the 
 Crown Prince, Koester of the German Navy League and 
 Keim of the German Army League to their pedestals. It 
 is men hke them, politicians like Heydebrand, literary 
 firebrands like Reventlow and Frobenius, and press- 
 poisoners like Hammann who were the real pioneers 
 of Armageddon. These are names with which the 
 English-reading world, enchanted by the myopic pro- 
 minence given to the writings of Nietzsche, Treitschke, 
 and Bemhardi, are not familiar. But they are the real 
 stage managers of the war tragedy, and it is with them 
 I shall deal before narrating the culminating effects 
 of their devilry. 
 
 Prince Bernhard von Bulow, fourth Imperial Chan- 
 cellor, 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 reverent regard with 
 which Anglo-Saxons cite Shakespeare. Billow'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, \\Titten 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 destined to go sizzling down the 
 age. It was worth its weight in precious gems to 
 the blood-and-iron brigade. As Bismarck's blas- 
 phemous bluster in 1887 gave the War Party of that 
 day its fillip, Billow in 1907 supplied the spurred and 
 
 35
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 helmeted zealots ol his era with a fiamboyancy no less 
 vicious. They snatched it up with alacrity, and, being 
 Germans, proceeded to exploit it with masterly efficiency 
 and deadly thoroughness. A " place in the sun " forth- 
 with 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 had 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 summar- 
 ized Germany's " place in the sun " : 
 
 " The German National Income amounts to-day to 
 two thousand one hundred fifty million pounds annually 
 as against from one thousand one hundred fifty to one 
 thousand two hundred fifty million pounds in 1895. 
 The annual increase in wealth is about five hundred 
 million pounds, as against a sum of from two hundred 
 twenty-five to two hundred fifty million pounds fifteen 
 years ago. 
 
 '* The wealth of the German people amounts to-day 
 to more than fifteen thousand milhon pounds, as 
 against about ten thousand million pounds toward 
 the middle of the nineties. These solid figures sum- 
 marize, expressed in money, the result of the enormous 
 economic labour 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 
 36
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 German industry at so miraculous a pace that while 
 Germany in the middle eighties was losing emigrated 
 citizens at tne 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, m.any 
 years before that date, an importer of men, instead of 
 an exporter ; that the net tonnage of the German mer- 
 cantile 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, in- 
 creased from three hundred million pounds to nearly 
 eight hundred million pounds, and in 1912, exceeded 
 one thousand millions. 
 
 By a " place in the sun " Prince Biilow meant, 
 primarily, territorial expansion for Germiany's " sur- 
 plus population." Yet even in this respect German 
 aggrandizement kept pace with her fabulous economic 
 development. When war broke out in 1914, the Ger- 
 man 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 hemisplieres ^ 
 and m.any years after the Monroe Doctrine had effect- 
 ually 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 totalled in 1914 only 
 a fraction more than five million pounds, or about 
 
 37
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 one-half of one per cent, of Germany's total trade of 
 one thousand million pounds in 1912. Germany's lust 
 for a larger " place in the sun," as it has been aptly 
 described by the author of J' Accuse, is "square-mile 
 greed," pure and simple, and as the same frank and 
 brilliant writer points out, Germany not only demands 
 a " place in the sun," but claims it for herself alone, in- 
 sisting 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 vahantly 
 to work — the Pan-German League and the German 
 Navy League. The Pan-Germans, whose efforts were 
 seconded by a subsidiary society called the Association 
 for the Perpetuation of Germanism Abroad, set them- 
 selves 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 en- 
 joyed more or less official countenance and support. 
 On occasion, when their activities appeared too per- 
 nicious or threatened to obstruct the subtle machina- 
 tions of German diplomac3^ 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 belhgerent and provocative literature, 
 which harped ceaselessly on the theme that what Ger- 
 many could not secure by diplomacy she must prepare 
 to extort by the sword. 
 38
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 As the Pan-Germans and the Navy League cher- 
 ished twin aspirations, .t 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 Tir- 
 pitz's big navy schemes, eventually went to such indis- 
 creet extremes in the pursuit of his duties as president 
 of the Na\^ League that the organization's existence as 
 a national association was momentarily threatened. It 
 was giving the game away. Keim was thereupon re- 
 moved from his position, to be succeeded by the Grand 
 Old Man of the German Fleet, Grand-Admiral von 
 Koester. Koester was suaviter in modo, but no less 
 fortiter in re than Keim. Entering the presidency of 
 the Navy League in the midst of the Dreadnought 
 era, when Germany's dream of her " future upon the 
 water " was sweetest, Koester's systematic and per- 
 nicious fanning of the public temper, especially against 
 England, left nothing to be desired. 
 
 General Keim, deposed from the leadership of the 
 Navy League, was presently kicked up-stairs by the 
 German War Party, and made president of the newly- 
 formed " German Defence League." This association 
 was organized to launch a national agitation in favour 
 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 patron- 
 age of the Imperial family and Government, Koester 
 and Keim carried out for six years preceding August, 
 
 39
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 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 " Defence 
 League " accompHshed its purpose in 1913 by ac- 
 complishing the passage of the celebrated Army Bill 
 whereby the land forces of the Empire were augmented 
 at an expense of fifty million pounds — the immediate 
 preliminary step to the assault of Europe by the 
 Kaiser's legions. 
 
 Count Reventlow, a Jingo of Jingoes, rendered both 
 the navy and army leagues valiant support in the 
 columns of his newspaper, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, 
 and in a regular grist of pamphlets and books which 
 his facile pen from time to time reeled off. Reventlow 
 was one of the archpriests of the War Party A 
 champion hater of everything foreign, he was tem- 
 peramentally 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 Franco- 
 phobism was little diminished by his marriage to a 
 charming French noblewoman. He hated the United 
 States, too. I could never quite divine the gallant 
 Count's reason for eating an American alive, in bis 
 mind, every morning for breakfast, and for despising us 
 as cordially as he detested Mr. Winston Churchill, Mon- 
 sieur Delcasse or the Czar, until he confessed to me one 
 day that he lost a fortune through unfortunate specula- 
 tion in a Florida fruit plantation. Thenceforth, appar- 
 ently, Reventlow's anti-Americanism knew no bounds. 
 It was more explosive than usual during his dis- 
 40
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 cussion of the Ltisitania massacre, but it was familiar 
 in its mendacity. 
 
 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 Ofhce and Imperial Chancellory. Hammann 
 for twenty years, because one of the craftiest, is one 
 of the most powerful men in German politics. For two 
 decades he has survived the incessant vicissitudes and 
 intrigues of the Foreign Office, which indeed were 
 more than once of his owm making. He was frequently 
 credited with being " the real Chancellor " in Biilow's 
 days because of his sinister influence over that urbane 
 statesman. Hammann's nominal duties were confined 
 to manipulating the German press for the Govern- 
 ment'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 unsavoury reputation — 
 he was a few years ago under indictment for perjur^^ 
 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 direc- 
 tion German newspapers, restlessly propagating the 
 Fatherland's need f or " a place in the sun," systemat- 
 ically distorted the international situation so as to 
 represent Germany as the innocent lamb and all other 
 nations as ravenous wolves howling for her immacu- 
 late blood. That Hammann is regarded as having 
 
 41
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 rendered " our just cause '■ priceless service was proved 
 only a few months ago by his promotion to a full 
 division-directorship in the Foreign Office. He had 
 hitherto ranked merely as a Wirklicher Geheimrat, or 
 sub-official of the department, although as a matter of 
 fact five Foreign Secretaries, " under " whom he 
 nominally served, were mere putty in the hands of 
 Germany's sinister 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 H receives popular credit for 
 the achievement, and von Tirpitz created it essentially 
 for war. The Pirate Chief once honoured 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 motives, 
 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 cen- 
 turies of martial history had proved her on land. 
 German sailors chafed under the corroding restraint of 
 peace. They hankered for laurels They were tired 
 of manning a dress-parade fleet, whose functions 
 seemed to be confined to holding spectacular reviews 
 for the Kaiser's glorification at Kiel. They hungered 
 for "The Day." Von Tirpitz has denied passionately 
 that they ever drank to " The Day " in their battleship 
 messes. But it was at least the unspoken prayer which 
 42
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 lulled them to well-earned sleep, for in consequence of 
 the iron discipline and remorseless labour which von 
 Tirpitz imposed on his officers and men in anticipation 
 of " Germany's Trafalgar," the Kaiser's Fleet was the 
 hardest worked navy in the world. No Armada in 
 history was ever so perpetually " battle-ready '' as the 
 German High Seas Fleet. It was the organization 
 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 
 favour 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 para- 
 sites, were due the remarkable iVnglophobe campaigns 
 which resulted in the desired periodical additions to 
 the Navy. 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 
 Tirpitz the Eternal, as, in heu of his long lease of 
 power, he is called. Repeatedly in the years preceding 
 the war England held out the hand of a naval entente. 
 The War Party and von Tirpitz said *' No 1" 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 
 will arise in southern Brazil " ; or Professor Adolf 
 Lasson, also of Berhn, who proclaimed the doctrine 
 
 43
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 that Germans' '* cultural paramount cy over all other 
 nations " entitles them to hegemony over the earth; or 
 Professor Adolf Wagner, the Berlin economist, who 
 excoriates compulsory arbitration as the refuge of the 
 politically impotent and a dogma beneath the dignity 
 of the Germany of the Hohenzollerns ; or the whole 
 dynasty of politician-professors like Delbriick, Zorn, 
 Liszt, Edward and Kuno Meyer, Eucken, Haeckel, 
 Harnack, or minor theorists like Miinsterberg, who year 
 in and year out preached the doctrine of Teutonic 
 superiority, Teutonic invincibility and Teutonic " world 
 destiny." These intellectual auxiliaries of the War 
 Party in their day have sent tens of thousands of young 
 men out of German universities with politically polluted 
 minds. Their class-rooms have been the real breed- 
 ing ground and recruiting camps of the German War 
 Party. 
 
 And then, of course, in addition to the generals and 
 admirals who wanted war, and the professors who 
 glorified war, and the editors, pamphleteers. Navy and 
 Army League leaders and paid agitators who wrote and 
 talked war, there was the German Army, represented by 
 its corps of fifty thousand or sixty thousand officers, 
 which was the living, ineradicable incarnation of war 
 and with every breath it drew sighed impatiently for its 
 coming. I suppose armies in all countries more or less 
 constitute " war parties." But never in our time has 
 an army tingled and spoiled for battle as ardently 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 essay to prove that the Ger- 
 man war machine of the day was not only the peer, but 
 incomparably the superior, of the Juggernauts with the 
 
 44
 
 THE STAGE MANAGERS 
 
 aid of which Frederick the Great and Moltke remapped 
 Europe. 
 
 But the Grand Mogul of the German War Party, 
 its pet, darhng and patron saint, was Crown Prince 
 WilHam, the Kaiser's ebulhent 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 IPs oratorical peace palave rings long ago 
 convinced his mihtary paladins that their hopes could 
 no longer with safety be pinned on the monarch who 
 would do nothing but rattle his sabre. " 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 hence- 
 forth 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 
 happmess — when the King calls to arms and the bugle 
 sounds the charge !" It was common gossip that when 
 the Crown Prince was exiled to the command of a 
 cavalry regiment in dreamy Danzig, far away from 
 the frenzied plaudits of the multitude in Berlin, the 
 Kaiser's action was inspired by the disquieting reali- 
 zation that his heir was acquiring a popularity, both 
 in and out of the army, which boded ill for the 
 
 45
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 security of the monarch's o^^^l status with his 
 Subjects. 
 
 These, then, are the men, who stage-managed the 
 impending clash. As with every great '* production," 
 prehminary plans were well and truly laid. Rehearsals, 
 in the form of stupendous manoeuvres on " a strictly 
 warlike basis," had brought the chief actors, scene 
 shifters and other accessories to first-night pitch. The 
 stage managers' work was done. They had now only 
 to take their appointed places in the flies and wings 
 and let the tragedy proceed. The rest could be left to 
 the puppets on both sides of the footlights. A month 
 of slow music, and then the grsind finale 
 
 46
 
 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 elfect 
 of the Archduke's assassination on the health of the 
 old Austrian Emperor than over resultant interna- 
 tional complications. It was Sir Edward Goschen, 
 British Ambassador in Berlin, previously accredited 
 to the Vienna court, who recalled to me Francis 
 Joseph's once-expressed determination to outlive his 
 heir. The doddering octogenarian had realized his 
 grim ambition. 
 
 The German Emperor returned to Berlin from. 
 Kiel on Monday, the 30th of June. Ties of deep 
 affection united him to his aged x\ustrian ally. It was 
 universally assumed that the Kaiser, with character- 
 istic impetuosity, would rush to Vienna to comfort 
 Francis Joseph and attend the Archduke's funeral. 
 So, as events developed, he ardently desired to do; 
 but intimations speedily arrived from the Hofburg 
 that " Kaiser Franz " had chosen to carry his newest 
 cross unmolested by the flummery and circumstance of 
 State obsequies, and William II remained in Berlin 
 for honorary funeral services in his own cathedral in 
 memor}^ of the august departed. Some day a his- 
 torian, who will have great things to tell, may relate 
 
 47
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 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 Duchess 
 that his heart " was bleeding for them." Men who 
 have an X-ray knowledge of Imperial William's psy- 
 chology 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 was safer to lean than 
 on the decrepit figurehead now bowed in impotent 
 grief, with a beardless grand-nephew of an heir ap- 
 parent as the sole hope of the trembling future. 
 
 Until the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand began to 
 assert himself, William H'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 ascendancy removed from 
 the scene, the German Emperor may well have thought 
 the hour at length arrived for the virile HohenzoUerns 
 to save the crumbling Hapsburgs from themselves, 
 and invertebrate Austria-Hungary from the Haps- 
 burgs. But Vienna decided it was better the Kaiser 
 should stay at home. His political physicians, on the 
 evening of July i, resourcefully discovered that His 
 Majesty was suffering from that famous German 
 m.alady 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 
 48
 
 SLOW MUSIC 
 
 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 fructifica- 
 tion of the German War Party's now fast-completing 
 conspiracy. Although martial law was being ruth- 
 lessly 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 situa- 
 tion was sufficiently placid to permit 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 afterwards, the military governor of 
 German South-West 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 Hohenzoliern steamed away to the fjords of Nor- 
 way with the Kaiser and his customary company of 
 congenial spirits. The Government-controlled Lokal- 
 Anzeiger and other journalistic handmaids of official- 
 dom 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 con- 
 
 E 49
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 vincing sign that however menacing the storm-clouds 
 in the South-East 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, Trond- 
 hjem 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 an- 
 ticipation of the distinction the Kaiser never failed 
 to bestow upon Herr Ballin's patrons. 
 
 The Kaiser's departure from Germ.any was particu- 
 larly well timed to bolster up the fiction subsequently 
 so insistently propagated, that Austria's impending 
 coercion of Serbia was none of Germany's doing. The 
 Hohenzollern had hardly slipped out of Baltic waters 
 when Vienna's " diplomatic demarche " at Belgrade 
 began. It was specifically asserted that these " repre- 
 sentations " would be " friendly." Europe must under 
 no circumstances, thus early in the game, be roused 
 from its midsumm.er siesta. The official bulletin from 
 the Hollenzolletn read: "All's well on board. His 
 Majesty listened to-day to a learned treatise on Slav 
 archaeology 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 
 50
 
 SLOW MUSIC 
 
 action. While Vienna's "friendly representations'' 
 were in progress at Belgrade, the papers of Vienna 
 and Budapest began sounding the tocsin for " vigor- 
 ous " prosecution of the Dual Monarchy's case against 
 the Serbian assassins and their accessories. The Ser- 
 bian Government meantime remained imperturbable. 
 Princip and Cabrinovitch, the takers of the Archduke 
 and Duchess' lives, after all, were Austro-Hungarian 
 subjects, and their crime was committed on Austrian 
 soil. Serbia, said Belgrade, must be proved guilty of 
 responsibility for Serajevo before she could be expected 
 to accept it. Then the allied 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 on the occasion of the preceding 
 Bosnian crisis, in 1909. 
 
 By the end of the second week of July the world's 
 most sensitive recording instruments, the stock ex- 
 changes, commenced to vibrate with the tremors of 
 surging unrest. The Bourse at Vienna was disturb- 
 ingly weak. Berlin responded with sympathetic 
 slimips. To the Daily Mail in London and the New 
 York Times I was able, on the night of July 10, to 
 cable the significant message that the German Imperial 
 Bank was now putting pressure on all German banks 
 to induce them to keep ten per cent, of their deposits 
 and assets on hand in money. On the same day an 
 unexplained tragedy occurred in Belgrade : the Russian 
 minister to the Serbian court, Monsieur de Hart wig, 
 Germanism's arch-foe in the Balkans, died suddenly 
 while taking tea with his Austrian diplomatic colleague 
 Baron Giesling. 
 
 SI
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Germany the while was going about its business, 
 which at mid-July consists principally of slowing down 
 the strenuous life and extending mere nocturnal " bum- 
 meling '* in home haunts to seashore, forests and moun- 
 tains 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 Bankdirckior Meyer and 
 Herr and Frau Rechtsanwalt Salzmann were a good 
 deal more interested in the food at the Logierkaus they 
 had selected for themselves and the Kinder at Herings- 
 dorf 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 m.ade off for 
 the seaside or the Tyrol felt surer than ever that war 
 v,'as a chimera when they read that Monsieur Humbert 
 had just revealed to the French Senate the astound- 
 ing unpreparedness of the Republic's military estab- 
 hshment. 
 
 Strain between Austria and Serbia was now increas- 
 ing. Canadian Pacific, German stock-dabblers' favour- 
 ite " flyer," tumbled on the Vienna and Berlin Bourses 
 to the lowest level reached since 1910. Real war 
 rumours now cropped up. Austria was reported to 
 have partially mobilized two army corps. Canadian 
 Pacifies continued to be " unloaded " by nervous Ger- 
 mans in quantities unprecedented. Now Serbia was 
 52
 
 SLOW MUSIC 
 
 "reported" to be mobilizing. It was July 17. 
 England, we gathered in Berlin, was interested exclu- 
 sively in 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 liis preparations and 
 to remain in Berlin. " See no occasion for any altera- 
 tion of 3^our arrangements," was wired back from 
 unperturbed and imperturbable Fleet Street. 
 
 The German War Party, acting through Hammann, 
 now perpetrated another grim, little witticism. It was 
 solemnly announced in the Berlin press — on July 18 — 
 that the third squadron of the German High Seas 
 Fleet was to be " sent to an English port in August (!) 
 to return the visit lately paid to Kiel by a British 
 squadron." Britain's Grand Armada the while was 
 assembled off Spithead for the mightiest naval review 
 in history — two hundred and thirty vessels manned by 
 seventy thousand officers and men. King George 
 spent Sunday, July 19, quietly at sea, steaming up and 
 down the endless lines of Dreadnoughts and lesser 
 ironclads. The Lord Mayor of London opened a new 
 golf course at Croydon. And Ulster was smouldering. 
 
 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 
 
 53
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the seriousness of the Austro-Serbian quarrel, ex- 
 pressed the pious hope that the '* discussion " would at 
 least be '* locahzed." Canadian Pacifies 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 uninter- 
 rupted progress, though the quarrelling Irishmen and 
 militant suffragettes of Great Britain knew it not, any 
 more than the summer resort merrymakers and " cures 
 guests " of Germany. The Foreign Offices, stock ex- 
 changes, embassies, legations and newspaper offices of 
 the Continent were fairly alive to the imminence of 
 transcendent events, but the great European public, 
 though within ten days of Armageddon, was magnifi- 
 cently immersed in its petty domestic preoccupations 
 and the ignorance which the poet has so truly called bliss. 
 Her " friendly representations " at Belgrade having 
 proved abortive, Austria now prepared for more force- 
 ful measures. On July 21 Berlin learned that Count 
 Berchtold, the Viennese foreign minister, had pro- 
 ceeded to Ischl to submit to the Emperor Francis 
 Joseph the note he is supposed to have 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 splut- 
 ter, 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 Govern- 
 ment, declaring that a " reckoning " with Serbia could 
 54
 
 SLOW MUSIC 
 
 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 the Germanic war 
 zealot's conception of vengeance for Serajevo. 
 
 During all these hours, so pregnant with the fate of 
 Europe, the German Foreign Office was stormed by 
 foreign newspaper correspondents in quest of light 
 on Germany's attitude. Was she counselling modera- 
 tion in Vienna, or fishing in .troubled waters ? Was 
 she reminding her ally that while Serajevo was primarily 
 an Austrian question, it was in its broad aspects essen- 
 tially a European issue ? Was the Kaiser really play- 
 ing his vaunted role as the bulwark of European peace, 
 or was Herr von Tschirschky, his Ambassador in 
 Vienna, adjuring the Ballplatz that it was Austria's 
 duty to " stand firm " in the presence of the crowning 
 Slav infamy, and that William of Hohenzollern was 
 ready once again to don " shining armour " for the 
 defence of " Germanic honour "? 
 
 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 
 Austro-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 oc- 
 curred to the tactful Wilhelmstrasse was to proffer 
 
 55
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 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 prerog- 
 atives as a Great Power — we were assured. Germany's 
 attitude was that of an innocent bystander and ob- 
 servant spectator, and nothing more. That was the 
 version of the Fatherland's attitude sedulously peddled 
 out for both home and foreign consumption. 
 
 Behind us lay a week of tremor and unrest un- 
 known since the days, exactly fortj^-four years pre- 
 vious, 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 to Serbia an ultimatum with a time limit 
 of forty-eight hours. My own information of this 
 crucial step was prompt and unequivocal. It was on 
 its way to London and New York before seven o'clock 
 in the evening, Berlin time. I was gratified to learn 
 at the Daily Mail office in London three weeks later 
 that I had sent to England the first news of the match 
 which had at last been applied to the European powder 
 barrel. It was many hours later before official 
 announcement of the Austrian ultimatum arrived 
 in Fleet Street. 
 
 I was not surprised to learn that my startling tele- 
 gram had aroused no little scepticism. During many 
 days preceding it was the despair of all Berlin corre- 
 spondents of British newspapers that they seemed 
 utterly unable to impress their home publics with the 
 fast-gathering gravity of the European situation. 
 
 S6
 
 SLOW MUSIC 
 
 London was no less nonchalant than Paris and St. 
 Petersburg. England was immersed to the exclusion 
 of all else in the world in the throes of the 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 which most 
 appealed to us in Berlin. 
 
 The newspapers of July 21, 22 and 23 arrived and 
 indicated that for England Ulster had become Europe. 
 There was obviously little space for, and less interest 
 in, dispatches from Berlin or Vienna describing the 
 *' undisguised concern" prevalent in those capitals. 
 On July 21 I telegraphed " high diplomatic authority '' 
 for the statement that the pistol would be at Serbia's 
 breast before the end of the week. But London re- 
 mained impervious. More than one of my British col- 
 leagues, equally unsuccessful in diverting London's 
 attention from Ulster, threw up his hands in desperation, 
 muttering things about " British complacency," which 
 wouldhave come with poor grace from a mere American. 
 
 Since then it has occurred to me that England's 
 sublime unconcern in the approach of Armageddon 
 may have been more apparent than real. Sir Edward 
 Grey's strenuous days and nights of telegraphing to 
 his Continental ambassadors, as England's WTiite 
 Paper revealed, had set in as early as July 20, when 
 he wired Sir Edward Goschen to Berlin that " I asked 
 
 57
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the German Ambassador to-day if he had any news 
 of what v/as going on in Vienna with regard to Serbia." 
 That was No. i in the series of historic dispatches 
 comprising the official British record of the genesis 
 of the war, which shows that there was at least some 
 foreboding of coming events, as far as Downing 
 Street was concerned. So I am compelled to think 
 that there may have been method in Fleet Street's 
 " splashing " a well-known musical comedy actress's 
 entangled love affairs and minimizing the determina- 
 tion of Austria to plunge Europe into war. There 
 is a fine spirit of solidarity in England concerning 
 foreign aftairs. British editors in particular tradi- 
 tionally refrain from crossing the pohcy of the Foreign 
 Office, no matter what the party complexion of the 
 rainister in charge. They are accustomed to sup- 
 port it unequivocally either by omission or commis- 
 sion, as the interests of Great Britain from hour to 
 iiour suggest. Whenever an attitude of debonair de- 
 tachment toward a given " foreign affair " is best de- 
 signed to promote the country's diplomatic programme. 
 Fleet Street can be insensibility incarnate, national 
 esprit de corps effectually fulfilling the function of a 
 censor. No one has ever told me that that is why the 
 appointment of a new principal for Duiwich College 
 received almost as much prominence on the morning 
 of July 24 as the grave news from Berlin, Vienna or 
 Belgrade. My suggestion of the reason is a diffident 
 surmise, pure and simple. It contributed materially, no 
 doubt, toward making Germany beheve that England 
 was too " preoccupied " with Irishmen and suffragettes 
 to think of going to war for her political honour. 
 
 But in Berlin things were now (July 24) moving 
 58
 
 SLOW MUSIC 
 
 toward the climax with impetuous momentum. On 
 that day, summing up events and opinion in official 
 and mihtary quarters, I telegraphed the following 
 message to London : 
 
 '* * We are ready !' This was the sententious reply 
 given to-day by a high official of the General Staff to 
 an inquiry with regard to Germany's state of pre- 
 paredness in the event that an Austro-Serbian conflict 
 precipitates a European war. 
 
 " I am able to state authoritatively that the casus 
 foederis which binds Austria, Germany and Italy in 
 alliance would come into effect automatically the 
 instant Austria is attacked from any quarter other 
 than Serbia.* 
 
 " I am further able to say that while Germany ex- 
 pects that war between Austria and Serbia is possible, 
 owing to the admittedly unprecedented severity of the 
 Austrian demands, this Government confidently hopes 
 that hostilities will be confined to them. 
 
 " It would be going too far to say that ' war fever ' 
 prevails in Berlin to the extent it is reported to be 
 rampant in Vienna. I find, however, even in circles 
 to which the thought of war is ordinarily repugnant, 
 
 ♦ The "assurances" given me by Foreign Oflfice spokesmen, 
 as reproduced in this telegram, were, of course, made at a 
 moment when the German Government, no doubt quite sincerely, 
 feit surer than it did ten days hence that the cast4s fccdcris which 
 bound Italy to join Germany and Austria in war would be 
 recognized by her without quibble. Germany, as the world was 
 so soon to find out, had convinced her own people that her war 
 was a holy war of defence, but Italy, visiting upon her Triple 
 Alliance partners the supreme condemnation of contemporary 
 political history, de-erted them on the palpable ground that their 
 war was war of aggression, pure and unalloyed. 
 
 59
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 that the imminent possibility of a European conflict 
 is contemplated with equanimity. They say that 
 Austria's resolute action has already cleared the 
 atmosphere of long-prevailing * uncertainty ' which 
 was gradually becoming insufferable. They assert in 
 accents of relief that a situation has finally been created 
 from which there can be no retreat. Far worse things, 
 it is declared, are conceivable than the conflagration 
 which Europe for years has half dreaded and half pre- 
 pared for. 
 
 ** Official Germany, nevertheless, does not believe 
 that Russia will force the issue. It is argued that the 
 matter at stake is entirely a domestic quarrel between 
 Austria and Serbia and involves Pan-Slavism only 
 indirectly. If Russia makes the controversy a pretext 
 for assisting the Serbians, it is pointed out that ' the 
 world's strongest bulwark of the monarchial principle 
 would practically place the stamp of approval on regi- 
 cide.' As suppression of regicide propaganda, root 
 and branch, is the mainspring of the Austrian action, 
 the German Government holds it is inconceivable that 
 Russia could in such circumstances align herself with 
 Serbia. If she does, and I am permitted to underline 
 this phase of the crisis with all possible emphasis, the 
 full strength of Germany's and Italy's armed forces 
 are ready to be mercilessly hurled against her, and 
 will be. 
 
 " A war against Russia would never be more popular 
 in Germany than at the present moment. For months 
 past the country has been educated by its most dis- 
 tinguished leaders to believe that an attack from 
 Russia is imminent. During the past week Professor 
 Hans Delbrlick has been giving wide pubhcity to an 
 60
 
 SLOW MUSIC 
 
 ' open letter ' received from a Russian colleague, Pro- 
 fessor Mitrosanoff , containing the following passage : 
 
 " ' It must not be forgotten that Russian public 
 opinion plays a vastly different role than it did a decade 
 ago. It has now grown into a full political force. 
 Anim.osity toward Germans is in everybody's heart and 
 mouth. Seldom was public opinion more unanimous.' 
 
 " Almost simultaneously Professor Schiemann, the 
 Kaiser's confidential adviser on world politics, has 
 heaped fresh fuel on the anti-Russian fire by declaring : 
 ' We have reason to think that the underlying purpose 
 of President Poincare's visit to the Czar was to expand 
 the Triple Entente into a Quadruple Alliance by the 
 inclusion of Roumania against Germany.' 
 
 " The Bourse closed amid undisguised alarm and 
 the wildest fears for what the week-end may bring 
 forth. The public is inclined to remain reassured as 
 long as the Kaiser consents to remain afloat in the 
 Hohenzollern in the fjords of Norway, but he can 
 reach German waters in twenty-four hours aboard the 
 speedy dispatch-boat Sleipncr, which is attached to 
 the Imperial squadron. 
 
 " 1 asked a military man to-day what show of force 
 Germany could make at the outbreak of hostilities in- 
 volving her. He said: * She could easily mobihze one 
 million five hundred thousand men within forty-eight 
 hours on each of her frontiers, east and v/est. That 
 gigantic total of three miillion would represent only 
 the active war establishmicnt and first -line reserves.' "
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 MY long - standing preconceptions of Berlin as 
 the phlegmatic capital of an unemotional people 
 were obliterated for all time at eight-thirty o'clock on 
 Saturday evening, July 25, 19 14. Along with them 
 went equally well-founded beliefs that, however in- 
 corrigible their War Party's lust for international strife, 
 the German masses were pacific by temperament and 
 conviction. When the news of Serbia's alleged rejection 
 of Austria's ultimatum was hoisted in Unter den Linden, 
 and Berlin gave way in a flash to a babel and pande- 
 monium of sheer war fever probably never equalled 
 in a civilized community, I knew that all my " psycho- 
 logy " of the Germans was as myopic as if I had learned 
 it in Professor Miinsterberg's laboratory at Harvard. 
 Instantaneously I realized that the stage managers 
 had done their work with deadly precision and all- 
 devouring thoroughness. If the mere suggestion of 
 gunpowder could distend the nostrils of the " peaceful 
 Germans '* and cause their capital to vibrate in every 
 fibre of its being as that first real hint of war did, I was 
 forced to conclude that the cataclysm now impending 
 would find a Germany animated to its innermost depths 
 by primeval fighting passions. Events have not beUed 
 the nev/ and disquieting impressions with which Berlin's 
 war delirium inspired me. 
 
 On the evening of July 25, after cabling to England 
 62
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 and the United States accounts of the blackest Saturday 
 in Berlin Bourse history, I made my way to JJnter den 
 Linden in anticipation of demonstrations certain to be 
 provoked by the result of the Austrian ultimatum, no 
 matter whether Serbia had 3delded or defied. I reached 
 the Wilhelmstrasse corner, where the British Embassy 
 stood, only a moment after the fateful bulletin had been 
 put up in the Lokal-Anzeiger's windows. It read: 
 ** Serbia rejects the Austrian Ultimatum !" That was 
 not quite true — to put it mildly — as the world was 
 soon to learn that far from " rejecting " Count Berch- 
 told's cavalier demands, Serbia bent the knee to every 
 single one of them except that which called for abject 
 surrender of her sovereign independence. But the 
 huge crowds which had been gathered in U7iter den 
 Linden since sundown — it was now a little past eight- 
 thirty o'clock and still quite light — knew nothing of this. 
 All they knew and all they cared about was that 
 ' * Serbien hat ahgelehnt I" War, the intuition of the mob 
 assured it, was now inevitable. 
 
 "Kricg! Krieg!" (War! War!) it thundered. 
 " Nieder mit Serbie?i I Hoch Oesierreich I" (Down 
 with Serbia ! Hurrah for Austria !) rang from thou- 
 sands of frenzied throats. Processions formed. Men 
 and youths, here and there women and girls, lined up, 
 military fashion, four abreast. One cavalcade, the 
 larger, headed toward Pariser Platz and the Branden- 
 burg Gate. Another eastward, down the Linden. A 
 mighty song now rent the air — " Goit erhalte Franz den 
 Kaiser ^^ (God save Emperor Francis), the Austrian 
 national anthem. Then shouts, yelled in the accents 
 of imprecation — *' Nieder mit Russla?id !" (Down with 
 Russia). The bigger procession's destination was soon 
 
 63
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 manifest. It was marching to the Austrian Embassy 
 in the Moltke-strasse. The smaller parade was headed 
 for the Russian Embassy in Unter den Linden. In 
 my taxi I decided to follow on to Moltke-strasse, and, 
 crossing to the far side of the Linden, I came up with 
 the rearguard of the demonstrators just opposite the 
 chateau-like Embassy of France in the Pariser Platz. 
 Gathered on the portico servants were clustered watch- 
 ing the " manifestation/' At their hapless heads the 
 processionists were shaking their German fists as much 
 as to say that France, too, was included in the orgy of 
 patriotic WTath now surging up in the righteous 
 Teutonic soul. It was the one touch of humour in an 
 otherwise overwhelmingly grim spectacle. 
 
 Through the entrance to the leafy Tiergarten, down 
 the pompous and sepulchral Avenue of Victory, across 
 the Konigs-Platz with its blatant statue of the Iron 
 Chancellor and the Column of Victory, through the 
 district whose street nomenclature breathes of Ger- 
 many's martial glory — Roon-strasse, Bismarck-strasse 
 and Moltke-strasse — the parade, now swelled to many 
 times its original proportions, halted in front of the 
 Austrian Embassy. Some self-appointed cheer-leader 
 called for Hocks for the ally, for another stanza of the 
 Austrian national anthem, for more " Dov/n with 
 Serbia," and for more yells of dehance to Russia. 
 Opposite the embassy-palace towered the massive 
 block-square General Staff building. From it there 
 emerged, while the demonstration was at its zenith, 
 three young subalterns. The mob seized them joyously, 
 shouldered them and acclaimed them — the brass- 
 buttoned and epciuletted embodiment of the army on 
 whom Germany's hopes were presently to be pinned. 
 6a
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 *' Krieg! Krieg I" the war-mongers chanted in ecstatic 
 shrieks. Then " Deiitschland, Deutschland ilber Alles'' 
 twin of the Austrian anthem as far as the melody is 
 concerned, was sung with tremendous fervour. The 
 crowd yelled for Emperor Francis Joseph's ambassador, 
 the Hungarian Count von Szogeny-Marich, but, if he 
 was at ^ome, he preferred not to face the multitude. 
 Presently a beardless young embassy attache appeared 
 at an open window — the physical personification of the 
 allied Empire — and he almost reeled from the shock 
 of the tumultuous shout hurtled in his monocled coun- 
 tenance. 
 
 For nearly an hour delirium reigned unbridled. 
 Then the demonstrators betook themselves back to 
 the Linden district, Vv-here they met up with more pro- 
 cessions. Throughout the night, far into Sunday morn- 
 ing, Berlin reverberated with their tramp and clamour. 
 All my doubts as to the capital's temper toward war 
 were annihilated, my cherished confidence in ihe 
 average German's fundamental love of peace shattered. 
 Berlin is the tuning-fork of the Empire. As she was 
 shrieking " War ! War !" so, I felt sure, Hamburg and 
 ]\Iunich, Dresden and Stuttgart, Cologne and Breslau, 
 Konigsberg and Metz, would be shrieking before the 
 world was many hours older. And when the Sunday 
 papers reported that " fervent patriotic demonstra- 
 tions " had broken out everywhere the night before, 
 as soon as "Serbia's insolent action " was communicated 
 to the public, something within me said that only a 
 miracle could now restrain war-mad Germany from 
 herself plunging into the fray. 
 
 I have said that Armageddon was instigated by the 
 German War Party. In substantiation of that charge 
 
 F 65
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 let me narrate a bit of unrecorded history. About 
 four o'clock of the afternoon of July 25 — the day of 
 orgy in Berlin above described — the Austrian Foreign 
 Office in Vienna issued a confidential intimation to 
 various persons ?xcustonied to be favoured with such 
 communications that the Serbian reply to the ulti- 
 matum had arrived and was satisfactory. Belgrade 
 did not succumb in respect of every demand put forth 
 by Austria, but it was sufhciently grovelling to insure 
 peace. Foreign newspaper correspondents in Vienna, 
 to several of whom this information was supplied, 
 learned, when they applied at their own Embassies for 
 confirmation, that the latter, too, had been formally 
 acquainted with the fact that Serbia's concessions 
 were far-reaching enough to guarantee a bloodless 
 settlement of the ugly crisis. 
 
 Vienna breathed a long, sincere sigh of relief. It 
 had feared the worst from the moment Count Berch- 
 told dispatched the Berlin- dictated ultimatum to Bel- 
 grade ; but the worst was over now. Serbian penitence 
 had saved Austrian face. 
 
 While correspondents were busily preparing their 
 telegrams, which were to flash all over the world the 
 welcome tidings that war had been averted, though 
 only by a hair's breadth, the Austrian Foreign Office 
 was telephoning to the Foreign Office in Berlin the 
 text of Serbia's reply. 
 
 A certain journalist was on his way to the telegraph 
 office to hand in his dispatches. The editor of a 
 great Vienna newspaper, a friend, intercepted him. 
 
 " Well, what are you saying ?" the editor inquired. 
 
 " That it's peace, after all," replied the correspon- 
 dent. 
 66
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 " It was peace," said the editor sadly, *' but meantime 
 Berlin has spoken." 
 
 The week of fate opened on Monday, July 27, amid 
 general expectations that the worst had now become 
 inevitable. Popular alarm was not assuaged by the 
 impulsive action of the Kaiser, contrary to the prefer- 
 ences of the Government, in breaking off his Norwegian 
 cruise when Serbia's defiance was wirelessed to the 
 HohenzoUern and rushing back to Kiel under full 
 steam. " The Foreign Office regrets this step," re- 
 ported Sir Horace Rumbold, acting British Ambassador 
 at Berlin, to Sir Edward Grey. " It was taken on His 
 Majesty's own initiative and the Foreign Oftice fears 
 that the Emperor's sudden return may cause specula- 
 tion and excitement." It was, of course, characteristic 
 of the monarch whom Paul Singer, the late Socialist 
 chieftain, once described to me as *' William the Sud- 
 den." " Speculation and excitement " are precisely 
 what the Kaiser's dramatic return did precipitate. He 
 did not come into Berlin, but retired to the compara- 
 tive privacy of the New Palace in Potsdam, to engage 
 forthwith in protracted council with his political, 
 diplomatic, military and naval advisers. Meantime 
 Berlin throbbed with forebodings and unrest. The 
 Stock Exchange almost collapsed. Values tumbled 
 by the millions of marks. Fortunes vanished between 
 breakfast and lunch. Financiers committed suicide. 
 Savings banks were besieged by battalions of nervous 
 depositors. Gold began to disappear from circulation. 
 
 At the Foreign Office, newspaper correspondents 
 were informed that the situation was undoubtedly ag- 
 gravated, but not " hopeless." Germany's aim was to 
 
 67
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 " localize " the Austro-Serbia.n war, which was now 
 an actuality. " All depends on Russia," Herr Ham- 
 mann's automatons assured us when we asked who 
 held the key to the situation. Germany remained, as 
 slie had been from the beginning of the crisis, merely 
 " an innocent, though, naturally attentive, by- 
 stander." Austria had not sought her counsel, and 
 " none had been offered." It would have been an in- 
 sufferable offence (said the Hammannites) for Berlin to 
 intrude upon Vienna with " advice " at such an hour. 
 Austria was a great sovereign Power, Count Berch- 
 told a diplomat of sagacity and courage, and Germany's 
 role v/as merely that of a silent friend. She had very 
 particularly " not been concerned " with the ad- 
 mittedly stiff terms the rejection of which had now, 
 unhappily, resulted in war. All this we were told at 
 VVilhelmstrasse 76 in accents of touching sincerity. 
 
 The attitude of the German public was already one of 
 amazing resignation to the possibility of war. Men of 
 affairs, who had during the preceding forty-eight hours 
 in many cases seen great fortunes irresistibly slipping 
 from their grasp, contemplated a European conflagra- 
 tion with incredible equanimity. I recall with especial 
 distinctness the views expressed by my old friend, 
 Gehcimrat L., the head of an important provincial 
 bank. " We have not sought war," he said, " but we 
 are ready for it — far readier than any of our possible 
 antagonists. Our preparedness, military, naval, finan- 
 cial and economic, is in the most complete state it has 
 ever attained. Confidence in the army and navy is 
 unbounded, and it is justified. For years the political 
 atmosphere has been growing more and more uncom- 
 fortable for Germany {Geheimrat L. evidently longed 
 68
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 for "a place in the sun," too), and we have felt that 
 war was inevitable, sooner or later. It is better that 
 it comes now, when our strength is at the zenith, than 
 later when our enemies have had time to discount our 
 superiority." Geheimrat L. and I were standing in 
 Unter den Linden while he talked. Another proces- 
 sion of war-zealots tramped by, singing Deutschland, 
 Deutschland ilher Alles. " You see," he said, pointing 
 to the demonstrators and waving his own hat as the 
 crowd shrieked " Hoch der Kaiser f" " we all feel the 
 same way." Germany, in other words, while not ex- 
 actly spoiling for war, was something more than ready 
 for it and would leap into the ring, stripped for the 
 combat, almost before the gong had called time. 
 Events did not belie that fantasy, either. 
 
 Sir Edward Grey was now making eleventh-hour 
 efforts to stave off fate. He was constrained to induce 
 Vienna to view the Serbian imbroglio from the broad 
 standpoint of a European question, which the Ger- 
 manic Powers, of course, knew that it was. He pro- 
 posed a conference in London between himself and the 
 ambassadors of Germany, Russia, France and Italy, in 
 the hope of settling the Austro-Serbian dispute on the 
 basis of Serbia's reply to Count Berchtold's ultimatum. 
 " It has become only too apparent," the British Foreign 
 Secretary wrote a year later in a crushing rejoinder 
 to the German Chancellor's revamped and distorted 
 version of the war's beginnings, " that in the proposal 
 v/e made, which Russia, France and Italy agreed to, 
 and which Germany vetoed, lay the only hope of peace. 
 And it was such a good hope ! Serbia had accepted 
 nearly all of the x\ustrian ultimatum, severe and 
 violent as it was." Herr Hammann's minions told us 
 
 69
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 with pleasing plausibility of the reasons why Germany 
 ('eclined the conference proposal. " We cannot re- 
 commend Austria," they said, " to submit questions 
 affecting her national honour to a tribunal of outsiders. 
 It would not be consistent with our obligations as an 
 ally." That was subterfuge unalloyed, as was amply 
 proved by Germany's subsequent refusal even to sug- 
 gest any other method of mediation, in which Sir 
 Edward Grey had promised acquiescence in advance. 
 The War Party's plans were plainly too far progressed 
 to tolerate so tame and inglorious a retreat. It was 
 thirsting for blood, and was in no humour to content 
 itself with milk and water. It was like asking a 
 champion runner, trained to the second and poised on 
 the starting tape in an attitude of trembhng expecta- 
 tion of the " Go " pistol, to rise, return to the dressing- 
 room, get into street clothes and cool his ardour for 
 victory and laurels by taking a leisurely walk around 
 the town. The Tirpitzes, the Falkenhayns, the 
 Reventlows, the Bemhardis and the Crown Princes, 
 lurking Mephistopheles-like in the background, leaned 
 over Bethmann Hollweg and the Kaiser on July 28, 
 while Sir Edward Grey's proposal was undergoing final 
 consideration, and whispered in their ear an imperious 
 " No !" Germany, as " evidence of good faith," the 
 Wilhelmstrasse told us next day, was continuing to 
 exercise friendly pressure '* in the direction of peace " 
 at both St. Petersburg and Vienna. But, as Colonel 
 Roosevelt said of President Taft, Berlin m.eant well 
 feebly. The mills of the war gods were grinding 
 remorselessly, and they were not to be clogged. 
 
 Early in the evening^ of Wednesday, July 29, the 
 Kaiser summoned a Council of War at Potsdam. The 
 70
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 Council lasted far into the night. Dawn of Thursday 
 was approaching before it ended. All the great pal- 
 adins of State, civilian, military and naval, were 
 present. Prince Henry of Prussia, freshly arrived 
 from London, brought the latest tidings of sentiment 
 prevailing in England. The Imperial Chancellor and 
 Foreign Secretary von Jagow were armed with up- 
 to-the-minute news of the diplomatic situation in Paris 
 and St. Petersburg. Russia's plans and movements 
 were the all-dominating issue. General von Falken- 
 hayn. Minister of War, was loaded with confidential 
 information that, despite the Czar's ostensible desire 
 for peace and his still pending communication with 
 the Kaiser to that end, " military measures and dispo- 
 sitions of unmistakably menacing character " were 
 in progress on both the German and Austrian fron- 
 tiers. Lieutenant-General von Moltke, Chief of the 
 General Staff, contributed not only corroborative 
 information of the imminency of " danger " from 
 Russia, but conveyed reassuring details of Germany's 
 power to meet and check it. Grand-Admiral von 
 Tirpitz, Secretary of the Navy, and Admiral von Pohl, 
 Chief of the Admiralty Staff, were ready to con\ince 
 the Supreme War Lord that the fleet was no less pre- 
 pared than the armiy for any and all emergencies. 
 There was absolutely nothing, from a military and 
 naval standpoint, so the generals and admirals were 
 eager to demonstrate, to justify Germany in assuming 
 and maintaining an^i;hing but " a strong position." 
 
 Some day, perhaps, the history of that fateful night 
 in the New Palace at Potsdam will be written, for there 
 was Armageddon born. Its precise details have never 
 leaked out . So much I believe can be here set down with 
 
 71
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 certainty — it was not quite a harmonious council which 
 finally voted for war. At the outset, at any rate, it 
 was divided into camps which found themselves in dia- 
 metrical opposition. The " peace party," or what was 
 left of it, was said, loath as the world is to believe it, 
 to have been headed by the Kaiser himself. Bethmann 
 Hollweg supported his Imperial Master's view that 
 war should only be resorted to as a last desperate 
 emergency. Von Jagow, the, innocuous Foreign Secre- 
 tary, dancing as usual to his superiors' whistle, " sided " 
 with the Emperor and the Chancellor. Von Falken- 
 hayn and von Tirpitz favoured war. Germany was 
 ready; her adversaries were not; the issue was plain. 
 Von Moltke was non-committal. He is a Christian 
 Scientist, and otherwise pacific by temperament. 
 Prince Henry of Prussia did not at least violently 
 insist upon peace. I could never verify whether the 
 German Crown Prince was permitted to participate in 
 the War Council or not. If he was, posterity may be 
 sure that his influence was not exercised unduly in 
 the direction of a bloodless solution of the crisis. Herr 
 Kuhn, the Secretar\'' of the Treasury, submitted satis- 
 fying figures to prove that, if war must be, Germany 
 was financially caparisoned. From Herr Ballin came 
 word that if war should unhappily be forced upon the 
 Fatherland by the bear, the present positions of Ger- 
 man liners were such that few, if any, of them would 
 fall certain prey to enemy cruisers. Those which 
 could not reach home ports would be able to take 
 refuge in safe neutral harbours. 
 
 The next day, Thursday, July 30, I was able to 
 telegraph my newspaper chiefs in London and New 
 York that the fat was now irrevocably in the fire. The 
 72
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 War Party's views had prevailed. The fiction that 
 " Russian mobilization " was an intolerable peril which 
 Germany could no longer face in inactivity had been 
 so assiduously maintained that any reluctance to go to 
 war, which may have lingered in the Kaiser's soul, 
 was effectively overcome. The sword had at last 
 been " forced " into his hand. Russia, it was decided, 
 was to be notified that demobilization or German 
 " counter-mobilization " within twenty-four hours was 
 the choice she had to make. My information went con- 
 siderabl}?- be^^ond this so-called " last German effort on 
 behalf of peace." It was to the effect that while 
 Germany had taken "one m.ore final step" in the 
 direction of an amicable solution of the crisis, she did 
 not really expect it to he successful, and had, indeed, 
 resorted to it merely in order to be able to claim that 
 she had " left ?to stone unturned to prevent war.''^ 
 
 Germany was now in everything except a formally 
 proclaimed state of war. Mobilization was not actually 
 '' ordered," but all the multitudinous preliminaries for it 
 were well under way. As I have herein before intimated, 
 German reservists from far-off South-West Africa were 
 at that very moment en route to Europe on suddenly 
 granted " leaves of absence." The terrible button at 
 whose signal the German war machine would move 
 was all but pressed. To prove it the super-patriotic. 
 Government-controlled Lokal-Anzeiger let a woefully 
 tell-tale cat out of the bag. It issued a lurid " Extra " 
 at two-thirty p.m., categorically announcing that " the 
 entire German army and navy had been ordered to 
 mobilize." After the news had spread through Berlin 
 like wildfire and sent prices on the Bourse tobogganing 
 toward the bottom at the dizziest pace of all the week, 
 
 73
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the Lokal-Anzeiger twenty minutes later blandly issued 
 another " Extra," explaining that through " a gross 
 misdemeanour in its circulating department " the 
 public had been furnished with "inaccurate news" 
 about mobilization ! 
 
 The good " Lokal's " news was not " inaccurate." It 
 was only premature, for twenty-four hours later, on 
 Friday, July 31, it was enabled, along with other 
 papers, to flood the metropolis with another " Extra," 
 officially proclaiming that Emperor William had de- 
 clared Germany to be in a " state of war." The " Ex- 
 tras " added that the Kaiser would himself shortly 
 arrive in Berlin from Potsdam. No one doubted now 
 that the Fatherland was on the brink of grim and por- 
 tentous events. War might only be a matter of hours, 
 perhaps minutes. Instantaneously all roads led to 
 Unter den Linden. Through it, now Oberster Kriegs- 
 herr indeed — Supreme War Lord is not an ironical 
 sobriquet foisted upon the German Emperor by de- 
 tractors, as many people think, but an actual, formal 
 title — ^the Kaiser would soon be passing. History was 
 to be made to repeat itself. Old King William I, 
 returning to Berlin from Ems on the eve of the Franco- 
 Prussian War, made a spectacular entrance into Berlin 
 under identical circumstances. The welcome to his 
 grandson must be no less imposing and immortal. 
 
 I was fortunate enough to pre-empt a place of special 
 vantage for the show — a table on the balcony of the 
 famous Cafe Kranzler at the intersection of Friedrich- 
 strasse and the Linden. The boulevard was jammed. 
 All Berlin seemed gathered in it. Presently the triple- 
 toned horn of the Imperial motor-car tooted from afar 
 the warning that the Kaiser was approaching. A tornado 
 
 74
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 of cheers and Hochs greeted him all along the Via Tri- 
 umphalis. The Empress, at his side, smiled feelingly in 
 token of the most spontaneous welcome the Kaiser ever 
 received at the hands of his never overfond Berliners. 
 The brass-helmeted War Lord himself was the personifi- 
 cation of gravity. His favourite pose in public is 
 uncompromising sternness ; to-day it was the last word 
 in severity. He did not seem a happy man, nor a tithe 
 so haughty as I always imagined he would be in the 
 midst of war delirium. It was an unmistakably anxious 
 Kaiser who entered his capital on that afternoon of 
 deathless memory. 
 
 The Imperial spectacle, smacking strongly of Wil- 
 liam's own stage management, had only begun, for now 
 the Crov/n Prince's familiar motor signal, Ta-tee, Ta-ta, 
 sounded from the direction of Brandenburg Gate, and 
 presently he rolled along, with the beauteous and all- 
 captivating Crown Princess Cecelie at his side. Squat- 
 ting between them, saluting solemnly in sailor suit, 
 was their eldest son, the eight-year-old Kaiser-to-be. 
 The ebullition of the crowd in Unter den Linden knew 
 no bounds at the sight of the Crown Prince, for years 
 Berlin's darling. In striking contrast to the Kaiser's 
 solemnity was his heir's smile-wreathed face, which, 
 in the picturesque German idiom, was literally freude- 
 strahlend (radiant of joy). The spectre of war was 
 obviously not depressing the Colonel of the Death's 
 Head Hussars. He beamed and grinned in boyish 
 happiness as the mob surged round his car so insist- 
 ently that for a minute it could not proceed. Right 
 and left he shot out his arm to shake hands with the 
 frenzied demonstrators nearest him. The Crown Prin- 
 cess shared her consort's manifest pleasure, while the 
 
 75
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 princeling saluted tirelessly. Then other cars whirled 
 by, containing Prince and Princess August Wilhelm of 
 Prussia and the remaining Princes, the sailor Adalbert, 
 rotund Eitel Friedrich, and father-like Joachim and 
 Oscar. The HohenzoUern soldier-family picture was 
 to be complete at this immortal hour. Now there was 
 a fresh outburst of acclamation almost as volcanic as 
 that which greeted the Crown Prince. Admiral Prince 
 Henry, in navy blue and steering his own low, open 
 car, was passing. The Kaiser's brother is very dear to 
 the popular heart in Germany. As the Crown Prince 
 typifies the army, so democratic Prince Henry stands 
 for the na\'y. The procession was brought up by the 
 funereal Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg. For him the 
 cheering was only desultory, as he is not a familiar 
 figure, and many of the crowd obviously had no 
 notion who the worried-looking old gentleman in top 
 hat and frock coat might be. 
 
 The throngs now streamed towards the Royal Castle 
 in the confident hope that William the Speechmaker 
 would not disappoint them. About six o'clock in the 
 evening their patience and Hochs were rewarded. Sur- 
 rounded by the members of his family, the Kaiser 
 appeared at the balcony window facing the Cathedral 
 across the Lustgarten (this was more of the 1870 pre- 
 cedent) 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 fol- 
 lowing homily : 
 
 " A fateful hour has fallen upon Germany. Envious 
 people on all sides are compelling us to resort to just 
 defence. The sword is being forced into our hand. If 
 76
 
 THE CLIMAX 
 
 at the last hour my efforts do not succeed in maintain- 
 ing peace, I hope that with God's help we shall so wield 
 the sword that we shall be able to sheathe it with 
 honour. 
 
 "' 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 
 with Hocking and footsore from standing and march- 
 ing, but now indubitably certain that events were im- 
 pending which would try the Fatherland's soul as it 
 had never been tested before. 
 
 77
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 WAR 
 
 " '^r^HE Russian mobilization menace !" That was 
 A the great myth now irrevocably implanted 
 in 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 mutilated the Ems tele- 
 gram forty-four years previous in order to extenuate 
 the assault on France, and now the " Russian 
 mobihzation menace," the Cossack bogey, was invented 
 to popularize and as justification for precipitating 
 the conflict on which the Prussian War Party's 
 heart was irrevocably 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 when- 
 ever 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 mur- 
 derous, burglarious attack on innocent, defenceless, 
 peace-loving Germany." They had done more than that 
 — and here was yet another Hohenzollem 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 
 78
 
 WAR 
 
 German public opinion, shrewdly prepared, dutifully 
 swallowed it whole. Germans, their Emperor's " honour" 
 and their own '' safety '' now at stake, approved fervidly 
 the ultimatum which they were told had been presented 
 in St. Petersburg, demanding a,bandonment of tlie 
 Czar's " provocative " military measures. 
 
 I have too much respect for the perfected might of 
 the Teutonic w^ar machine to believe that any German 
 soldier worthy of the name ever considered Russian 
 military movements along the Prussian and Austrian 
 frontiers at the end of July, 1914, a " menace." It 
 was only a fortnight previous that the German Military 
 Gazette, the official army organ, had laughed the whole 
 Russian army out of court as an organization hardly 
 worthy of Prussian steel. Now the transfer of half 
 a dozen Russian corps had become so vast a peril as 
 to necessitate plunging the whole German Empire into 
 a " state of war !" Evei^body 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 w^ere always 
 ready for war. It was their commonest and proudest 
 boast. A high officer of the General Staff, twenty-four 
 hours after Serbia's " rejection " of the Austrian ultima- 
 tum, when asked how ready Germany was for eventuali- 
 ties, said, sententiously, ' 'A It ready." My Junker friend, 
 von G., of Kiel, himself a Prussian officer, would have 
 snorted with scornful glee if I had ever suggested to 
 him that any Russian mihtary measures could really 
 " menace " Germany. He knew what I knew, and 
 what anybody with sense in Germany always under- 
 stood, that, compared to what the Fatherland with its 
 comprehensive system of military-controlled state 
 
 79
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 railways could achieve in the way of actual " mobiliza- 
 tion," Russia would require weeks where Germany 
 would need only days, or even hours. The " Russian 
 mobilization menace " was Germany's supreme bluff. 
 
 St. Petersburg had been given until twelve o'clock 
 noon of Saturday, August i, to " demobilize." FaiHng 
 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 Hmit attached. All knew that 
 the great decision rested essentially in Russia's hands ; 
 that war with the Czar automatically meant war with 
 the French, too. Twelve o'clock Berhn time came and 
 went without word of any kind from Count Pourtales 
 he Kaiser's am.bassador in St. Petersburg. The Em- 
 peror 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 with 
 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 rumour. Russia had asked for a further period 
 of grace, one heard. Hope, report said, while slender, 
 was not yet utterly vanished. 
 
 The afternoon passed amid almost insufferable 
 anxiety. Unter den Linden and the Lustgarten, the 
 sprawling area around the Castle, were choked with 
 people tense with expectancy. Dread, rather than was 
 fervour, inspired them. About five-twenty o'clock, 
 80
 
 WAR 
 
 after one of the daily heart-to-heart war talks I had 
 been privileged to hold over the teacups with Mrs. 
 Gerard, the wife of the American ambassador, I drove 
 through the Wilhelmstrasse toward the Linden, accom- 
 panied by my English colleague, Charles Tower, Berlin 
 representative of the New York World and London 
 Daily News. I do not suppose the historic little side- 
 show was specially arranged in our honour, but as a 
 matter of fact we happened to pass the Foreign Ofhce 
 at the very instant that Doctor von Bethm.ann Hollweg, 
 grave with inconcealable worry, was entering a plebeian 
 taxicab. He was evidently starting out on a trans- 
 cendent 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 vSecretary von Jagow and a military 
 aide-de-camp. I blush to confess that Tower and I were 
 filled with such overw^eening 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 BerHn taxi tear through the heart of the business 
 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 Franz J - 
 sische-strasse, over the little bridge which spans the 
 canal, and into the southern esplanade of the castle. 
 Only small crowds were gathered at this point, and the 
 Chancellor's cab swung past the sentries and through 
 the big Neptune Gate of the Schloss almost unnoticed. 
 Now instinctively certain of the nature of Bethmann 
 Hollweg's errand. Tower and I made our way to the 
 Lustgarten, since early morning an endless vista of faces 
 
 G 8i
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 stretching nearly all the way from the Dom to the 
 Brandenburg Gate end of Unter den Linden, a mile to 
 the west. We felt sure that the universally awaited 
 Order of Mobilization might be momentarily expected. 
 As events developed, that was the document which we 
 had seen the Chancellor taking to the Kaiser. It was 
 six o'clock. The doleful chimes of the Cathedral across 
 from the Castle were summoning the people to the 
 service of intercession ordained by the Emperor earlier 
 m the day. Solemnity hung over the multitude like a 
 pall. Men and women knew now that Russia's answer, 
 or lack of answer, whichever it might be, meant war, not 
 peace. They had not long to wait for confirmatory 
 news. As soon as word was telephoned to the Wolff 
 Agency, the official news bureau, that the Imperial 
 signature had at length been officially given — that the 
 sword was now, literally and beyond recall, " forced " 
 into William II's hands — the newspapers, which had 
 had sufficient advance information for their purposes, 
 drenched the capital with Extmhldtter containing the 
 fateful tidings : 
 
 " UNIVERSAL MOBILIZATION OF THE 
 
 GERMAN ARMY AND NAVY 
 
 Another two lines explained, breathlessly, that an or- 
 der to that effect had just been promulgated by the 
 Supreme War Lord. The twelve-hour period which 
 Germany had granted to Russia for " the making of 
 a loyal declaration " had been ignored. To-morrow, 
 added the chief announcement in the most portentous 
 ExtraUatt a German newspaper ever issued, would be 
 82
 
 WAR 
 
 the first mobilization da3^ All Sunday, Monday and 
 Tuesday the Furor Teutonicus would be busy donning 
 shining armour. The deed was done. " Gentlemen," 
 the Kaiser is said to have remarked to Moltke, Falken- 
 hayn 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 tele- 
 graph 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 mied with no little prepossession in Germany's 
 favour. 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 defence of her honour, 
 rights and imperilled 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 psycholo- 
 gist would describe it, all-hypnotizing in its ejects. It 
 was not until five days afterwards, when I had crossed 
 the German frontier, reached Dutch territory and 
 
 83
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 caught 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. . . . 
 
 The Mobilization Order tore through the capital 
 with the velocity and the shock of a shell. Expected, 
 it yet stunned. The throng before the Castle still sang 
 Deutschland, Deidschland ilher Alles and cheered for 
 the Kaiser, and desultory processions of young men and 
 boys still marched hither and thither across the town. 
 But an atmosphere of soberness and grim reality 
 now descended upon Berlin. The iron 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 sub- 
 jects, liable for military service with the first line (Re- 
 serve), 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 con- 
 trol, brought every reservist in the realm definite in- 
 formation as to where and when he was expected to 
 present himself. The magic system which Roon de- 
 vised for hurling Germany's legions across the Rhine 
 in '70 was once again in mechanical, yet noiseless, 
 motion. Sheer jubilation, the " hun'ah " patriotism 
 with which Berlin had reverberated for a week, died out. 
 There were good-byes to be said now, long good-byes, 
 and affairs to be wound up. The iron business of war 
 was waiting to be attended to. The crowds in Unter den 
 Linden and the Lnstgarten melted homeward, silently, 
 immersed in anxious reflection. Before they waked 
 84
 
 WAR 
 
 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 ver^^ first German bul- 
 letin of Armageddon : 
 
 " Up to 4 o'clock this morning the Great Gen- 
 eral Staff has received the following reports : 
 
 " I. 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 at- 
 tempted attack by the Russians on the railway 
 station at Miioslaw was frustrated. 
 
 " 2. The station master at Johannisburg and 
 the forestry authorities at Bialla report that 
 during last night (ist 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 'Lyok 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 bogey, too, con- 
 verted into an ofiicially hall-marked reality ! 
 
 Modern war, from the journalist's standpoint, 
 consists principally of two things — censorship, and 
 
 85
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 rumour. Both had now set in with a vengeance. The 
 first day in Berlin seethed with irresponsible report. 
 People believed anj^thing. 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 Lux- 
 emburg " 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 cav- 
 alry 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 terri- 
 tory. French aviators had flown into Bavaria and 
 dropped bombs in the neighbourhood of Nuremberg, 
 evidently with the intent of destroying military rail- 
 way 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, be given his walking papers ? So far 
 rowdies had yelled Deutschland, Deutschland iiher Alles 
 only in front of the Russian Embassy. Now that French 
 airmen had shelled Bavaria, how long would it be before 
 the chateau in Pariser Piatz 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 dis- 
 patches saying that " powerful influences are at work 
 86
 
 WAR 
 
 to prevent England becoming involved in the war''? 
 Mr. Norman Angell had written in that sense to TJie 
 Times — the Lokal-Anzeiger reported with undisguised 
 satisfaction. A large number of British professors, 
 it added, had launched a '' protest '' against war with 
 Germany, " the leader in art and science and against 
 whom a v/ar for Russia and Serbia would be a crime 
 against civilization." A *' great and influential meet- 
 ing of Liberals in the Reform Club " had adopted res- 
 olutions commending Sir Edward Grey's efforts on 
 behalf of peace and " energetically demanding the 
 strict preservation of English neutrality." The Ger- 
 mans took heart. Blandly ignorant of their Govern- 
 ment's secret diplomatic schemings, now in frantic 
 progress, to keep Great Britain out of the fray, they 
 were lulled by their rulers and misleading 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 pacificist voice of Radical and pro- 
 German journalism. No intimation was permitted to 
 reach the German public that voices like The Times, The 
 Observer, The Daily Mail, The Morning Post and The 
 Daily Telegraph were calling for the only action by 
 the Government consonant with British honour and 
 British rights. The outburst of fanatical rage against 
 the " perfidious sister nation " so soon to ensue was 
 mainly due, I shall alwa^^s remain convinced, to the 
 diabolical swindle of which the German nation was the 
 victim at the hands of its dark-lantern governors. In 
 
 87
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 that far-off day when the scales have fallen from 
 Teutonic eyes, I predict that the Kaiser's people will 
 cry for vengeance on their deceivers. As they were 
 dnped about Russia, so v%^ere 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 in- 
 formed, " demands absolutely that in addition to the 
 regular official organs, the entire population should give 
 vent to its patriotic sentiments by co-operating in 
 the apprehension of such dangerous persons." " By 
 active and restless vigilance," continued this official 
 incitement to lynch law, " everybody can in his own 
 v/ay contribute toward a successful result of the war." 
 It was not to be expected that a nation so idolatrous of 
 officialdom as the Germans could possibly resist this 
 co-rU' blanche permit to every man to play the role of 
 an avenging sleuth. The inevitable result was that 
 Germany became in a flash the scene of a nation-wide 
 " drive " for spies, real or imaginary. Anybody who 
 was either known to be a Russian or remotely suspected 
 of being one, or who even looked like a Russian, was 
 in imminent danger of his life. Now the notorious 
 story of " poisoning of wells in Alsace by French army 
 surgeons " was circulated. " Hunt for French spies !" 
 promptly read the newest invitation to mob violence. 
 88
 
 WAR 
 
 Weird " news " began to fill the Extrahldtter. A 
 " Russian spy '' had been caught in Unter den Linden, 
 masquerading as a German naval officer. After being 
 beaten into insensibility, he was dragged to Spandau 
 and shot. In another part of the 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. A motor-car, in which 
 women were travelling, 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 journahst, 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 im- 
 minent, 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, un- 
 mistakable professional credentials, well-known official 
 status in Berlin and convincingly American exterior 
 availed him not. He had plenty of mone^^ and a 
 camera, and that was enough. He must be a spy. 
 For three days and nights he was under lock and key, 
 and, even after he had contrived to establish communi- 
 cation 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, a,nd 
 remain in Berlin for the rest of the war, where, I believe, 
 
 89
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 he still is, doing vigilant work for the premier American 
 news organization. I was told, but could never verify, 
 that one of the conditions of brother Conger's libera- 
 tion was that he should not " talk about *' the affair. 
 
 How many hapless persons, Russians, French or un- 
 fortunates suspected of being such, with nothing in the 
 world against them more incriminating than their real 
 or imagined nationality, were put out of the way either 
 by German mob savagery, police brutality or fortress 
 firing-squads in those opening forty-eight hours of 
 Armageddon will probably never be known. I do not 
 suppose the Germans themselves know. But this 1 
 know — that even at that earliest stage of their sanguin- 
 ary game thousands of them conducted themselves 
 in a manner which, had they done nothing else during 
 the war to stagger humanity, would brand them as a 
 race of semi-barbarians. Kiiltur gave a very sorry ac- 
 count 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 rumour 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 
 90
 
 WAR 
 
 reservists, their last day in civilian 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 congrega- 
 tion to recite with him the Lord's Prayer. Strong men 
 and women were in tears when the Amen was reached. 
 The service was brought to a close with a beautiful 
 rendition by that mighty chorus of the Xiederldndisches 
 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 oppor- 
 tunity 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 strug- 
 gle 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 
 
 91
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 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. 
 
 92
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE AMERICAN^ 
 
 k.^ 
 
 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 Blilow^ — it was at one of the so-called " par- 
 liamentary evenings " in 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 i, 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 journ listic fences 
 in Berlin, with a view to remaining there throughout 
 the war. There was, as yet, of course, 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 prac- 
 tice of her real profession. As an American citizen and 
 special correspondent of three great American news- 
 papers — the New York Times, Philadelphia Public 
 Ledger and Chicago Tribune — and fully accredited as 
 such in German official quarters, I had every reason 
 
 93
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 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 The Daily Mail would 
 not interfere with my remaining in Germany as an 
 American writing exclusively for American papers. It 
 was, of course, obvious that if this permission were 
 granted me, my connection with the British news 
 organization, which for years was Germany's hete noire, 
 would have automatically to cease. 
 
 In my ambassador, Mr. Gerard, I found, as ever, a 
 ready supporter of my plans. He recognized, as I 
 did, that a " Daily Mail man," particularly one who 
 specialized, as I had for eight years, in pubhshing as 
 much as I dared about Germany's palpable prepara- 
 tions for war, might find himself on thin ice in asking 
 favours 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 favourable 
 aspects of Germian hfe 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 
 many things Teutonic. This foreigner's tribute to the 
 real source of modern German greatness — the Father- 
 land's captains of science, art, letters, commerce, finance 
 and industry — was considered so fair and flattering to 
 the Germans that Manner um den Kaiser, a German 
 translation, went through eight editions to the half- 
 dozen of the English original. During the Zabern army 
 upheaval in Alsace-Lorraine in the winter of 1913-14 
 an article of mine in The Daily Mail entitled " WTiat 
 94
 
 THE AMERICANS 
 
 the Colonel Said," was the only presentation of the 
 German militar^^ attitude pubhshed in England. Even 
 the War Party newspapers in Berlin did me the doubtful 
 honour of reproducing that attempt to interpret the 
 Prussian point of view that, where the sacredness of 
 the King's tunic is at stake, all other considerations 
 vanish into insignificance. 
 
 The Ambassador suggested, in the always practical 
 way of American diplomacy, that I should assemble 
 for him a dossier of some of my newspaper work in 
 Berlin showing that I had consistently attempted to 
 present the bright, as well as the dark, side of the Ger- 
 man picture. Judge Gerard promised to submit my 
 desire to remain in Germany during war, if v/ar came 
 to Foreign Secretary von Jagow and to recommend 
 that mi3^ aspiration should be gratified. It was wel- 
 come news which the Ambassador was finally enabled 
 to give m.e on August i, that the Foreign Secretary 
 had considered my application and granted it. I re- 
 joiced 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, some close-range 
 impressions of man-killing as an applied art. 
 
 I was not the only Am.erican appealing to our Em- 
 bassy for amelioration of my troubles about this time. 
 In fact there were so many others — hundreds and hun- 
 dreds of them — that the Ambassador and his small staff 
 ceased altogether to be government officials, and became 
 merely comforters of distracted compatriots plunged 
 suddenly into the abyss of terror and helplessness in 
 
 95
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 a strange land by the spectre of war. From early 
 morning till long past midnight Wilhelms Platz 7, the 
 dignified home maintained by the Gerards as Ameri- 
 can 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 
 alder manic committee of Battle Creek, Michigan, was 
 not getting what it bargained for — study of Berlin's 
 sewage farms and municipal labour 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 j the Dresdner Bank, had 
 not reckoned even on the remote possibility of its refus- 
 ing 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, any- 
 how," 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 
 96
 
 THE AMERICANS 
 
 refugees and refugettes so cruelly trapped in Arma- 
 geddonland. 
 
 Americans who come to Europe proverbially feel a 
 proprietary interest in their Embassies, Legations and 
 Consulates. The Berlin Ambassador had always put in 
 much valuable time assuaging the grief and disap- 
 pointment 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 favours like exploration of the German 
 educational system under the personal chaperonage 
 of the Minister for Culture. Then, of course, there 
 were the ever-present " German- Americans," who, hav- 
 ing sneaked away from their beloved Fatherland in 
 youth without performiing 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 inter- 
 vention 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 literall}^ jammed with fretting men, 
 and weepy women and children. Every roomx over- 
 flowed 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 demand- 
 ing in martial tone that American Ausldndcr should 
 ** legitimatize " themselves in some more convincing 
 
 H 97
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 manner than display of the stars and stripes in coat 
 lapels. 
 
 The railways were available now only for troops. 
 The Hamburg- American and North German • Lloyd 
 had cancelled all their west-bound sailings, and our 
 Consular officials in Hamburg and Bremen were tele- 
 graphing 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 water- 
 ing 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 nieces and nephews of Uncle Sam. 
 
 The Embassy rapidly and patiently mastered the sit- 
 uation. Mrs. Gerard converted herself into the adopted 
 mother of every lachrymose American woman and 
 child encamped on her broad marble staircase. Mrs. 
 Gherardi, the wife of our Naval Attache, 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' ef- 
 forts 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, 
 98
 
 [Photo 
 
 [Uudcmvod and Uuderwosd 
 
 MRS. GKRAKD. 
 
 [la lace f. 98.
 
 THE AMERICANS 
 
 already effectually isolated from the rest of the world 
 behind an impenetrable ring of steel. As for the men 
 of the Embassy, from the x\mbassador dowTi to " Wil- 
 helm," the old German doorkeeper who has initiated 
 two generations of American diplomats into the mys- 
 teries of their profession in Berlin, no faithful ser- 
 vants of an ungrateful Republic ever came so valiantly 
 to the rescue of fellow-taxpayers. The Embassy 
 apartments, including the Ambassador's own sanc- 
 tuary, were turned into offices which looked for all the 
 world like a Recruiting Bureau. Every available space 
 for a desk was usurped b}^ somebody taking applica- 
 tions for passports or filling up the passports them- 
 selves, to be turned over to Judge Gerard in an un- 
 ceasing stream for his signature and seal. Uncle Sam 
 surely never raked in so man^/ two-dollar fees at one 
 killing in all the history of his Berlin ofhce. 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 
 attaches 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 cheque, at work with a mantel-piece as a desk, 
 recording the vital statistics of a Vermont grocery-man 
 who wanted a passport. In another comer sat Henry 
 WHiite, ex- Ambassador in Rome and Paris, scribbling 
 away at breakneck pace, in order that the age, com- 
 plexion and height of that fair but trembling Vassar 
 graduate might be quickly and accurately inscribed in 
 an application for a Yankee parchment. There, with 
 
 99
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the arm of a chair as a desk, was Professor Jeremiah 
 W. Jenks, great authority on political economy, cur- 
 rency and trusts, patiently extorting the statistical story 
 of his life from the coroner of a Minnesota county who 
 had been caught in the 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 wdndow-sill as a 
 writing-board, Mrs. T., a 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 har- 
 ness as a volunteer in the impromptu army of Uncle 
 Sam's clerks, doing her bit for 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 comrade- 
 ship 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 Ion ; in the memory of those w-ho 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 Wil- 
 son sent to Berlin less than a year previous was first 
 
 lOO
 
 THE AMERICANS 
 
 presented to his compatriots at a little function at which 
 it was my honour 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: " WTien the 
 time comes for me to retire from Berlin, if you will 
 call me the most American Ambassador who ever re- 
 presented 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 re- 
 maining days in Berlin appear to be calculable in 
 hours. Whether it shall turn out that the Arabic in- 
 sult was after all swallowed as the Lusitania infamy was 
 stomached, or whether Judge Gerard is finally recalled 
 from Berlin as a protest extracted at length from the 
 most patient, reluctant and long-suffering Government 
 on record, he will richly have realized his ambition — 
 to be '' the most American Ambassador " ever accred- 
 ited to the German court. In my time in Berlin I 
 knew five American ambassadors. Each one was a 
 credit to his nation. But " Jimmy " Gerard was '* the 
 most American," and I count that, in a citizen of the 
 United States called to represent his country abroad, 
 the superlative quality. The seductive atmosphere 
 of a Court in which adulation was obsequiously prac- 
 tised, especially toward Americans, never turned the 
 head of Judge Gerard or his wife. They had far more 
 
 lOI
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 than the average 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 pre- 
 sence 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 Euro- 
 pean political life, with its gaping pitfalls and brilhant 
 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 HohenzoUern 
 court the most gifted ambassador on the Foreign 
 Office's active list — Sir Edward Goschen. Unthink- 
 ing Americans, by which I mean those who underesti- 
 mate 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 
 102
 
 THE AMERICANS 
 
 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 Ameri- 
 can electioneering campaign. It is amid its storms 
 and tribulations that a man learns to be something 
 more than an inhabited dress-suit. It is there he 
 acquires the art of being human. It is there that he 
 comes to appreciate the priceless value of loyalty. 
 United States Presidents do not err seriously when 
 they hunt for ambassadors among men who have been 
 through the preparatory school from which " Jimmy " 
 Gerard holds a jnagnum cum laude. 
 
 My personal observations of Judge Gerard's am- 
 bassadorial methods are based for the mxost part on his 
 career before the war. But he has not departed from 
 them during the war. Bism.arck 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 Berhn since x\ugust, 19 14. 
 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 Gennany. They do not fit 
 into the Teutonic diplomatic scheme. If they are in- 
 spired by such unconventional aspirations as those to 
 which Judge Gerard gave utterance in his "keynote 
 speech " to the American Luncheon Club of Berhn, it 
 is morally certain that their usefulness — to Germany 
 — is limited. 
 
 The American Ambassador had been acting for 
 
 103
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 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 treatment accorded him and his staff during 
 their last hours on German soil, had this to say of 
 him: 
 
 " I should also like to mention the great assistance 
 rendered to us all by my American colleague, Mr. 
 Gerard, and his staff. Undeterred by the hooting and 
 hisses with which he was often greeted by the mob on 
 entering and leaving the Embassy, His Excellency 
 came repeatedly to see me, to ask how he could help 
 us and to make arrangements for the safety of stranded 
 British subjects. He extricated many of these from 
 extremely difficult situations at some personal risk to 
 himself, and his calmness and savoir faire and his firm- 
 ness in dealing with the Imperial authorities gave full 
 assurance that the protection of British subjects and 
 interests could not have been left in more efficient and 
 able hands." 
 
 Nobody who ever knew '' Jimmy " Gerard — that is 
 the affectionate way in which old friends and even 
 acquaintances of brief duration almost invariably 
 speak of him — would expect him to be anything in the 
 world except " undeterred " by the cowardly onslaughts 
 of the Berlin barbarians. An expert swimmer, clever 
 amateur boxer, crack shot, volunteer soldier and vet- 
 eran of New York politics, " Jimmy " Gerard never 
 knew the meaning of the word fear, and the unfailing 
 courage and pugnacity with which he has " stood up " 
 to the Kaiser's Government throughout the various 
 104
 
 THE AMERICANS 
 
 diplomatic crises of the war have been in full keeping 
 with his virile temperament. The debt that the captive 
 British soldiers in Germany owe to Ambassador Gerard 
 has been attested times without number. That con- 
 ditions at prisoner camps gradually emerged from the 
 deadly to the tolerable phase was in no slight degree 
 due to his capacity for '' doing things." 
 
 It is sometimes said that our diplomatic system, or 
 such as it is, reduces American ambassadors and min- 
 isters to the status of messenger-boys, who have little 
 to do but to carr}^ back and forth between their offices 
 and the foreign ministries to which they are accredited 
 the communications and instructions which Washing- 
 ton sends them. There could, of course, be no more 
 obtuse misconception. Berlin, the capital of Macht- 
 politik, is particularly a capital in which everything 
 depends on the manner in which a foreign Govern- 
 ment's views are expressed or its wishes conveyed. 
 It has not been my privilege to be behind the innocuous 
 von Jagow's screen when " Jimmy " Gerard strolled 
 across the Wilhelms Platz to the ramshackle old Aus- 
 wdrtiges Ami, to tell the German Government what 
 Washington thought of this, that or the other of its 
 recurring acts of lawlessness, but I vov/ that von Jagow 
 has got to know Gerard for just what he is — an Ameri- 
 can from the top of his extraordinarily well-shaped 
 head to the soles of his feet. The war has not brought 
 us many blessings. Among the few vouchsafed us we 
 may count high the fact that at the capital of the proved 
 enemy of all mankind we had, ready to speak up and to 
 stand up for us, in gladness or vicissitude, a real man. 
 
 No stor^?- of our Berlin war Embassy would be com- 
 plete without a reference to the Ambassador's lieu- 
 
 los
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 tenants, who, inspired by his own example of unruffled 
 good nature and limitless patience, capably played 
 their own trying parts. At Judge Gerard's right hand 
 was Joseph Clark Grew, First Secretary, Harvard '02, 
 who, having shot wild beasts in the jungles of Asia, 
 would naturally not quail before Germans, no matter 
 how stormy the conditions. Grew is one of the excep- 
 tional young men in our diplomatic service, because 
 he has weathered its snares unspoiled. A distinguished 
 secretarial career at such important posts as Cairo, 
 Mexico City, Vienna, Petrograd and Berlin, in the 
 course of which he frequently acted as Ambassador or 
 Minister in charge, has left him, at thirty-five, as nat- 
 ural, human and American as no doubt many Harvard 
 men are while still beneath the democratizing influence 
 of the campus elms. I mention the preservation of 
 these qualities in Grew because they have been known 
 to disappear in many of our worthy young fellow- 
 countrymen, jumped precipitately from college into 
 representative positions abroad, and who thenceforth 
 refused to brush shoulders with anything beneath the 
 rank of royalty. 
 
 In Roland B. Harvey and Albert Billings Ruddock, 
 respectively Second and Third Secretaries, Judge Ger- 
 ard was also the fortunate possessor of a couple of 
 adjutants who, in the presence of emergency, showed 
 that hustle and bonhomie, besides being American 
 talents, are diplomatic traits of no mean order. To 
 preserve calm during the passport stampede of the 
 first week of August, 1914, was to exhibit the finesse 
 of a Disraeli. Harvey and Ruddock are types of the 
 younger generation of American diplomatists who go 
 in for the career with a view to devoting themselves to 
 106
 
 THE AMERICANS 
 
 its serious side and from among whom, som.e day, 
 we ought to evolve a professional service worthy of 
 the name. Neither of them ever struck me as being 
 afflicted by such emotions as filled the breast of a 
 certain well-known young man when promoted from 
 a European first-secretaryship to one of our important 
 ministerships in South America. " Well, old boy," I 
 
 asked him, " what do you think about going to ?" 
 
 " Oh," he rejoined, " I suppose it's all right, but it's a 
 h — of a way from Paris !" 
 
 I must not end this chapter, which I hope is recog- 
 nizable as a poor expression of gratitude to all con- 
 cerned for many kindnesses rendered, without a men- 
 tion of the 3^oungest, but by no means the least meri- 
 torious, member of the Berlin war Embassy family — 
 Lanier Winslow, the Ambassador's ever-effervescent pri- 
 vate secretary. War sobered Winslow so rapidly that 
 he committed matrimony before it was six months old 
 I can hear him now, in the midst of the passport panic, 
 still imitating Frank Tinney or humming Get Out and 
 Get Under, just as Nero might have done if Rome had 
 known what rag-time was. At an hour when it was 
 most needed, Lanier Winslow was a paragon of good 
 humour, and altogether, by common consent, a thing 
 of beauty and a joy for ever. 
 
 07
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 GERMANY'S war Juggernaut by the morning of 
 Monday, August 3, was in full, but incredibly 
 noiseless, motion. I always knew it was a magnifi- 
 cently well greased machine, geared for the maximum 
 of silence, but I felt sure it could not swing into 
 action without some reverberating creaks. Yet Berlin 
 externally had been far more feverishly agitated on 
 Spring Parade days at recurring ends of May than 
 it was now, with " enemies all round " and that " war 
 on two fronts," which most Germans used to talk 
 about as something, Gott set Dank, they would hardly 
 live to see. One's male friends of military age — it 
 was now the second day of mobilization — kept on melt- 
 ing away from hour to hour, but amid a complete lack 
 of fuss and bustle. It almost seemed as if the army 
 had orders to rush to the fighting-line in gum-shoes 
 and that everything on wheels had rubber tyres. As 
 the Fatherland for years had armed in silence, so she 
 was going to battle. We saw no seventeen-inch guns 
 rumbling to the front. Those were Germany's best- 
 concealed weapons. A military attache of one of the 
 chief belligerents, who lived in Berlin for four years 
 preceding the war, has since confessed that he never 
 even knew of " Big Bertha's " existence ! 
 
 Germany girding for Armageddon was distinctly a 
 disappointment. I entirely agreed with a portly dow- 
 108
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 ager from the Middle West, who, between frettings 
 about when she could get a train to the Dutch frontier, 
 continually expressed her chagrin at such " a poor 
 show." She imagined, like a good many of the rest of 
 us, that mobilization in Germany would at the very 
 least see the Supreme War Lord bolting madly up and 
 down Unter den Linden, plunging silver spurs into a 
 foaming vv'hite charger and brandishing a glistening 
 sword in martial gestures as Caruso does when he pla^^s 
 Radames in the finale of the second act of Aida. Ver- 
 di's Egyptian epic is the Kaiser's favourite opera, and 
 he ought to have remembered, we thought, how a con- 
 quering hero should demean himself at such a blood- 
 stirring hour. At least Berlin, we hoped, would rise 
 to the occasion, and thunder and rock with the pomp 
 and circumstance of war's alarums. 
 
 There was amazingly little of anything of that sort. 
 The Kaiser instead motored round town in a prosaic 
 six-cylinder 2rlercedes, as he long was wont to do, 
 just keeping some rather important professional en- 
 gagements with the Chief of the General Staff, the Im- 
 perial Chancellor and the Secretary of the Navy. As 
 he flitted by, the huge crowds lined up on the kerbs 
 stiffened into attitudes, clicked heels, doffed hats and 
 " hoched." The atmosphere was stimmungsvoller than 
 usual, for German phlegm had vanished along with high 
 prices on the Bourse, but the paroxysm of electric 
 excitement which I always fancied would usher in a 
 German war was unaccountably missing. When you 
 mentioned that phenomenon to German friends, their 
 bosoms swelled with visible pride. They were im- 
 measurably flattered by your indirect compliment that 
 the Kaiser's war establishment was so perfect a mech- 
 
 109
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 anism that it could clear for action almost impercept- 
 ibly. 
 
 I had now deserted my home in suburban Wilmers- 
 dorf, which once I nicknamed the " District of Colum- 
 bia," for in and all round it Berlin's American colony 
 was domiciled, and taken a room for the opening scenes 
 of the war drama in the Hotel Adlon. With its broad 
 fronts on the Linden and Pariser Platz, and the French, 
 British and Russian Embassies within a stone's throw 
 to the right and left, the Adlon was an ideal vantage 
 point. If there were to be " demonstrations," I could 
 feel sure, at so strategic a point, of being in the thick of 
 them. Events of the succeeding thirty-six hours were 
 to show that I did not reckon without my host on that 
 score. 
 
 From window and balcony overlooking the Linden 
 I could now see or hear at intervals detachments of 
 Berlin regiments, Uhlans or Infantry of the Guard, 
 or a battery of light artillery, swinging along to railway 
 stations to entrain for the front. Occasionally battalions 
 of provincial regiments, distinguishable because the 
 men did not tower into space like Berlin's Frederickian 
 guardsmen, crossed town en route from one train to 
 another. The men seemed happier than I had ever 
 before seen German soldiers. That was the only dif- 
 ference, or at least the principal one. The prospect 
 of soon becoming cannon-fodder was evidently far 
 from depressing. Most of them carried flowers en- 
 twined round the rifle barrel or protruding from its 
 mouth. Here and there a bouquet dangled rakishly 
 from a helmet. Now and then a flaxen-haired Prus- 
 sian girl would step into the street and press a posey 
 into some trooper's grimy hand. Yet, except for the 
 
 I lO
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 fact that the soldiers were all in field grey (I wonder 
 when the Kaiser's military tailors began making those 
 millions of grey uniforms !) with even their familiar 
 spiked headpiece masked in canvas of the same hue, 
 the Kaiser's fighting-men trundling off to battle might 
 have been in the midst of a work-a-day route-march. 
 Then, suddenly, a company or a whole battalion would 
 break into song, and the crowd, trailing alongside the 
 bass-drum of the band, just as in peace times, would 
 take up the refrain, and presently half-a-mile of Unter 
 dot Linden was echoing with Deufschland, Deutschland 
 iiber Alles, and I knew that the Fatherland was at war. 
 At the railway stations of Berlin and countless other 
 German towns and cities at that hour heart-rending 
 little tragedies were being enacted, as fathers, mothers, 
 wives, sisters and sweethearts bade a long farewell to 
 the beloved in grey. Only rarely did some man in 
 uniform himself surrender to the emotions of the 
 moment. These swarthy young Germans, with fifty 
 or sixty pounds of impedimenta strapped round them, 
 were endowed with Spartan stolidity now, and smihngly 
 buoyed up the drooping spirits of the kith and kin they 
 were leaving behind. " Es wird schon gut, M utter chen ! 
 Es wird schon giif .'" (It will be all right, mother dear ! 
 It will be all right !) Thus they returned comfort for 
 tears . ' ' Nicht unterliegen ! Besser nicht zuriickkehren !' ' 
 (Don't be beaten ! Better not come back at all !) was 
 the good-bye greeting blo\\'n with the final kisses as 
 many a trainload of embryonic heroes faded slowly 
 from sight beneath the station's gaping archway. 
 Germany was now indubitably convinced that its war 
 was war m a holy cause. The time had come for the 
 Fatherland to rise to the majest}^ of a great hour. 
 
 1 1 1
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 " Auf wiedersehen P' sang the country to the army. 
 But if there was to be no reunion, the army must go 
 down fighting to the last gasp for unsere gerechte Sache, 
 manfully, tirelessly, ruthlessly, till victory was en- 
 forced. Such were the inspiring thoughts amid which 
 the boys in field grey trooped oft to die for Kaiser and 
 Empire. 
 
 The outstanding event of August 3 was the publica- 
 tion of the German government's famous apologia for 
 the war, the so-called " "WTiite Paper," officially de- 
 scribed as " T^Iemorandum and Documents in Relation 
 to the Outbreak of the War." Early in the afternoon 
 a message arrived for m.e at the Adlon to the 
 effect that if I would call at the Press Bureau of the 
 Foreign Office at five o'clock, Legationsrat Heilbron, 
 one of Hammann's lieutenants whom I had known for 
 many years, would be glad to deliver m.e an advance 
 copy for special transmission to London and New 
 York. I lay great stress on the fact that up to sun- 
 down of August 3, 1 9 14, I continued to be persona 
 gratissima with the Imperial German Government. It 
 was true that one of the young Foriegn Office cubs 
 told off to censor press cablegrams at the Main Tele- 
 graph Office had, during the preceding three days, 
 expressed annoyance with what he considered my 
 eagerness to ''go into details," but Legationsrat Heil- 
 bron's invitation to fetch the " Wliite Paper " was 
 gratifying evidence that my relations with the powers- 
 that-be were still " correct," even if not cordial. I 
 was glad of that, because there was constantly in my 
 mind the desire to remain in Germany, whatever hap- 
 pened, with a front -row seat for the big show. At the 
 appointed hour I presented myself in Herr Heilbron" s 
 1 12
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 room on the ground-floor of the Wilhelmstrasse front 
 of the Foreign Office. He greeted me with old-time 
 courtesy, though I found his demeanour perceptibly 
 depressed. He handed me a copy of the Denkschrift, 
 and, when I begged him for a second one, he complied 
 with a gracious hitte sehr. 
 
 A London colleague had already intimated to me 
 that the Imperial Chancellor, desiring to place the 
 German case promptly and fully before the British and 
 American publics, would " do his best " with the mili- 
 tary authorities who were now in supreme control of 
 the postal telegraph and cable lines to induce them to 
 allow London and New York correspondents to despatch 
 exhaustive " stories " on the White Paper. As I was 
 sure, however, that Renter's Agency for England and 
 the Associated Press for America would be handling 
 the affair at great length, my treatment of it was con- 
 fined, as was usual under such circumstances, to tele- 
 graphing a brief introductory summary. 
 
 What struck me instantly as the features of the 
 German publication were its treatment of the war as 
 an exclusively Russian-provoked Russo-German affair 
 and its brazenly ex-parte character — how ex-par te I 
 did not fully realize till I read England's White Paper 
 a week later. Sir Edward Grey submitted his documents 
 in evidence without marginal notes or comment of any 
 kind, and asked the world to pass judgment. Doctor 
 von Bethmann Hollweg's White Paper began with a 
 lengthy plea of justification and ended with quotation 
 of such communications between the Kaiser's Govern- 
 ment and its ambassadors and between the German 
 Emperor and the Czar as would most plausibly 
 support the Fatherland's case for war. It was mani- 
 
 ^ 113
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 festly a biased and incomplete record. It was in fact 
 a " doctored " record, and suggested that its authors 
 had Bismarck's mutilation of the Ems telegram in 
 mind as a precedent, in emulation of which no German 
 Government could possibly go wrong. 
 
 Although compiled to include events up to August i, 
 the German White Paper was silent as the grave in 
 regard to Belgium and the negotiations with the 
 Government of Great Britain. Issued on the night of 
 August 3, when hundreds of thousands of German 
 troops were waiting at Aix-la-Chapelle for the great 
 assault on Liege — if, indeed, at that hour they were 
 not already across the Belgian frontier — this sacred 
 brief designed to establish the Fatherland's case at the 
 bar of world opinion had no single word to say on 
 what was destined to be almost the supreme issue of 
 the war. It was the last word in Imperial German 
 deception. If the German public had known that Sir 
 Edward Grey on July 30 had already " warned Prince 
 Lichnowsky that Germany must not count upon our 
 standing aside in all circumstances," I imagine its 
 bitterness a few nights later, when the fable of England's 
 " treacherous intervention " was sprung upon the de- 
 luded Fatherland, might have been less barbaric in its 
 intensity. 
 
 Next to the omission of all reference to what Sir 
 Edward Grey called Germany's " infamous proposal " 
 for the purchase of British neutrality — a pledge not 
 to despoil France of European territory if England 
 would stand with folded arms while Germany violated 
 Belgium and ravished the French Colonial Empire — 
 the outstanding fact in the Berlin White Paper was the 
 admission of Germ an- Austrian complicity in the humilia- 
 114
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 tion of Serbia. The Foreign Office, as I have previously 
 explained, had zealously affirmed Germany's entire 
 detachment from Austria's programme for avenging 
 Serajevo. What did the White Paper now tell us ? 
 That 
 
 " Austria had to admit that it would not be con- 
 sistent either with the dignity or the self-preservation 
 of the Monarchy to look on longer at the operations on 
 the other side of the border without taking action. . . . 
 We were able to assure our ally most heartily of our agree- 
 ment with her view of the situation, and to assure her that 
 any action she might consider it necessary to take in order 
 to put an end to the movement in Serbia directed against 
 the existence of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy would 
 receive our approval. We were fully aware, in this 
 connection, that war-like moves on the part of Austria- 
 Hungary against Serbia would bring Russia into the 
 question, and might draw us into a war in accordance 
 with our duties as an ally." 
 
 The historic and ineffaceable fact is that Austria — 
 wobbly, invertebrate Austria, which would even to-day, 
 but for Germany, lie prostrate and vanquished — never 
 made a solitary move in the whole plot to coerce Serbia 
 without the full concurrence of the big brother at 
 Berhn. It would be an insult to the intelligence of 
 German diplomacy, stupid as it is, to imagine that the 
 Kaiser's Government sat mute, unconsulted and non- 
 chalant, while Austria worked out a scheme certain, 
 as the Germans themselves admit in their White Paper, 
 to plunge Europe into war. 
 
 It was m\' privilege on arriving in the United States 
 
 115
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 on August 22 to furnish the New York Times with the 
 first copy of the German White Paper to reach the 
 American public. In preparing a prefatory note to 
 accompany the verbatim translation published in next 
 day's paper, I selected the paragraph just quoted as 
 primd-facie evidence that the German claim of non- 
 collusion with Austria is subterfuge — to give it the 
 longer and less unparliamentary term. 
 
 The German White Paper was prepared formally 
 for the information of the Reichstag, which was sum- 
 moned to meet on Tuesday, August 4, of imperishable 
 memory, for the purpose of voting £65,000,000 of 
 initial war credits. Paris was not won in the expected 
 six weeks, and the Reichstag has voted £1,500,000,000 
 of war credits up to this writing (September i, 1915), 
 with melaiicholy promise of still more to come. The 
 twenty-four hours preceding the war sitting had not 
 been eventless. Monsieur Sverbieff and the staff of 
 the Russian Embassy were the victims of gross insults 
 from the mob in Unter den Linden, as they left their 
 headquarters in motor-cars for the railway station. 
 Mounted police were present to " keep order," but their 
 " vigilance " did not deter German men and youths 
 from spitting in the faces of the Czar's representatives, 
 belabouring them with walking-sticks and umbrellas, 
 and offering rowdy indignities to the women of the 
 ambassadorial party. In front of the French Embassy 
 menacing crowds stood throughout the day and night, 
 waiting for a chance to exhibit German patriotism at 
 Monsieur Cambon's expense. When Sefior Pole de 
 Bernabe, the Spanish Ambassador, who was calling to 
 arrange to take over the representation of France dur- 
 ing the war, made his appearance, the mob mistook him 
 116
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 for Cambon and was just prevented in the nick of time 
 from assaulting the Spaniard. How the French 
 Embassy finally got away from Germany, under circum- 
 stances which would have shamed a Fiji Island govern- 
 ment, was later related for the benefit of posterity 
 in the French Yellow Book. When I read it months 
 later, I remembered my first German teacher in Berlin, 
 a noblewoman, once telling me, when I asked her how 
 to say " gentleman " in Gtrman: " There is no such 
 thing as a 'gentleman' in the German language." 
 That was paraphrased to me by another German on a 
 later occasion, when, discussing the ability of German 
 science, so well demonstrated during this war, to devise 
 a substitute for almost anything, he remarked: " The 
 only thing we can't make is a gentleman, because we 
 never had a proper analysis of the necessary ingredi- 
 ents." The Germans, in their communicative moments, 
 always used to acknowledge that Bismarck was right 
 when he called them " a nation of house-servants." 
 It is impressively exemplified by their stage, which 
 boasts the finest character actors imaginable; but 
 when a German player essays to portray the gentleman, 
 he is grotesque. He gropes helplessly in a strange and 
 unexplored realm. 
 
 On the day before the war session of the Reichstag, 
 the Kaiser, more conscious than ever now of his partner- 
 ship with Deity, ordained Wednesday, August 5, as 
 a day of universal prayer for the success of German 
 arms. Soon after its proclamation, William II, 
 thunderously acclaimed, appeared in Unter den Linden 
 intermittently, en route to conference with high officers 
 of state. He was clad, like every German soldier one 
 now saw, in field-grey, and ready, one heard, to leave 
 
 117
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 for the front at a moment's notice, to take up his post, 
 ae signed him by Hohenzollern warrior traditions, on 
 the battlefield in the midst of his loyal legions. Mo- 
 bilization was now in full swing, and more and more 
 troops were in evidence, crossing town to railway 
 stations from which they were to be transported east or 
 west, as the Staff's emergencies required. A week 
 before, all these soldiers were in Prussian blue. They 
 were grey now, from head to foot, millions of them. 
 Obviously the clothing department of the army had 
 not been taken by surprise by the cruel war "forced" 
 upon pacific Germany. Three million uniforms can 
 hardly be manufactured in a whole summer — even in 
 Germany. I thought of this, as grey streams, far into the 
 evening, kept pouring through Berlin, and I pondered 
 what a marvellously happy selection that peculiar shade 
 of drab-grey, of almost dust-like invisibility from afar, 
 was for field purposes. To shoot a.t lines no more 
 colourful than that, it seemed to me, would be like 
 banging away at the empty horizon itself. . . . 
 
 History, I suppose, will date Armageddon from 
 August I, when the German army and navy were 
 mobilized, or perhaps from August 2, when Germany 
 claims that Russia and France fired the first miscreant 
 shots. But the red-letter day of the World Massacre's 
 opening week was beyond all question Tuesday, August 
 4, which began with the war sitting of the Reichstag 
 and ended with England's declaration of war on 
 Germany. It was destined to be especially big with 
 import for me — of vital import, as events hanging over 
 my unsuspecting head were speedily to reveal. 
 
 At midday, two hours before the session of the 
 Reichstag in its own chamber, Parliament was " opened" 
 ii8
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 by the Kaiser personally in the celebrated White 
 Hall of the Royal Castle. I had applied lor admis- 
 sion after the few available press tickets were already 
 exhausted, but it was not difficult for me to visualize 
 the scene. I had been in the White Hall on several 
 memorable occasions in the past — during the visit 
 of King Edward VH in February, 1909, at a brilliant 
 State banquet and at the ball which followed; at 
 the wedding of the Emperor's daughter, " the sunshine 
 of my House," Princess Victoria Luise, and Duke 
 Ernest August of Brunswick, in May, 1913; and a 
 month later during the Silver Jubilee celebration 
 of the Kaiser's reign, when our own Mr. Carnegie 
 showered plaudits on the Prince of the world's peace. 
 Tower, of The World and Daily News, was lucky enough 
 to secure a ticket to the Castle ceremonial, and he was 
 bubbling over with excitement at having been privi- 
 leged to participate in so memorable a function. My 
 old friend, Giinther Thomas, late of the Newyorker 
 Staatszeitung, now joyous in the prospect of joining 
 the German Press Bureau's war staff, came back from 
 the Castle almost pitying me for not having been there. 
 " Wile, I tell you," I can hear him saying now, " it 
 was beautiful, simply beautiful ! You missed it ! 
 It was enough to make one cry !" Thomas lived in 
 New York seventeen years, but he returned to Germany 
 a more devout Prussian than ever, as a man ought to be 
 whose father fell gloriously at Koniggratz. 
 
 The description furnished by my English and Prus- 
 sian colleagues evidently did not exaggerate the splen- 
 dour and impressiveness of the scene in the White Hall. 
 The Kaiser, in iield-general's grey, entered, escorting 
 the Empress. He was solemn, but not anxious-looking. 
 
 119
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Around the marble-pillared chamber, where on'y 
 fifteen months before I had seen the Czar and George V 
 of England tripping the minuet with German prin- 
 cesses as the Kaiser's honoured guests, were grouped 
 the first men of the Empire. In the places of distinc- 
 tion, closest to the canopied throne, each according to 
 his Court rank, stood the Imperial Chancellor, General 
 von Moltke, Grand- Admiral von Tirpitz and a score of 
 other eminent ofhcers of the civil, naval and military 
 governments. Am.ong the foreign ambassadors only 
 the representatives of Russia and France were missing 
 from their old-time places. Mr. Gerard, modest and 
 retiring as always, amid the glitter of gold lace and brass 
 buttons flashing on all sides, cut a more than ever 
 self-effacing figure in his diplomatic uniform — the plain 
 evening dress of an American gentleman. 
 
 The Kaiser read his War Speech, which he held in 
 his right hand, while the left firmly gripped his sword- 
 hilt. Beginning in a quiet tone. His Majesty's voice 
 appreciably rose in intensity and volume as he ap- 
 proached the kernel of his message which told how 
 " with a heavy heart I have been compelled to mobilize 
 my army against a neighbour with whom it has fought 
 side by side on so many fields of battle." The Imperial 
 Russian Government, William II went on to say, 
 " yielding to the pressure of an insatiable nationalism, 
 has taken sides with a State which by encouraging 
 criminal attacks has brought on the evil of war." That 
 France, also the Kaiser continued, " placed herself on 
 the side of our enemies could not surprise us. Too 
 often have our efforts to arrive at friendlier relations 
 with the French Repubhc come in collision with old 
 hopes and ancient malice." And when the Kaiser had 
 
 I20
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 ended, with an invitation to '' the leaders of the different 
 parties of the Reichstag " (there were no Sociahsts 
 present) " to come forward and lay their hands in mine 
 as a pledge," the WTiite Hall reverberated with applause 
 which must have seemed almost indecorous in so 
 august an apartment, but which, no doubt, rang 
 true. It was then, I suppose, that Thomas felt hke 
 weeping, and so should I, perhaps, had I been there. 
 The Kaiser, the handshaking levee over, strode from the 
 scene amid an awesome silence, and the statesmen, the 
 generals and the admirals went their respective ways. 
 All was now in readiness for the real Reichstag session, 
 in which words of deathless ignominy were to fall from 
 the Chancellor's lips. 
 
 We were accustomed to sardine-tin conditions in 
 the always overcrowded Press Gallery of the Reichstag 
 on " great days," but to-day we were piled on top of 
 one another in closer formation even than a Prussian 
 infantry platoon in the charge. Familiar faces were 
 missing. Comert, of Le Temps, Caro, of Le Matin, 
 and Bonn ef on, of L^ Figaro, were not there. They 
 had escaped, we were glad to hear, by one of the very 
 last trains across the French frontier. Lowenton (a 
 brother of Madame Nazimoff), Grossmann, Markoff 
 and Melnikoft, our long-time Russian colleagues, were 
 absent, too. Had they gained Wirballen in time, we 
 wondered, or were they languishing in Spandau ? 
 Doctor Paul Goldmann, doyen of our Berlin corps, 
 was in his accustomed seat, beaming consciously, as 
 became, at such an hour, the correspondent -in-chief of 
 the great allied Vienna Neue Freie Presse. The British 
 and American contingents were on hand in force. 
 Never had we waited for a Kanzlerrede in such electric 
 
 121
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 expectancy. " Copy " in plenty, such as none of us had 
 ever telegraphed before, was about to be made. Gold- 
 niann, a Foreign Ofhce favourite, as well as the all-round 
 most popular foreign journalist in Berlin, may have 
 had an advance hint what was coming, as he frequently 
 did, but to the vast majority of us — English, American, 
 Swedish, Dutch, Italian, Swiss, Spanish and Danish, 
 sandwiched there in the Presslogc so closely that we 
 could hear, but not move — I am certain that the mo- 
 mentous words and extraordinary scenes about to 
 ensue came as a staggering revelation. 
 
 Doctor von Bethmann HoUweg, who is flattered 
 when told that he looks like Abraham Lincoln — the 
 resemblance ends there — began speaking at three - 
 iifteen o'clock. Gaunt and fatigued, he tugged ner- 
 vously at the portfolio of documents on the desk in 
 front of him during the brief introductory remarks 
 of the President of the House, the patriarchal, white- 
 bearded Doctor Kaempf. The Chancellor's manner 
 gave no indication that before he resumed his seat he 
 would rise to heights of oratorical fire of which no one 
 ever thought that " incarnation of passionate doc- 
 trinarianism " capable. What he said is known to all 
 the world now; how, in Bismarckian accents, he thun- 
 dered that " we are in a state of self-defence and neces- 
 sity knows no law !" How he confessed that " our 
 troops, which have already occupied Luxemburg, may 
 perhaps already have set foot on Belgian soil." How 
 he acknowledged, in a succeeding phrase, to Germany's 
 eternal guilt, that " that violates international law." 
 How he proclaimed the amazing doctrine that, con- 
 fronted by such emergencies as Germany now was, 
 she had but one duty — " to hack her way through, 
 
 122
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 even though — I say it quite frankly — we are doing 
 wTong !" 
 
 Our heads, I think, fairly swam as the terrible por- 
 tent of these words sank into our consciousness. " Our 
 troops may perhaps already have set foot on Belgian 
 soil !" That meant one thing, with absolute certainty. 
 It denoted war with England. Trifles have a habit at 
 such moments of lodging themselves firmly in one's 
 mind; and I remember distinctly how, when I heard 
 Bethmann Hollweg fling that challenge forth, I leaned 
 over impulsively to my Swedish friend, Siosteen, of 
 the Gotehorg Tidningen, and whispered: " That settles 
 it. England's in it now, too." Siosteen nods an 
 excited assent. It is in the midst of one of the fre- 
 quent intervals in which the House, floor and galleries 
 alike, is venting its impassioned approval of the Chan- 
 cellor's words. I have heard Biilow and Bebel and 
 Bethmann Hollweg himself, times innumerable, set the 
 Reichstag rocking with fervid demonstrations of ap- 
 proval or hostility, but never has it throbbed with such 
 life as now. It is the incarnation of the inflamed war 
 spirit of the land. The more defiant the Chancellor's dic- 
 tion, the more frenzied the applause it evokes. " Sehr 
 richtig ! Sehr richtig I" the House shrieks back at him 
 in chorus as he details, step by step, how Germany has 
 been " forced " to draw her terrible sword to beat back 
 the " Russian mobilization menace," how she has tried 
 and failed to bargain with England and Belgium, how 
 she has kept the dogs of war chained to the last, and 
 only released them when destruction, imminent and 
 certain, is upon her ! 
 
 All eyes in the Press Gallery are riveted on the 
 broad left arc of the floor usurped by the one hundi'ed 
 
 123
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 and eleven Social Democratic deputies of the House 
 of three hundred and ninety-seven members. For 
 the first time in German history their cheers are ming- 
 ling with those of other parties in support of a Gov- 
 ernment policy. That, after the Belgian revelation, 
 is beyond all question the dominating feature of a scene 
 tremendous with significance in countless respects. 
 There is nothing perfunctory about the " Reds' " en- 
 thusiasm; that is plain. It is real, spontaneous, uni- 
 versal. No man of them keeps his seat. All are on 
 their feet, succumbing to the engulfing magnitude 
 of the moment. That, it instantly occurs to us, means 
 much to Germany at such an hour. It means that 
 the hope which more than one of the Fatherland's 
 potential foes in years gone by has fondly cherished, 
 of Socialist revolt in the hour of Germany's peril, was 
 illusory hope. The Chancellor knows what it denotes. 
 " Our army is in the field !" he declares, trembling 
 with emotion. " Our fleet is ready for battle ! The 
 whole German nation stands behind them !" As one 
 man, the entire Reichstag now rises, shouting its ap- 
 proval of these defiant words in tones of tumultuous 
 exaltation. For two full minutes pandemonium reigns 
 unchecked. Bethmann Hollweg is turning to the 
 Social Democrats. His fist is clenched and he bran- 
 dishes it in their direction — not in anger as so often 
 heretofore, but in triumph — and, as if he were pro- 
 claiming the proud sentiment for all the world to hear, 
 he exclaims, at the top of his voice, " Yea, the whole 
 nation !" Thus was Armageddon born. Germany, all 
 present know, will be at war before another sun has 
 gone down, not only with Russia and France, but with 
 England, and, of course, with Belgium, too. 
 124
 
 AUGUST FOURTH 
 
 " Supposing the Belgians resist ?" I asked Schmidt, 
 of the B. Z. am Mittag, a splendid German colleague 
 whom I once christened Berlin's " star " reporter, as we 
 wandered, thinking hard, back to Unter den Linden. 
 
 " Resist ?" he replied, half pitying the feeble-minded- 
 ness which prompted my question. " We shall simply 
 spill them into the sea !" 
 
 -S
 
 CHAPTER X 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 WE are not barbarians, my dear Wile !" ex- 
 claimed Giinther Thomas, when we met in 
 the Ad) on after the Reichstag sitting, answering my 
 query about the safety of correspondents of English 
 newspapers, now that Germany was about to annex 
 Great Britain as an enemy in addition to Russia and 
 France. I had found Thomas during ten years of ac- 
 quaintance the best-informed German journalist I ever 
 knew. His long residence in America had grafted a 
 " news nose " on him, which, coupled with a profound 
 knowledge of the history and present-day undercur- 
 rents of his own country, made him an ideal and valu- 
 able colleague. I treasure my relations with him in 
 grateful recollection. One required occasionally to 
 dilute both his news and views with a strong solution 
 of scepticism, for Thomas was both a Prussian patriot 
 and representative of Mr. Ridder's Newyorker Staats- 
 zeitung. But nine times out of ten his counsel and 
 information were like Caesar's wife His assurance to 
 me on the evening of August 4, 1914, that his countr^^- 
 men " were not barbarians " was b}^ far the most mis- 
 leading piece of news he ever supplied me. 
 
 The imminence of hostilities with England revived 
 irresistibly in my mind the qualms which had filled the 
 Germans for a week previous on this very point. 
 " "Wliat will the English do ?" was the question they 
 126
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 anxiously and constantly flung at anyone they thought 
 likely to be able to answer it intelligently. It was the 
 thing which gave them the most poignant he art -search- 
 ing. The " war on two fronts," the purely Continental 
 affair with the Dual Alliance, filled the average Germian 
 with no concern. The Kaiser's military machine was 
 constructed to deal with France and Russia com.- 
 bined, and no German ever for a m.oment doubted its 
 capacity to do so. Events of the past year, I think it 
 may fairly be said, have justified that confidence, for 
 I suppose no expert anywhere in the world doubts 
 but that for the presence of British sea power on 
 France and Russia's side, the German eagle m.ight long 
 since have been screaming in triumph over Paris 
 and Petrograd. But with the British " in," dozens 
 of Germans confessed, as my own ears can bear testi- 
 mony, their case was " hopeless." Few of them were 
 persuaded that Germany could, in Bismarck's pic- 
 turesque phrase, * * deal with the British Navy in Paris." 
 While the prospect of having to fight France and 
 Russia did not disturb the Germans, the possibility of 
 having to battle with Britain simultaneously filled 
 them with undisguised alarm. They would not admit 
 it now, but in the fading hours of July, 1914, and the 
 opening days of August, it was a nightmare which 
 pressed down so heavily upon their consciousness that 
 they never spoke of it except in accents of dread. The 
 Hate cult had not yet toppled their reason. Lissauer's 
 demoniacal ballad was still unwritten. In those an- 
 guished moments they talked of England, when not in 
 terms of outright fear, as the " brother nation " of 
 kindred blood and ideals with whom war was unthink- 
 able because it would be nothing short of " civil war." 
 
 127
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Doctor Hecksher, a well-known National Liberal 
 member of the Reichstag and Siimmungsmacher 
 (henchman) of the Foreign Office, industriously assured 
 English newspaper correspondents of the "horror" 
 with which the mere idea of conflict with England 
 filled the German soul. I thought it strange that one of 
 my last dispatches to London, before Anglo-German 
 telegraphic communication snapped, containing Doctor 
 Hecksher's views and mentioning him by name, was 
 ruthlessly censored in Berlin and returned to me as 
 untransmissible. That meant one of two things — that 
 Doctor Hecksher was wrong in attributing to Ger- 
 many overweening desires of peace with England, or 
 that it was unwise to let me indicate that Teuton knees 
 were quaking at the prospect of war with her. Cer- 
 tainly lachrymose expressions of hope that England 
 would not feel called upon to " intervene " in Germany's 
 " just quarrel " with her neighbours were common to 
 the point of universality in Berlin on the eve of the 
 clash. They were born of inherent conviction that 
 German aspirations of imposing Hohenzollem hege- 
 mony upon the Continent must and would be wrecked 
 by England's adherence to her century-old policy of 
 opposing so vital a disturbance in the balance of Euro- 
 pean power. 
 
 Uppermost in my mind just now was how to trans- 
 mit at least the vital passages of the Chanc«^11or's 
 " Necessity knows no law speech " to The Daily Mail. 
 A merely informative bulletin about it to the editor 
 had just been brought back from the Main Telegraph 
 Office by my faithful young German secretary, Arthur 
 Schrape, with the message that " no more dispatches to 
 England are beixig accepted." That was about six 
 128
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 o'clock p.m., at least three hours before Berlin or the 
 world generally had any knowledge that England and 
 Germany were actually at grips. Communication with 
 the United States, Schrape had been told, was still 
 open, so the most natural thing in the world was to 
 attempt to get Bethmann Hollweg's crucial statements 
 to London by way of New York. Then followed a 
 decision on my part which was to prove my undoing — 
 I committed the diabolical and treasonable crime of 
 calling up my friend and colleague, Mackenzie, the 
 able correspondent of The Times, and discussing 
 with him the feasibility of cabling the New York 
 representatives of our respective papers to relay to 
 London the news which we were unable to send 
 directly from Berlin. We were telephoning in Ger- 
 man, of course, as every one for three days past had 
 been required to do, and we realized that prac- 
 tically every conversation, especially between highly 
 suspicious characters like long - accredited English 
 newspaper correspondents, was being overheard by 
 some spy with an ear glued to a receiver. Knowing all 
 this perfectly well, we talked with entire freedom of our 
 nefarious scheme for undermining the security of the 
 German Empire. Finally it was agreed that Mackenzie 
 should come to my rooms in the Adlon and an^ange with 
 me there the text of a cablegram to New York which 
 would bottle up the German fleet, encircle the Crown 
 Prince's army and generally wreck the Kaiser's plans 
 for subjugating Europe, even before the ink on the 
 General Staff's plans was dry. We agreed that the 
 surest way of striking this blow for England was to 
 cable to New York a message whose veiled language 
 would disclose to even the most stupid eye that it con- 
 
 K 129
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 cealed a plot of heinous proportions. It was decided 
 that we should concoct in cable language a cablegram 
 reading like this : 
 
 " Chancellor just delivered importantest speech 
 Reichstag. As communication England unlonger pos- 
 sible suggest your cabling Newyorks news." 
 
 Mackenzie, accompanied by his assistant, Jelf (since 
 fallen gallantly in France), arrived at the Adlon. We 
 canvassed the New York suggestion in detail — amid 
 such secrecy that Schrape, a very keen-eared German 
 of twenty-two and a patriot, who is now serving his 
 Kaiser and Empire in field-grey, was permitted to 
 overhear our deliberations. Then we came to the 
 most treacherous decision of all, viz., not to carry out 
 our grandiose project for confounding the German War 
 Party's knavish tricks. But we had gone far enough. 
 We were discovered. Our machinations, though we 
 knew it not, were seen through, our guns were spiked, 
 and all that remained was to put us, as soon as 
 possible, where we could do no further harm. Any 
 number of Frenchmen and Russians were already in 
 the same place. 
 
 Carelessly leaving behind me my type-writing- 
 machine, fifty-pfennig map of the North Sea, copies 
 of my preceding week's cablegrams, scissors, paste-pot, 
 carbon-paper, the latest Berlin newspapers, and other 
 telltale emblems of my infamy, I went to the American 
 Embassy to discuss the latest and obviously greatest 
 turn of the war kaleidoscope with Judge Gerard. 
 There were a thousand and one questions to level at 
 him. Was it true that Sir Edward Goschen had 
 130
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 already asked him to take charge of Great Britain's 
 interests ? WHhiat would panic-stricken American war 
 refugees do now, with British warships blockading the 
 German coasts ? Would it any longer be safe in 
 Berlin for our people to talk their own language in 
 public ? Would the United States Government be 
 making any declaration of neutrality, or something 
 of that sort, to the German Government ? Was the 
 Embassy still in direct communication with Washing- 
 tion ? Could it facilitate the transmission of our news- 
 cablegrams to New York or Chicago ? These were the 
 things the journalistic brethren eyi masse were anxious 
 to know — and I recall vividly that the Ambassador 
 and his staff, despite a week of worries unprecedented, 
 were still smiling and managing to reply to every 
 question, however abstract or unanswerable, with 
 invincible equanimity. I have since heard that there 
 were fellow-citizens who found Gerard, Grew, Harvey 
 and Ruddock " inattentive." I suppose they were the 
 patriots who couldn't understand why local cheques on 
 the First National Bank of Roaring Branch, Penn- 
 sylvania, " weren't good " at the Embassy, and who 
 were " peeved " because the Ambassador couldn't tell 
 them why Uncle Sam hadn't already started a fleet ot 
 Dreadnoughts and liners de luxe to Hamburg and 
 Bremen to rescue his stranded tourist family. Or one 
 of the complainants, who was " going to write to 
 Bryan " about our " inefficient diplomatic service,'* 
 may have been that plutocratic dame from Boston 
 who demanded that Gerard should at least be able 
 to commandeer " a special train " for the Americans, 
 even if every military line in all Germany was at that 
 hour choked with troop-transports. And yet we 
 
 131
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Yankees rank in effete Europe as a cool-headed and 
 common-sense race ! 
 
 What dominated my thoughts, of course, was 
 whether, after all, I was now to be allowed to remain 
 in Germany. My desire to do so was never stronger — 
 to sit on the edge of history in the making at such a 
 moment. Judge Gerard resolved my doubts. I 
 should " cheer up " and hope for the best. I tarried 
 for a moment longer, to chat over the day's overwhelm- 
 ing developments with Mrs. Gerard, with whom I had 
 not had my usual daily cup of tea and war conference. 
 We wondered how long it would be before a formal 
 declaration of war between England and Germany 
 would be declared. I spoke of my pleasurable antici- 
 pation of being permitted to live through the mighty 
 days ahead of us in Berlin with herself and the Am- 
 bassador. They would be experiences worthy of trans- 
 mission to grandchildren. We agreed we should be 
 privileged mortals, in a way, to be vouchsafed so 
 tremendous an opportunity. I commented on Mrs. 
 Gerard's amazing lack of fatigue after four days and 
 nights of trials and tribulations with terror-stricken 
 compatriots. She spoke of the lively satisfaction 
 it had given her to be of service of so homely and home- 
 spun a character, and remarked that young Mrs. 
 Ruddock had been " a perfect brick " through it all, 
 an aide-de-camp whom a field-marshal might have 
 envied. . . . 
 
 Eight o'clock. Dusk had just fallen as I quitted the 
 Embassy. A trio of servants clustered at the entrance 
 was examining in the dim light a Tageblatt " Extra " 
 which, they said, was just out. I fairly snatched at it. 
 This is what it said: 
 I 32
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 ENGLAND BREAKS OFF DIPLOMATIC 
 RELATIONS WITH GERMANY 
 
 The English Ambassador in Berlin, Sir Ed- 
 ward Goschen, appeared this evening in the 
 German Foreign Office and demanded his pass- 
 ports. That denotes, in all probability, war 
 with England ! 
 
 I ought not to have been surprised,, yet I was shocked. 
 So England now, at last and really, was "in it.'* 
 The realization was almost numbing. I stood read- 
 ing and reading the Extrablatt, over and over again. 
 ''' Joe " Grew came hurrying up in his automobile. He, 
 too, had the Tagehlatt in his hand. He was hastening 
 to tell the Ambassador the news. It was true, Grew 
 said, beyond any doubt. Ye Gods ! What next ? 
 The world's end, one thought, was about all there was 
 left to happen. And that seemed nearer at hand than 
 any of us ever felt that it was before. 
 
 I started now for the British Embassy, across the 
 Wilhelms Platz and down the Wilhelmstrasse four or 
 five blocks to the north. From afar I heard the rumble 
 of a mob, not a singing cheering mob such as had been 
 turning Berlin into bedlam for a week before, but a 
 mob obviousty bent on more serious business. I 
 reached the Behrenstrasse, two hundred feet away 
 from the Embassy. Though quite dark, I could 
 see plainly what was happening. The Embassy was 
 besieged by a shouting throng, yelling so savagely 
 that its words were not distinguishable. They were 
 not chanting Rule, Britannia ; I was sure of that. 
 
 133
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 It 'was imprecations, inarticulate but ferocious beyond 
 description,' which^they were muttering. I saw things 
 hurtling toward the windows. From the crash of 
 glass which presently ^ensued, I knew they were hit- 
 
 Berliner # ^ageHatt 
 
 ^u& Eandalt'geitmaig. 
 
 Snglonb tidt^t Die Diplomafii^en 
 
 $>cr engllf^c *3eif<5aftet Its Berlin ^it ei)h>aib 
 ©offi^n erfc^tett I^eute aUnh Utt beutfc^ett ^ua* 
 toSttiQen §lmte stttb forberte fclne ^affe. ©«§ 6e* 
 
 Extra Edition of Berliner Tageblatt announcing War 
 WITH England. 
 
 ting their mark. The fusillade increased in violence. 
 When there was a particularly loud crash, it would 
 be followed by a fiendish roar of glee. The street 
 was crammed from kerb to kerb. Many women 
 134
 
 STORMING OF THE BRITISH EMBASSY BY THE BERLIN 
 MOB ON THE NIGHT OF AUGUST 4, 1914. 
 
 Drawn for the Illustrated Lofidon Neivs after description by 
 the Author. 
 
 \To face p. 134.
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 were among the demonstrators. A mounted policeman 
 or two could be seen making no very vigorous effort to 
 interfere with the riot. It was no place for an English- 
 man, or anybody who, being smooth-shaven, was 
 usually mistaken for one in Berlin. I did not dream of 
 trying to run the blockade. The rear, or Wilhelm- 
 strasse, entrance of the Adlon adjoins the Embassy. 
 It would be easy to gain access to the hotel that way. 
 I tried the door. It was locked. I rang. One of the 
 light-blue uniformed page-boys came, peered through 
 the glass, recognized me and fled without letting me 
 in. I rang again. No one came. Wilhelmstrasse 
 now was roaring with the mob's rage. Ambassador 
 Goschen's subsequent report on this classic manifes- 
 tation of Kultur described how he and his staff, seated 
 in the front drawing-room of the Embassy, narrowly 
 escaped being stoned to death by missiles which flew 
 thick and fast through every paneless window of the 
 building. 
 
 I hailed a passing horse cab and told the driver to 
 make for the Adlon by the circuitous route of the 
 Voss strasse, Koniggratzer-strasse and Brandenburg 
 Gate. Ten minutes later I reached the hotel. I 
 stepped to the desk and asked for Herr Adlon, Sr., or 
 Louis Adlon, his son; said the Wilhelmstrasse mob 
 might soon decide to hold an overflow meeting and 
 attack the hotel premises, and that certain precau- 
 tionary measures might be useful. The lobby of the 
 hotel, I noticed, was rapidly filling up with American 
 war refugees, of whom there was to be a meeting. I 
 recognized a dozen or more anxious compatriots whom 
 I had seen encamped at the Embassy during the 
 preceding two or three days. The Ambassador was 
 
 135
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 expected, they said, and they were hoping and praying 
 to hear from him that the Government had at last 
 effected adequate rescue arrangements. The frock- 
 coated menial at the hotel desk, only a few hours pre- 
 vious servility itself, was unusually curt when I asked 
 where the Adlons were. I did not think of it at the 
 time, but his rudeness assumed its proper importance 
 in the schem^e of things as they later developed. I 
 stopped to chat with Ambassador Gerard, who had just 
 strolled in. Then I met another acquaintance, Count 
 von Oppersdorff, the urbane Silesian Roman Catholic 
 political leader, a familiar and welcome figure on our 
 Berlin golf links. '' So England has come in," re- 
 marked the Count. " Yes," I rejoined, '' you hardly 
 expected her to keep out, did you ?" " Well," said 
 Oppersdorff, with a meaningful look in his mild blue 
 eye, " there will be many surprises — many surprises." 
 That was a war prophecy which has come true. 
 
 I dashed up to my room to write a dispatch to The 
 Times in New York and The Tribune in Chicago, which 
 should tell briefly of the outbreak of war between 
 England and Germany, and of the extraordinary^ 
 scenes in front of His Britannic Majesty's embassy. 
 A Lokal-Anzeiger " extra " was now available, with 
 a brazenl^^ " cooked " summary of the events which 
 had precipitated the climacteric decision (see opposite 
 page). 
 
 It was this news — reiterating by the printed word 
 what the Chancellor had unblushingly announced in the 
 Reichstag: that military necessities had taken prece- 
 dence of " all other considerations," including honour — 
 which aroused the ferocity of the mob and incited it 
 amid m.ad maledictions on " perfidious Albion," to vent 
 136
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 ENGLAND HAS DECLARED WAR ON 
 GERMANY ! 
 
 Official Report. 
 
 This afternoon, shortly after the speech of 
 the Imperial Chancellor, in which the offence 
 against international law involved in our set- 
 ting foot on Belgian temtory was frankly ac- 
 knowledged and the will of the German Empire 
 to make good the consequences was affirmed, 
 the British Ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen, 
 appeared in the Reichstag to convey to For- 
 eign Secretary von Jagow a communication 
 from his Government. In this communication 
 the German Government was asked to make 
 an immediate reply to the question whether 
 it could give the assurance that no violation of 
 Belgian neutrality would take place. The 
 Foreign Secretary forthwith ansv/ered that this 
 was not possible, and again explained the 
 reasons which compel Germany to secure her- 
 self against an attack by the French army 
 across Belgian soil. Shortly after seven 
 o'clock the British Ambassador appeared at 
 the Foreign Office to declare war and demand 
 his passports. 
 
 We are informed that the German Govern- 
 ment has placed military necessities before all 
 other considerations, notwithstanding that it 
 had, in consequence thereof, to reckon that 
 either ground or pretext for intervention would 
 be given to the English Government. 
 
 ^37
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 its fury by attempting to wreck the English Embassy. 
 This German " official report," moreover, besides dis- 
 torting the facts so as to place the onus for the out- 
 break of hostilities exclusively upon England, deliber- 
 ately misstated the object of Sir Edward Goschen's 
 visit to the Foreign Office. As we know from his 
 famous dispatch on the last phase, he did not " appear " 
 there " to declare war." England's declaration of war, 
 as a matter of historical record, was not made until 
 eleven p.m., or midnight Berlin time. The assault on 
 the Embassy by KuUur's knife- throwing, stone-hurling 
 and window-breaking cohorts was in full progress by 
 nine o'clock. It began almost immediately after Sir 
 Edward Goschen's return from his celebrated farewell 
 interview with the Imperial Chancellor — the torrid 
 quarter of an hour in which von Bethmann Hollw^eg, 
 incapable of concealing Germany's rage over the 
 wrecking of her war scheme, blackened the Teutonic 
 escutcheon for all time by branding the Belgian treaty 
 of neutrality as a " scrap of paper." Of all egregious 
 words which have fallen from the lips of German 
 " diplomats," von Bethmann Hollweg's immortal in- 
 discretions of that day will live longest, to his own and 
 his country's ineffaceable shame. 
 
 WTiile at work on my dispatches in my hotel room 
 — it was now about nine o'clock — I could hear Unter 
 den Linden below my windows roaring with mob fury 
 against Britain. " Krdmer-volk !" (Peddler nation !) 
 " Rassen-Verrat !" (Race treachery !) " Nieder mit 
 England I" (Down with England !) " Tod den Eng- 
 landetri !" (Death to the English !) were the shouts 
 which burst forth in mad chorus. I have never hunted 
 beasts in the jungle. Never have my ears been smit- 
 138
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 ten with the snarl and growl of wild animals at bay. 
 I never heard the horizon ring with the tumult of 
 howling dervishes plunging fanatically to the attack. 
 But the populace of Berlin seemed to me at that mo- 
 ment to be giving a vivid composite imitation of them 
 all. Certainly no civilized community on earth ever 
 surrendered so completely to all-obsessing brute fury 
 as the war mob which thirsted for British blood in 
 " Athens-on-the-Spree " on the night of August 4, 1914. 
 It gave vent to all the animal passions and breathed the 
 murder instinct said to be inherent in the average hu- 
 man when unreasoning rage temporarity supplants san- 
 ity. If it had caught sight of or could have laid hands 
 on Sir Edward Goschen, or any one else identifiable 
 as an Engldndcr, it would undoubtedly have torn him 
 limb from limb. The Germans may not be the modern 
 personification of the Huns, but the savagery to which 
 their Imperial capital ruthlessly resigned itself on the 
 threshold of war with England justifies the belief that 
 they have inherited some of the characteristics of x\t- 
 tila's fiends. Next morning's Berlin papers explained 
 in all seriousness, on police authority, that the mob was 
 " infuriated " because persons in the English Embassy 
 had thrown "beggars' pennies" from the windows — a 
 ludicrous falsehood. 
 
 Half an hour later I came downstairs to motor to 
 the Main Telegraph Ofhce with my American cables. 
 No sooner had I stepped to the threshold of the hotel 
 tlipn three policemen grabbed me — one pinioning my 
 right arm, another my left, and the third gripping me 
 by the back of the neck. All round the hotel entrance 
 gathered gesticulating Germans yelling, like Comanche 
 Indians, " Englischer Spion I Nach Spandaii niU ihm I" 
 
 139
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 (English spy ! To Spandau with him !) In far less 
 time than it takes me to tell it, my captors, who had 
 now drawn their sabres to " protect " me, as they ex- 
 plained, from the murderous intentions of the mob, 
 tossed me into the rear seat of an open taxicab wait- 
 ing at the kerb. They allowed sufficient time to elapse 
 for the miob, which now encircled the cab shouting 
 " Englischei' Hund I" (English dog!) " Schiesst den 
 Spion !" (Shoot the spy !) and other cheery greet- 
 ings, to cool its passions on my hapless head and body 
 with fisticuffs and canes, while a misdirected upper- 
 cut from a youth, aimed squarely at my jaw, did 
 nothing but knock my hat into the bottom of the car 
 and send my eye-glasses splintered and spinning to 
 the same destination. The police, still covering me 
 with their sabres, shoved me to the floor of the car 
 and gave orders to the driver to make post-haste for 
 the Mittel-strasse police station, half a dozen blocks 
 away. The power of speech having temporarily re- 
 turned — I wonder if my readers will regard it a hu- 
 miliating confession if I acknowledge that cold chills 
 were now chasing up and down my spine ? — I ven- 
 tured to ask the policemen to whom or to what I was 
 indebted for this " striking " token of their solicitude. 
 " You know perfectl}^ well why you're here," replied 
 the giant who was gripping me by the right arm as if 
 I might be contemplating escape from the lower re- 
 gions of the taxi by falling through or flying avv^ay. 
 " The mob heard the Adlon was full of English spies, 
 and they were waiting for you to come out. They'd 
 have killed you on the spot if we hadn't been there 
 to rescue you." That was, of course, simply an ab- 
 surd lie, as fast-crowding events of the succeeding 
 140
 
 li.iChtrsgaberloht aes ;-.echtJ?ui.wi*lts unci :;otar 
 Dr. )tto Spreoger, Bremen, betreffend S.lon'ij;;© 
 lis Hotel Afilor. , 13erli2i. 
 
 Am heuti^jec Ta^ge wurde !y:r,rr6d.WF,, W lie ic. Hotel 
 Ad Ion actelefociert aua der Stadt, und zwar von elncr: ,$e- 
 wlBsec l^r.Xlcgaley (?). '^Ca wurdo ihindlo Lltteliuaig ge- 
 waoht, daae derselbe (Kingsloy) elnei. -lur ausflndlg ge- 
 oiaobt h&be "die Ulttsllon^ Ub«r kts)&rlku n^ich :-?nsI;=ii:d kom- 
 mec au l;.sseii". Hierauf verabredeten bsldo, da»3 Kijiigsley ( ?) 
 uis 6 Uhr Ins Hotel Ad Ion Itowmen sollte. Des gQsohaih; die 
 beidOE PeraoKoE oonferlerton ble 6 Uhj- und verlloa."- en so- 
 daci; daa iiotel. At dor Coiii'cror-z rutt/ai aine di-lLte i'orfon, 
 acechelnend eln Jujcger -J.'.^lfinder.tell. ilerr illngsloy (?) 
 n«iohte ebenfalls der; Eiaar <c& air.ei'. Ju/.gen Snglfir.dora. 
 
 Berllr. , dec 4.AugU3t 1914. 
 
 FAC-SiMrr.K of Original Dknuxciatiun of thk Author as an "English Spy." 
 
 ^
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 night were to demonstrate. I was arrested because 
 I had been denounced, in all formality, as a spy. 
 If the German authorities are inclined to assert the 
 contrary, I refer them, without permission, to 
 the document herewith reproduced — the official 
 and original denunciation obligingly slipped by 
 mistake into my handbag of personal belongings at 
 the Police-Presidency later in the night, when, on the 
 demand of the American Ambassador, I was precip- 
 itately released from custody. Doctor Otto Sprenger 
 of Bremen was one of the police spies stationed either 
 in the Hotel Adlon, or at a wire therewith connected, 
 to overhear conversations, and who, in the hour of 
 his country's extremities, struck a herculean blow for 
 Kaiser and Empire by catching Mackenzie (Kingsley 
 is as near as he could get the name) and myself in our 
 telephonic plot to frustrate Germany's war plans. 
 
 I was still remonstrating with the police about the 
 absurdity of my arrest when the taxi pulled up in front 
 of Mittel-strasse station. Evidently news of our im- 
 pending arrival had preceded us, for another gang of 
 shouting patriots was assembled in front of the sta- 
 tion and proceeded to bestow upon me the same sort 
 of a welcome as I received at the hands of the mob 
 in Unfer den Linden. Still " protecting " me with 
 their drawn sabres, my guardians contrived to push 
 and drag me into the station-house and up one flight 
 of stairs to headquarters before the crowd had done 
 anything more serious than crack me over the head 
 and shoulders half a dozen times. I was then led into 
 the back room of the station, where, as I soon saw, 
 pickpockets and other criminals are taken to be 
 stripped and searched, and was ordered to sit down 
 
 141
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 in the midst of a group of twenty policemen, who 
 eyed me with glances mingling contempt and murder- 
 ous intent. 
 
 I had partially recovered my equilibrium after 
 my somewhat exciting experiences of the previous 
 ten minutes and found myself able to talk dispas- 
 sionately to a courteous young lieutenant of police 
 who was in charge of the station. I told him I was 
 not only an American, but a long-time resident of 
 Berlin, with a home of my own in Wilmersdorf, and 
 that if he would communicate with his superior^ 
 Doctor Henninger, chief of the political police, who 
 had known me for years, he would soon be able to 
 convince himself that a grotesque mistake had been 
 made in arresting me as an " English spy." The 
 lieutenant, who, I should think, was the only German in 
 all Berlin who had not yet entirely lost his reason, asked 
 me politely for my papers and other credentials. I 
 handed him my American passport, newly issued at the 
 Embassy a few days before, a visiting-card bearing 
 my Berlin home address, one or two copies of my most 
 recent news telegrams to London and New York, 
 which I happened to have with me, my correspondent's 
 identification card stamped by the Berlin police de- 
 partment, and finally a letter which I had been carry- 
 ing with me during the war crisis for precisely some 
 such emergency — a communication sent me from the 
 Imperial yacht in the summer of 1913, acknowledging 
 in gracious terms a copy of Men Around the Kaiser, 
 which William II had deigned to accept at my hands. 
 The police lieutenant almost clicked heels and came 
 to the salute when he saw that his prisoner was the 
 possessor of so priceless a document He asked me 
 142
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 to " calm " myself and await developm.ents, " Es wird 
 scJion gut sein." WHiich in real language means that 
 " everything will be all right." 
 
 As their superior officer had not lopped off my head 
 on sight, and even condescended to hold courteous 
 converse with the " spy," the group of policemen in 
 whose midst I found myself now warmed up to me 
 perceptibly. 
 
 " You are an American, eh ?" ejaculated one of 
 them. " I wonder if you know my brother in Minne- 
 sota ? His name is Paul Richter." 
 
 I was genuinely sony^ I had never met Herr Richter 
 — probably he did not live in the Red Ri\-er Valley, 
 which was the only part of Minnesota I knew, I ex- 
 plained. I knew some Richters in my native county 
 of La Porte, Indiana, but they had never claimed the 
 honour, to my knowledge, of having a brother in the 
 Kaiser's police. While Schntzmann Richter and I 
 were doing our best to discover that the world is small, 
 noise of fresh commotion, such as had greeted my o\mi 
 arrival at the station, ascended from the street. Ap- 
 parently a fresh " bag " had come in. A second later, 
 of all people on earth, who should be pushed into the 
 room, with three policeman at his neck and arms, but 
 my very dishevelled friend. Tower. He was hatless, 
 his collar and tie were a\\Ty^ every hair of his Goethe- 
 like blond head was on end, and he cut altogether the 
 figure of a very much perturbed young man. There 
 were no mirrors about, so I cannot say with certaint\- 
 how I myself looked, but I am sure I could have 
 easily been mistaken for Tower's twin at that moment. 
 Partners in misery and anxiety we certainly w^ere. 
 Tower, it appeared, was denounced to the spy hunters 
 
 143
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 at the Adlon by a chauffeur he had engaged to drive 
 him a day or two before — the man who piloted the 
 machine w^hich was hired out to Adlon guests at fancy 
 rates per hour. Presently the chauffeur himself 
 bounded into the room, shouting like a madman. 
 " Now we've got him — the damned English cur !" he 
 snarled, shaking his fist, first in Tower's face, and 
 then, recognizing me, in mine, with an oath and a 
 " You, too, pig dog !" The chauffeur now ranted his 
 reasons for denouncing both Towner and me. " I'm an 
 old African soldier !" he yelled. " I know these con- 
 temptible Englander This Towner (he called it Toever, 
 which was the way Germans used phonetically to 
 pronounce a former American ambassador's name) is 
 the notorious Times correspondent !" Tower impetu- 
 ously denied this soft impeachment, and pointed out 
 that far from being the Thunderer's representative, 
 he w^as the correspondent of the Germanophile 
 Daily News. Tower was never pro-German himself, 
 but it was grasping at a legitimate straw so to 
 describe his London paper. I could not conscienti- 
 oush^ identify The Daily Mail as deiUschfrenndlich, or, 
 I regretfully mused, it might be the means of saving 
 my neck. 
 
 Now there was more noise from the lower regions. 
 W^om had they nabbed this time ? Astonished as I 
 was to see Tower marched in, I fairly gasped when the 
 newest batch of prisoners was shoved into the room, 
 for it was headed by my young secretary, Schrape, 
 and included Mrs. Hensel, a grey-haired German- 
 American lady and an old Berlin friend of my family, 
 and Miles Bouton, of the local staff of the Associated 
 Press. Schrape and Mrs. Hensel had been denounced 
 144
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 at the Adlon as my accomplices in espionage — Schrape 
 for obvious reasons, and Mrs. Hensel because she had 
 called to see me at the hotel a few minutes after my 
 arrest, undoubtedly, of course, to bring me illicit in- 
 formation or receive her " orders!" She had come, 
 as a matter of fact, as countless acquaintances of mine 
 had been doing throughout the week, to ask for advice 
 or assistance in the midst of the topsy-turvy conditions 
 into which life in Berlin had been so suddenly plunged. 
 Schrape was remarkably cool. So was Bouton, who 
 insisted upon expressing himself with such freedom 
 about the indignities heaped upon him that I mo- 
 mentarily expected to witness his decapitation. Mrs. 
 Hensel, poor soul, was frightened speechless and be- 
 tween her tears could only incoherently make me 
 understand that she had no sooner asked for my name 
 at the Adlon desk than the clerks handed her over to 
 the police. Bouton seemed to owe his arrest to the 
 fact that he was in Tower's company in the Adlon lobby, 
 attending the meeting of American war refugees. 
 Tower had been savagely cracked over the head by 
 an Adlon waiter armed with a tray while being hustled 
 out of the hotel by the police. Mrs. Bouton, tearfully 
 protesting against her husband's capture, had herself 
 been threatened with arrest or something worse if she 
 did not instantly " hold her mouth." Just what part 
 the Adlon staff of clerks, porters, waiters and page- 
 boys played in our arrest was not made clear to me 
 until the next day; of which more in the succeeding 
 chapter. 
 
 As soon as the " gang of spies," as the policemen in 
 the room now pleasantly called us, was complete. 
 Tower, Schrape and Bouton were lined up against the 
 
 L 145
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 wall and ordered to raise their hands above their heads, 
 while their clothes were searched for concealed weap- 
 ons or incriminating espionage evidence. While my 
 fellow prisoners (except Mrs. Hensel) were undergo- 
 ing examination, a typical young Berlin thug, evi- 
 dently a thief, was brought in, and took his place 
 adjacent to my colleagues, also to be searched. The 
 room was now resounding with encouraging shouts 
 from overwrought policemen that " the English dogs 
 ought to be hanged." Others suggested that " Span- 
 dau," the spy-shooting gallery, was a more appropriate 
 place for us than the gallows. For some God-willed 
 or other mysterious reason I was not searched. That 
 gave me only temporary relief, for we were presently 
 informed that we would be taken to the Police-Presi- 
 dency (central station) for the night and " dealt with 
 there." That meant searching of everybody, I felt 
 morally sure, and it was then that the tongue of me 
 began cleaving to the roof of my mouth, while my 
 throat parched with terror. For in a leather card-case 
 in my inside pocket I carried a telegraph code, utterly 
 innocuous in itself — a make-shift affair compiled during 
 the preceding forty-eight hours and of which I posted 
 a duplicate to London, with a view to explaining to mj^ 
 editor in cipher my movements and whereabouts if I 
 had suddenly to leave Berlin. It was a quite harmless 
 string of phrases reading like this : 
 
 " My wife's condition has become critical, and physi- 
 cians recommend immediate departure if catastrophe 
 is to be avoided." 
 
 All this was, of course, in German, and meant (as 
 the code explained) that I was proceeding to the Hotel 
 146
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 Angieterre in Copenhagen. Another phrase substi- 
 tuted " bo3^'s " for " wife's " and meant that I was leav- 
 ing for the Hotel Doelen in Amsterdam, etc., etc. It 
 dawned instantly upon me that if the Berlin political 
 police, at such a witching hour, discovered on a sus- 
 pected spy a telegraphic code of so " incriminating " 
 a character, he could hardly look forward to anything 
 beyond the regulation thrill at sunrise. I might have 
 been able to explain in prosaic peace-times, I solilo- 
 quized, that many newspaper correspondents use pri- 
 vate codes in communicating with their editors, but 
 to convince a Berlin police official at that moment that 
 my code was of innocent import struck me as the 
 quintessence of physical impossibility. 
 
 I was undergoing, I think, all the emotions of fear 
 and trembling when our quintette of prisoners was 
 now marched down to the street and piled into taxis for 
 transportation to the PoUzei-Prdsidium in Alexander- 
 Platz, two miles across town. An enormous throng 
 filled the Mittel-strasse, snarling wath rage. The 
 sight of us maddened them into a fiendish scream. 
 TowTr and I were pushed into the first car, which 
 happened to be the Adlon vehicle he had hired and 
 was doubtless still paying for, and which was driven 
 by his infuriated chauffeur. The *' covering " sabres 
 of the police, one each of whom guarded Tower and 
 myself, respectively in the front and back seats, did 
 not prevent the mob from belabouring us once more 
 with fists and sticks, to the accompanim.ent of un- 
 printable epithets and curses. My mind, however, 
 was occupied completely with how to get rid of that 
 code nestling in my inside pocket. Nothing short of 
 entire insensibility could have deflected my thoughts 
 
 147
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 for even a fleeting second from that all-absorbing 
 issue. I was thinking hard and quickly. 
 
 Tower's chauffeur, proud to be serving the Kaiser 
 on so historic an occasion, did not drive us, as he 
 would naturally and ordinarily have done, through the 
 darkened side streets leading from Mittel-strasse to 
 Alexander-Platz, but decided to drag us in triumph 
 like the victims chained to Nero's chariots, down the 
 brilliantly illuminated Unter den Linden, which, 
 though it was now nearly eleven o'clock, was packed 
 with war demonstrators. Crossing to the more crowded 
 southern side, at a point near the Hotel Bristol, the 
 driver threw on his top-speed and whirled us down 
 the glittering boulevard at breakneck pace. As for 
 himself, with a policeman at his side, and two behind 
 him pinioning Tower and myself, he was frantic with 
 super-patriotic joy. Now steering with his left hand, 
 he waved his right madly through space at the gaping 
 kerbstone crowds, and yelled, so that they might know 
 what it all meant: " English spies ! Now we've got 
 'em ! Now we've got 'em ! Hurrah ! Hurrah !" It 
 was a great moment in that illustrious Kraftwagen- 
 fuhrer's career. Nothing in his greasy past had ever 
 approached it in tremendousness. He saw the Iron 
 Cross dangling in certain outlines before his ecstatic 
 vision — the reward for valour in the hour of his Father- 
 land's need. 
 
 I was brooding incessantly over that code, but even 
 while being paraded past the Berliners, my mind was 
 actively at work on a scheme for its destruction. Neces- 
 sity is, indeed, the mother of invention, and to this 
 hour I do not fully comprehend how I came to find the 
 courage or ingenuity to do what I was now success- 
 148
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 fully accomplishing. We had reached the Opera, were 
 approaching the Castle, and Alexander-Platz was less 
 than five minutes away. The need for quick work 
 was growing more urgent from second to second. My 
 pohceman held me firmly by the right arm. My left 
 was entirely free. With it I was able easily to reach 
 the right-hand inside pocket of my coat, wherein the 
 card-case containing the code was lodged. I contrived 
 to finger my way into the case without attracting the 
 attention of my warder, who, Allah be praised, was still 
 too fascinated by the plaudits of the crowds to be 
 more than mildly interested in me. I could " feel " the 
 code now. It was of flimsy tissue-paper and with deft- 
 ness could be torn into shreds. A sufficiently long 
 interval had elapsed since my last visit to the manicure 
 to make my finger-nails highly eftective for the purpose, 
 and by degrees which seemed infinitely slow I managed 
 to crumple and desiccate the " guilty" document and 
 by " palming " and working the bits into the spaces 
 between my fingers the whole thing was effectually 
 obliterated. I withdrew my hand, stuck it into the out- 
 side left-hand pocket of my coat containing a handker- 
 chief, blew my nose and, while in that unforbidden 
 act, let I don't know how many hundreds of tissue- 
 paper particles fly back of me into the wind of Berlin's 
 bristling night air. I was saved. They could search 
 me now to their heart's content. I found that, some- 
 how or other, the power of speech had suddenly re- 
 turned, and a moment later I was saying cheerily 
 to my Schutzmann captor, " Well, we're here now." 
 
 The details of what happened in the big room of 
 the Police-Presidency into which we were nov/ ushered 
 — my friend Simons, of the Amsterdam Telegraaf, and 
 
 149
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Nevinson, special correspondent of The Daily News, 
 \\-ho were found in Tower's room at the Adlon and 
 arrested on that " evidence," had arrived there before 
 us — are brief and unessential. What had taken 
 place during the preceding two hours is vastly more 
 to the point. Ambassador Gerard, who was at the 
 Adlon when we were arrested, seems to have cleared 
 for action in his typically shirt-sleeves diplomatic 
 fashion. He dispatched First Secretary Grew to the 
 Foreign Office to demand our instantaneous release. 
 Grew informed Under-Secretary Zimmermann that if 
 Germany continued to treat American citizens and 
 newspaper correspondents in accordance with the 
 practices of the Middle Ages (Conger was still languish- 
 ing in durance vile at Gumbinnen) the Fatherland was 
 dangerously likely to lose the esteem of the only first- 
 class Power in the world which seemed still to be on 
 speaking terms with her. Herr Zimmermann, who 
 understands plain English when it is spoken to him, 
 was apologetic in the extreme. He told Grew that 
 immediate steps would be taken to liberate me and my 
 friends and that the Foreign Office " regretted " that 
 such indignities should have been heaped upon inno- 
 cent persons. Mr. Gerard evidently determined to take 
 no chances, for the first secretary was sent to the 
 Police-Presidency with the embassy motor-car, with 
 instructions to demand our delivery in the flesh and 
 stay there till it was made. Meantime the Foreign 
 Office had sent urgent telephonic instructions to the 
 pohce to liberate us. We were asked to fill up 
 certain identification forms and exhibit some more 
 papers, and then, in accents of courteous explanation, 
 were assured that an " error " had unfortunately been 
 150
 
 THE WAR REACHES ME 
 
 made. We should " not hesitate, if anybody molested 
 us again," to call up Police Headquarters, and matters 
 would be speedily set right. It was not probable, we 
 were assured, that we would have any more trouble. 
 If we desired, a police escort was at our service, so 
 that we might return to the hotel or to the Embassy in 
 certain safety. 
 
 We had just been bowed out of the place of our 
 brief detention when the familiar outlines of " Joe " 
 Grew loomed into view, down the corridor, and with 
 him " Fritz," the German " hfe-guard " of the Em- 
 bassy. It is not customary for American m.en to kiss 
 each other, but I confess here to having been mo- 
 mentarily inspired with a strong temptation to lavish 
 some form of osculatory gratitude upon Grew. Cer- 
 tianly I felt that there was nothing quite so good on 
 God's footstool just then as to be an American citizen. 
 When Grew insisted on packing all five of us — Tower, 
 Mrs. Hensel, Bouton, Schrape and myself — into his 
 car and driving us back to the Embassy (it was now ' he 
 romantic hour of one a.m.) behind the protecting folds 
 of the Stars and Stripes flapping defiantly at the wind- 
 shield, I vowed a solemn, silent oath — to aspire in 
 such days as might still be left to me for an oppor- 
 tunity some day to reciprocate in kind the ser\dce the 
 Ambassador and Grew had that night rendered me, 
 the supreme service men can render a fellow man — 
 to save his life. 
 
 They were to be called upon, though I did not then 
 know it, to rescue me once again before either they or 
 I were twenty-four hours older. 
 
 151
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 SUCH sleep as I enjoyed in what remained of the night 
 between August 4 and 5 was secured, for the first 
 time in more than a week, beneath my own roof. I had 
 finished with the " hospitahty " of the Hotel Adlon for 
 all time to come. After a brief visit at the Embassy, 
 to assure the Ambassador of my everlasting gratitude 
 for having thrown out the life-line, and seeing Mrs. 
 Hensel safely started for her home in Charlottenburg 
 under trusted escort, I betook myself to Wilmersdorf, 
 where our faithful little German governess, Anna 
 Kranz, had been holding the fort all summer during 
 the absence of my family in the United States. I tele- 
 phoned Frdulein from the Embassy a summary of the 
 night's events, fearing that police minions might be 
 paying me a domiciliary visit and causing the poor girl 
 unnecessary alarm. I told her Schrape was coming 
 home with me for the night and that as neither of us had 
 had a bite since the preceding noon, we could do 
 full justice to anything, however frugal, which might 
 still be discoverable in the larder. It was a wide- 
 eyed, then tearful and always sympathetic Thuringian 
 damsel, who hstened to our story over bread and 
 cheese at the romantic hour of two-thirty a.m. I can 
 hear her now interrupting with a characteristic and 
 condoling " Aher, Herr WUe P' 
 
 Having dispatched Schrape to the Adlon early next 
 152
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 day to pay my bill and fetch the belongings I had had 
 so abruptly to leave behind me there the night before, 
 I proceeded to town. At the Embassy was a host of 
 riends anxious for news of me. The most absurd 
 rumours, it seemed, were in circulation. There was a 
 detailed version of my last moments in front of a 
 firing-squad at Spandau, and somebody " who had a 
 friend at the Police Presidency " had told somebody 
 else that I was in shackles which would probably not 
 be removed till the war was over — if then. Still 
 another tale related circumstantialty how I had been 
 "smuggled" from Berlin at the dead of night, under 
 military guard, to the Dutch frontier, across which, 
 by this time, I was unceremonious^ " expelled." 
 
 When I was able to gain the ear of the Ambassador 
 — the American war-refugee panic was now at tem- 
 pestuous zenith, with the Embassy like a place be- 
 sieged — I represented to him that I feared my hopes 
 of remaining in Germany, after what had happened, 
 were slender in the extreme. Scouts had brought in 
 the intelligence, I informed him, that a miniature mob 
 of evident purpose was waiting in front of the Equit- 
 able Building, where The Daily Mail ofhce was, now and 
 then knowingly pointing to our big gilt window-sign, 
 in order that passers-by might understand why traffic 
 was being blocked in front of No. 59 Friedrichstrasse. 
 If the crowd waited long enough, it probably saw at 
 work the sign men whom I had ordered to take down 
 the red rag. Discretion is ever the better part of 
 valour, and I felt no compelling desire to superintend 
 the job in person. 
 
 The Ambassador thought I was unduly disturbed. 
 He was convinced that my arrest was purel}^ an un- 
 
 153
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 fortunate blunder, due to a combination of officious 
 patriotism and excessive zeal, and meant nothing. I 
 was inclined to agree with him. Berlin and the Ber- 
 liners had suddenly lost their minds, and nothing 
 which occurs when a community or men are in a state of 
 mental aberration ought in reason to be charged against 
 them. I had obviously fallen victim to the mass 
 dementia which robbed Germans of their senses when 
 their lingering fears of war with England became 
 terrifying actualit}^ I certainly did not overestimate 
 the importance of the episode, nor have I ever done so. 
 I now ran across von Wiegand of the United Press 
 (as he then was) and Swing, of the Chicago Daily 
 News. Being Americans, like myself, they had just 
 taken the precaution of applying to the Foreign Office 
 for credentials which would protect them from such 
 delicate attentions as the police had shown me. They 
 suggested that I should see Legationsrat Heilbron and 
 get an Answeiskarte. Swing was in jubilant mood. 
 He had a scheme under promising way to accompany 
 Major Langhorne, our military attache, to the front 
 as a " secretary." My heart pumped with envy. Von 
 Wiegand had not yet evolved his forthcoming cam- 
 paign for becoming Interviewer- in-Chief to the German 
 Empire and the Vatican, but all of us felt sure that his 
 German noble origin, plus his nose for news and excel- 
 lent official connections, would land Karl Heinrich on 
 his feet, as far as reporting the war was concerned, if 
 any one was going to be favoured at all. The Anglo- 
 American newspaper fraternity was already a rather 
 decimated body. Conger, of the Associated Press, 
 was in gaol at Gumbinnen. Wilcox, of The Daily Tele- 
 graph, had been fortunate enough, only a few days 
 154
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 previous, to get to Russia. Ford, of The Morning Post, 
 had not waited for the crash and left for England on 
 one of the last peace-time trains. Tower, my night's 
 partner in woe, had slept in the porter's basement 
 of the American Embassy and was now a refugee 
 in the British Embassy, where, I understood, all the 
 other purely English correspondents were being 
 rounded up during the day, to accompany Sir Edward 
 Goschen and his staff out of Germany next morning 
 in the safe-conduct train provided by the German 
 Government. Mackenzie, of The Times, with whom I 
 had " plotted " by telephone, was still unarrested, for 
 some miraculous reason ; I had not yet seen the original 
 " denunciation " of our espionage operations, from 
 which I later knew that he had only been identified 
 as " Kingsley." He can blame that circumstance, 
 no doubt, for having been denied the privilege of my 
 own experiences. 
 
 At five o'clock, the customary hour for newspaper- 
 men to visit the Foreign Office, I went to call on Lega- 
 tionsrat Heilbron. He had not yet come in, so I sent 
 my card to his colleague, Legationsvat Esternaux, with 
 whom I had enjoyed professional acquaintance ever 
 since the hour of my arrival in Germany, thirteen years 
 previous to the week. I assured Esternaux that I cher- 
 ished no particular animosity towards the police 
 authorities for my silly arrest, being convinced that 
 a grotesque mistake alone was responsible. Con- 
 servatively apologetic, he acquiesced in this view. 
 
 " You were a victim," Esternaux then began, " of 
 our just and universal rage over the treacherous and 
 treasonable action of England in stabbing us in the 
 back. Never, as long as they live, will Germans for- 
 
 155
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 give the perfidy of the British Government in be- 
 traying the common blood in favour of uncivihzed 
 Pan-Slavism. It is the most criminal faithlessness 
 in the world's history — this taking advantage of our 
 difficulties to vent long pent-up spite against the merely 
 dangerous German commercial rival." Herr Ester- 
 naux did not mention Belgium, though the flow of 
 his righteous indignation was increasing from phrase 
 to phrase. " Race treason ! That is what has fired the 
 German soul to its depths ! That is what caused 
 last night's unseemly demonstrations. Nobody con- 
 dones mob fury less than the German Government, 
 but it is explained, if not justified, by what has 
 happened. Of one thing the world may be sure — with 
 whatever bitterness we make war on our Russian and 
 French foes, it will be nothing — it will be child's play 
 — compared to the spirit of revengeful rancour and holy 
 wrath in Vviiich we shall fight the English race-traitors. 
 That was the temper of the Berlin mob last night. It 
 is the temper in which we are going to war with Great 
 Britain. It is the temper in which we shall wage the 
 struggle with her to the bitter end. Make no mistake 
 about that !" I had listened, on the authoritative 
 premises of the Imperial German Government, to 
 perhaps the first official proclamation of the hate and 
 fright fulness programme so far uttered. Gott strafe 
 England ! How graphically succeeding events were 
 to bear it out ! 
 
 After Legationsrat Esternaux had fired this high- 
 explosive, he ushered me out, and I knocked on Lega- 
 tionsrat Heilbron's door, fifteen yards farther down the 
 dingy passageway. Fur-mittens and ear-muffs are not 
 de ngueur in northern Germany in midsummer, but I 
 156
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 should have worn them that afternoon of August 5, 
 for the reception awaiting me at Heilbron's hands was 
 of Arctic frigidity. It was a vastly changed Heilbron 
 from the obliging functionary who had pressed upon 
 me, forty-eight hours previous, copies of the German 
 White Paper, in order that I might spread the official 
 truth about " how the Fatherland had worked to pre- 
 vent the war " broadcast in England and the United 
 States. It was also a strangely less courteous Lega- 
 tionsraf than the one (Esternaux) whose presence I 
 had just quitted. 
 
 " Herr Legationsrat,'' I began, "I have come to ask you 
 for an identification-card. You know, I suppose, of my 
 little experience last night. I ami quite willing to take 
 my chances with the mob, but I ought to have som^e- 
 thing to protect me from the excesses of your police." 
 
 " Mobs are mobs," he rejoined. " I can do nothing 
 for you." 
 
 " That is strange," I interposed. " Surely you know 
 that the American Ambassador has arranged for my 
 remaining in Germany ?" 
 
 " I know nothing about that whatever," said Heilbron. 
 
 " Well, Legationsrat Esternaux does," I retorted, 
 " because he told me so not five minutes ago, and he 
 said you would issue the necessary credentials." 
 
 Heilbron, who like all German bureaucrats has the 
 backbone of a crushed worm in the presence of superior 
 authority, or the mere suggestion of it, now reached 
 for his telephone-receiver and asked to be connected 
 with somebody in the Foreign Office. He repeated 
 the object of my call to whomever was supposed to be 
 at the other end of the line, nodded in assent to some- 
 thing apparent^ said to him, then turned to mie : 
 
 157
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 " It is just as I thought. The Foreign Office can do 
 nothing for you. If you want credentials, you must 
 apply to the police." 
 
 " But, Herr Legationsrat,^' I persisted, " there can 
 be no objection to your giving me something which will 
 insure me ordinary safety at such a time as this. After 
 all, you know, I'm an American." 
 
 With a shrug of the shoulders and outflung arms, a 
 German gesture expressing indifference or helpless- 
 ness, or both, Heilbron observed, sardonically: " For 
 us, you are a Daily Mail man — nothing else. You are 
 known everywhere as such. Certainly if you remain 
 here, your position will undoubtedly be a precarious 
 one." 
 
 It was plain that the ethics which impelled von Beth- 
 mann Hollweg to tear up the Belgian " scrap of paper " 
 — brazen disregard of pledges — were now being pur- 
 sued in my very insignificant case. The German 
 Foreign Secretary had given a formal undertaking, as 
 I understood it, as to the inviolability of my personal 
 and professional status as an American citizen and 
 journalist. Not five minutes before, I had been assured 
 by an official of the German Foreign Office in the 
 Foreign Office that the latter was fully aware of the 
 arrangements which Mr. Gerard had effected in my 
 favour. And now another official calmly denied 
 their existence, and, moreover, declared in substance 
 that a United States passport calling upon the friendly 
 German Government " to permit Frederic William 
 Wile safely and freely to pass, and, in case of need, to 
 give him all lawful aid and protection,'' was not worth 
 the parchment on which it was engraved. Inter- 
 national law was being refashioned in Berlin in a hurry. 
 158
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 Once again I was compelled to flee to the American 
 Ambassador for protection — reluctantty enough, for I 
 had already usurped far more of his time than one 
 citizen is entitled to. I told him that the German For- 
 eign Ofhce was trying to convert me into a man with- 
 out a country; not onl}^ that, but that its cheerful 
 intimation as to my " position" being " undoubtedly 
 precarious " rang clearly ominous in my ears. The 
 Ambassador shared that view. He was of the opinion, 
 when he saw me earlier in the day, that my alarm 
 was unwarranted. From, what other American news- 
 paper men had meantime reported, my fears seemed 
 to be justified. He agreed that it was best that I should 
 go — but how ? The town was already choked with 
 Americans anxious to "go." If it were impossible to 
 move any of them across the frontier, what earthly 
 chance was there of exporting me ? There was, of 
 course, just one chance that I could think of — to leave 
 next day with the British Embassy. The Ambassador 
 suggested that I should ask Sir Edward Goschen if he 
 would take me, along with the purely British corre- 
 spondents, who, I learned, were going in his train. 
 
 So now, the United States having obviously ex- 
 hausted its powders on my behalf, I threw myself on the 
 mercies of His Britannic Majesty. I found Sir Edward 
 Goschen unhesitatingly responsive to my request, on 
 the important condition that the German authorities 
 would permit a non-Englishman to accompany a safe- 
 conduct party of British subjects of highly official 
 character ! Once again the iron gates leading out of 
 Germany seemed barred to me, for my status at the 
 German Foreign Ofhce, as the day's events had estab- 
 lished, was not exactly that of a persona grata who had 
 
 159
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 but to ask a favour to have it granted. But, by an 
 act of Providence, as it then and always since has 
 seemed to me, Ambassador Gerard strolled into the 
 reception-hall of the British Embassy while I was 
 in conversation with Sir Edward Goschen. The 
 latter repeated the conditions on which he would 
 gladly rescue me — the assent of the German Govern- 
 ment — whereupon Mr. Gerard quietly remarked that 
 he would " look after that." He had little notion, I 
 suppose, of the herculean effort which would be neces- 
 sary to give effect to his reassuring words. 
 
 It was now past six o'clock. The British Embassy 
 train was timed to leave Berlin at seven next morning, 
 Thursday, August 6. If anything was going to be 
 done for me, all concerned realized that it would have 
 to be done soon. " Go home, pack up all you can jam 
 into two suit-cases, and turn up at the American Em- 
 bassy at nine o'clock," said Gerard. 
 
 No home was ever deserted, I am sure, more re- 
 luctantly or so precipitately as my little menage in 
 Wilmersdorf. It seemed a woefully inglorious ending 
 to thirteen very happy and fraitful years in Berlin. I 
 thanked Heaven that my wife and little boy were not 
 there to be evicted with me. A woman's attachment 
 to the things which have spelled home — the books, the 
 pictures, the thousand and one household trinkets, en- 
 shrined with priceless value to those who have accumu- 
 lated them — is far stronger than a man's. The wrench 
 of separation would have been correspondingly harder 
 to bear. In the midst of such reveries, sandwiched 
 between selecting the most essential contents for 
 the two suit-cases to which I was limited, I had a 
 caller. 
 1 60
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 " Herr Direktor Kretschmar, of the Hotel Adlon, 
 has come to see you," announced Frdulein. 
 
 Kretschmar is probably known to more American 
 travellers to Europe than any other hotel man on 
 the Continent. The Adlon had been Yankee head- 
 quarters in Berlin ever since its opening in the Autumn 
 of 1907. Old man Adlon, its genial founder and pro- 
 prietor, he of the arc-light face at midnight, after a 
 liberal evening's libations o'er the flowing bowl, used 
 to be fond of assuring people that " mein lieber Freund 
 Wile " had " made " the Adlon. If telling people that 
 the Adlon was the best hotel in Berlin, and reporting in 
 my American dispatches, as necessity required, that 
 Governor Herrick, Mr. Carnegie, Mr. Schwab, Doctor 
 David Jayne Hill, Vice-President Fairbanks, Theo- 
 dore P. Shonts, John Hays Hammond, Otto H. Kahn 
 or some other famous fellow-citizen was lodged in the 
 marble and bronze caravansary at the head of Unter 
 den Linden — if this " made " the Adlon — I plead guilty 
 to Herr i\.dlon's charge. I shall never do it again. I 
 divined at once the object of the curly-haired Kretsch- 
 mar's visit. Having graduated, I believe, like many 
 eminent German hotel-keepers, from the humble ranks 
 of hall-porters and head-waiters, he was a past master 
 in obsequious servility. Many a time I had seen him 
 bow and scrape like a grinning flunkey as he welcomed 
 the arriving or sped the parting guest at the Adlon, 
 but never was he so cringing a Kretschmar as stood 
 before me now. He got down to business without 
 delay. 
 
 There had been a " terrible mistake " at the hotel the 
 night before. He was there to offer the " deepest re- 
 gret "of both the elder and junior Herr en Adlon that 
 
 M 161
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 their " best friend " should have been the victim of 
 " such an outrage " on their premises. They had dis- 
 missed no less than ten members of the hotel staff for 
 comphcity in my arrest. The Adlon hoped, from the 
 bottom of its unoffending heart, that I would '* forgive 
 and forget." Kretschmar, at this point in his peccavi, 
 almost broke down. He was in tears, and, if I had 
 let him, he would probably have gone down on his knees. 
 If I had knowTi what I was told next day as to his 
 own connection with my experience at the Adlon, he 
 would not only have gone down on his knees, but down 
 the stairs of my flat-building as well. Whether it 
 was he who incited the page-boys, desk-clerks, lift- 
 men, chambermaids and waiters to regard me as an 
 " English spy " I cannot say, but, in light of the ex- 
 perience which a colleague, Alexander Muirhead, a 
 London newspaper-photographer, had in the Adlon 
 shortly after my arrest, there is at least ground to fear 
 that Kretschmar may have been something more 
 than an innocent bystander. 
 
 " When I asked for you at the desk," Muirhead told 
 me, " a supercilious clerk, eyeing me fiercely, referred 
 me to the manager, whereupon I was escorted into 
 Kretschmar's room. ' I've come to see my friend 
 Wile," I explained. ' Your friend Wile's a spy !' 
 snarled Kretschmar, who seemed beside himself with 
 fury. ' And he's now where he ought to be ! As for 
 you, mein Herr, stand there against the wall, hold 
 up your arms, and be searched for weapons ! For all 
 we know, you're a spy, too !' The mere thought of your 
 name appeared to fill Kretschmar with incontrollable 
 rage. Havmg satisfied himself that I had nothing 
 more explosive about me than some undeveloped films, 
 162
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 he allowed me to go my way amid incoherent mutter- 
 ing and imprecations about that ' of a spy, 
 
 Wile.' I was, of course, completely mystified by this 
 extraordinary episode, as I was at that time entirely 
 ignorant of your fate." 
 
 T^Iuirhead is a plain-spoken Scotchman, as well as 
 one of Europe's bravest and most famous " camera 
 men," and although the lachrymose Kretschmar indig- 
 nantly repudiates the occurrence, I hope he will not 
 mind if I prefer to believe Muirhead. The manager of 
 the Adlon still keeps my memory green. Periodically 
 during the war, whenever some Gennan paper has out- 
 done itself in dignifying me with vile abuse, Kretsch- 
 mar has faithfully marked it in blue pencil and sent it 
 to me by two routes — Switzerland and Holland — to 
 make sure that it reached me. As I have not taken the 
 trouble to acknowledge these little tokens of his abid- 
 ing interest, I hope he may learn from these pages that 
 they have been duly received and fill not the least 
 conspicuous niche in my chamber of German war 
 horrors. 
 
 A weepy good-bye scene with Frdulein, a parting, 
 lingering look around my beloved Arheitszinir.ier — so 
 soon to be ransacked by the German pohce — an un- 
 dying vow from the little woman to guard our Lares 
 and Penates as if they were her own last earthly pos- 
 sessions, and all was at an end, as far as my habitat 
 in Berlin was concerned. It has not been my privilege 
 to say fareweU to fireside and dear ones and then leave 
 for the front in field-grey or khaki, but no soldier- 
 man anywhere in this war has torn himself away 
 from home ties more sorrowfully than I turned my 
 back in the gathering dusk of August 5, 1914, on dear 
 
 •63
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 old Helmstedter-strasse. Instinctively I felt that I 
 should never see it again, and my heart was heavy. 
 ***** 
 
 " What's Baron von Stumm got against you ?" asked 
 Second Secretary Harvey, smilingly, at the American 
 Embassy, when I arrived, bag and baggage, at nine 
 o'clock. " He says you're not an American." Stumm 
 was the chief of the Anglo-American section of the 
 German Foreign Ofhce. He knev\^ perfectly well that 
 I am an American. He had entertained me at his own 
 table in May, 191 o, when he gave a luncheon-party in 
 honour of the American newspaper correspondents 
 stationed in Berlin and those travelling with Mr. Roose- 
 velt on the occasion of the Colonel's visit to the Kaiser. 
 Stumm had " nothing against me " in June, I explained 
 to Harvey, because of his own. sweet volition he dis- 
 tinguished me with a call at my hotel during Kiel 
 Regatta. I could not imagine what had suddenly come 
 over the scion of the humble Westphahan blacksmith's 
 house, which was one of the first of the nouveau riche 
 German industrial tribes to be ennobled. I could only 
 think that, like the Berhn police, Legationsrat Heil- 
 bron, Herr Direktor Kretschmar and nearly all other 
 Germans, Stumm had temporarily gone mad. If I 
 was " not an American,*' it had taken the Imperial 
 German Foreign Office thirteen years to make the dis- 
 covery. Some day I am going to send Stumm a 
 Christmas card. It will consist of a gilded birth- 
 certificate attested by the clerk of the County of La 
 Porte, Indiana. 
 
 No one supplied me with the details of the final 
 negotiations which were necessary to induce the 
 German Government graciously to consent to permit 
 164
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 me to leave Germany alive. I have since learned 
 that my pass was not secured without some extremely 
 forcible remonstrances and representations. Stumm 
 had denounced me as a ' ' scoundrel ' ' and in other 
 knightly terms. Why the German Foreign Office so 
 ardently desired to prevent my departure, after having 
 earlier m the same day declined to promise me im- 
 munity from physical harm, is a mystery which I trust 
 it may fome day elucidate. To fathom it is beyond 
 my own feeble powers of divination, and in this nar- 
 rative of farewell tribulations in the Fatherland, I 
 have confined myself strictly to facts. I have reso- 
 lutely not yielded to the temptation to surmise. But as 
 the official Genesis of Armageddon is not likely to 
 honour me with mention, I have presumed to set forth 
 my own diminutive part in it with perhaps a weari- 
 som.e superfluity of detail. I have the more eagerly 
 ventured to do so because grotesque versions of the 
 " term.s " on which I, an American citizen, if you please, 
 " secured permission to leave Germany," have been, 
 and still are, for all I know, in circulation in Berhn. 
 They are believed — and that is the one saddening 
 thought they inspire in me — by people who were once 
 my friends, among them Americans who place bread- 
 and-butter business necessities and social expedi- 
 ency in Germany above the elementary dictates of 
 gratitude and personal loyalty, which are traits one 
 encounters even in a Dachshund. It is these insuffer- 
 able lickers of German boot -heels who " have heard " 
 (and read in German newspapers) that I " gave my 
 word of honour " to seal my lips for ever " about 
 Germany," to " return to the United States at once " 
 (perhaps as press-agent to Dernburg, who was also 
 
 165
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 leaving Germany), to " renounce all connection with 
 English journalism," and other "promises" of 
 equally imbecilic character. The only " broken 
 pledge " which the rumour-mongers did not foist upon 
 me was an outright agreement to join Germany's army 
 of kept joumahsts. I should have been better off, 
 financially no doubt, if I had enhsted in that immacu- 
 late service, which is one of the best paid in the world. 
 ***** 
 
 My permit to leave Germany, Harvey said, would be 
 issued during the night and be handed me next morn- 
 ing at the British Embassy. Meantime, evidently to 
 make assurance doubly sure. Ambassador Gerard gave 
 me in his own handwriting an attest that I was leaving 
 the country with Sir Edward Goschen. He affixed 
 to it the great seal of the Embassy, handed me the note 
 with a merry " Good luck," I wrung his hand in a last 
 grip of gratitude and good-bye, and we parted company. 
 
 Meantime I had opened negotiations with the Em- 
 bassy porter to pass the night on a cot in his lodge, 
 where Tower had bunked after our arrest, and ar- 
 ranged with him to call me at four-thirty, so that I could 
 be at the British Embassy well before six o'clock. 
 WTiile I was chatting in the hallway, Mrs. Gerard came 
 along. " Where are you going to sleep to-night ?" she 
 inquired, solicitously. I told her. She would not hear 
 of my plans to camp in the porter's basement. There 
 were half-a-dozen bedrooms in the Embassy, and I must 
 use one of them. Then she hustled away, in the most 
 motherly fashion, to prepare for me what turned out 
 to be a suite de luxe. My last night in Germany was 
 slept on *'' American soil." It was not the most restful 
 night I have spent in my life, but it lingers as the 
 1 66
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 sweetest memory I cherish among a myriad of recollec- 
 tions which crowded thick one upon another in that 
 great wild week in Berlin. " x\nd do you like your 
 breakfast eggs boiled three or four minutes ?" was the 
 cheery " Good-night " and AiifWiedersehen I had from 
 " Molly " Gerard. 
 
 At least one Gennan, in addition to my secretary 
 and governess, who were models of devotion to the last, 
 took the trouble to show me a parting mark of esteem. 
 He was a colleague, Paul R. Krause, of the Lokal- 
 Anzeiger staff, a son-in-law of Field-Marshal Baron 
 von der Goltz, and one of the best of fellows. Krause 
 lived abroad so long — his life has been spent mostly 
 in Turkey, South Africa and South America — that he 
 will perhaps not mind my saying that he always struck 
 me as effectually de-Germanized. At any rate, having 
 heard of my plight, he came to the Embassy late at 
 night to offer me not only fraternal sympathy, but 
 physical assistance in the form of readiness to become 
 my " body-guard," if I really considered myself in 
 personal danger ! He could hardly be made to believe 
 that Heilbron had been " such an ass," when I told of 
 my partmg interview in the Foreign Offtce. Krause 
 and I exchanged Aiif Wiedersehen in the " American 
 bar " of the Hotel Kaiserhof, round the corner from 
 the Embassy, where I noticed Doctor Dernburg, 
 August Stem, of the Frankfurter Zeitung, and Doctor 
 Fuchs, of the Deutsche Bank, gathered dolefully round 
 a beer-table, and amazed, no doubt, to find Krause in 
 such doubtful company. 
 
 I did not seek my downy couch in the Embassy until 
 I had had a farewell promenade and visit with two 
 very dear newspaper pals, Swing, of the Chicago Daily 
 
 167
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 News, and Feibelman, of the New York Tribune and 
 London Express. Feibelman was still in the throes of 
 the anxiety from which I was about to be relieved, as 
 the Foreign Office had also refused him credentials 
 owing to his connection wdth an English journal. He 
 sincerely envied my good fortune in being able to escape 
 with the British Ambassador. I was glad to hear a 
 week later that he too had eventually contrived, with 
 the American Embassy's assistance, to reach Holland, 
 where he has done excellent work for his paper durmg 
 the war. Swing, Feibelman and I, arm-locked, walked 
 the silent streets around and about the Embassy until 
 long past midnight, speculating as to what the red- 
 clotted future had in store for each of us, embittered at 
 Fate for so ruthlessly disrupting friendships of affec- 
 tionate intimacy, and wondering, when all was over, 
 if it ever would be, whether Berlin or Kamchatka 
 would be the scene of our next reunion. ... 
 
 Something told me that even a twelfth-hour attempt 
 might be made to hamper my get-away, so, as a " posi- 
 tively last farewell " favour I asked " Joe " Grew, my 
 rescuer from the police, to escort me to the train. 
 Though it meant his tumbling out of bed at the 
 witching hour of five, his breezy " Sure, I will " set my 
 mind completely at rest. He arrived on the appointed 
 minute. The sight of the Stars and Stripes fluttering 
 at the front of his car was a reassuring little picture. 
 They had meant much to me during the preceding 
 forty-eight hours. At the British Embassy, which 
 looked more like a baggage-room or express-ofhce 
 struck by lightning, with the floors littered indiscrim- 
 inately with hastily-packed boxes of documents and 
 records, trunks, suit-cases, golf-bags and batches of 
 i68
 
 Fac-Simii.i; of Ghuman Passport i'ermiti
 
 THE LAST FAREWELL 
 
 clothing hastily slung or strapped into or around 
 travelling-rugs — and all the other indescribable im- 
 pedimenta of a suddenly-retreating army or an evicted 
 famil}^ — I found my German passport awaiting me. It 
 had been delivered to Godfrey Thomas, one of Sir 
 Edward Goschen's able young attaches, all of whom, like 
 the Ambassador himself, had given so characteristic an 
 exhibition of British imperturbability during the final 
 hours of crisis. The passport described me as " the 
 English newspaper correspondent, Wile." It is re- 
 produced at page 172. I treasure it with the same 
 pride which probably inspires a reprieved man to 
 cherish the document which cheats the hangman. 
 
 There was no guard of honour to bid Sir Edward 
 Goschen and his staff Godspeed from the Wilhelm- 
 strasse. No single German was so poor as to do them 
 reverence except a couple of sleepy policemen and 
 half-a-dozen blear-eyed, early-rising Berliners on their 
 way to work. None of them had yet learned to say 
 Gott strafe Englafid, so the lonely cavalcade of luggage- 
 laden taxis, which were hauling Great Britain's official 
 representatives on the first stage of their journey out 
 of the enemy's capital, proceeded on its way without 
 molestation or demonstration. 
 
 That very day the Kaiser's ambassador to England, 
 Prince Lichnowsky, was being accorded a departure 
 from London amid honours customarily reserved for a 
 ruling sovereign. Great Britain's ambassador to 
 Germany was leaving like a thief in the night, the 
 Imperial Government having requested him, when 
 shaking the dust of Berlin from his miscreant feet, to 
 slink to the railway station as inconspicuously as 
 possible and long before the righteous metropolis 
 
 169
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 waked. Otherwise, it was solicitously suggested, 
 Kultur, giving vent to the holy venom which now filled 
 the Teutonic soul, might feel constrained to stone the 
 Ambassador afresh. Thus, I, too, chaperoned by 
 Grew, sneaked out of Berlin. 
 
 My old German teacher was right. She said there 
 was no word for " gentleman " in the Kaiser's language. 
 The fashion in which his Government and people 
 went to war with England proved it.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 LEHRTER BAHNHOF, the gateway through 
 which so many British tourists have passed out 
 of Berhn en route to Hamburg or Bremen steamers, 
 was not en fete in honour of the departing Engldnder. 
 My memory travelled back irresistibly to the last 
 time the British Embassy in force was assembled 
 there — to greet King George and Queen Mary when 
 they arrived to visit the German Court in May, 1913. 
 The rafters rang on that occasion with the blare of a 
 Prussian Guard's band thundering God Save the King, 
 cousins George and William embraced fondly and 
 kissed, and the station was sv\athed in the en- 
 twined colours of Germany and England. It was a 
 different and forbidding aspect which the old brick 
 and steel barn of a train-shed presented this muggy 
 August morning. At every entrance sentries in grey 
 and policemen with Brownings at the belt stood guard, 
 for railways and stations were now as integral a part 
 of the war-machine as fortresses and guns. Inside, in- 
 fantrymen in grey from head to foot — all Germany 
 had now grown grey — carrying rifles with fixed bayo- 
 nets patrolled the platforms, searching each Eng- 
 lishman, as he came along, with glances mingling 
 watchfulness and contempt, 
 
 Our band of pilgrims, who were to be some forty 
 or fifty in all, arrived in detachments, having, as Sir 
 
 171
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Edward Goschen himself officially described it, " been 
 smuggled away from the Embassy in taxicabs by side 
 streets." The Ambassador himself was one of the last 
 to turn up. No Imperial emissary came to wish him a 
 happy journe}^ and Auf Wiedersehen, though the For- 
 eign Secretary deputized young Count Wedel to say 
 good-bye in his name. The Kaiser's farewell greeting 
 to Sir Edward was conveyed the day before, when the 
 All-Highest sent an adjutant with majestic regrets 
 for the sacking of the Embassy premises on the night 
 the war broke out. Of markedly less apologetic tenor 
 was the adjutant's message that Wilham H, " now 
 that Great Britain had taken sides with other nations 
 against her old allies of Waterloo, must at once divest 
 himself of the titles of British Field-Marshal and 
 British Admiral." The uniforms, orders and decora- 
 tions conferred on him by Perfidious Albion had 
 desecrated the exalted person of the supreme Hohen- 
 zollern for the last time. In the memorable dispatch 
 in which he so dispassionately narrated his final hours 
 in Beriin, Sir Edward Goschen sufficiently indicated 
 the true character of the Kaiser's adieu by mientioning 
 that *' the message lost none of its acerbity by the man- 
 ner of its delivery." As a Prussian officer was firing it 
 at the official incarnation of Great Britain, it is not 
 difficult to imagine the mien and tone of the proud 
 functionary on whom had been conferred the historic 
 distinction of breathing Hate in the face of the foe at 
 that cataclysmic hour. 
 
 I shall always hold it a privilege to have been in con- 
 tact with Sir Edward Goschen during the days which 
 preceded the war and in the hours of its beginning. 
 He was throughout an object-lesson in sano froid. In 
 172
 
 Plicto] {Elliott and Fry 
 
 SIR W. E. GOSCHEN, BART. 
 
 (Late British Ambassador in Berlin). 
 
 [lofacep. 172.
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 the midst of his hohdays in England when the crisis 
 arose, having left Kiel early in July with the British 
 squadron he returned hurriedly to his post in Berlin, 
 just before the match was applied to the powder- 
 barrel. I recall distinctly the invincible state of his 
 good humour when I visited him at the Embassy on 
 July 31, only an hour or two before the Kaiser declared 
 Germany to be in " a state of war." 
 
 " Wile," he remarked, fastening upon me a gaze 
 which very successfully simulated vexation, " what did 
 you mean by libelling me in that dispatch of yours 
 from Kiel about the Kaiser's visit to our flagship ? You 
 had the effrontery to suggest that I was lolling about 
 the quarter-deck in a tweed suit. I would have you 
 understand that my costume afloat is always the regu- 
 lation navy-blue !" 
 
 I pleaded colour-blindness. I said that from our 
 perch behind the thirteen-and-one-half-inch gun tur- 
 ret for'd it looked to me as if His Excellency had 
 actually worn tweed. 
 
 ■' Well, I didn't," he insisted, " and you caused me to 
 be twitted not a little in London for my criminal ignor- 
 ance of battleship etiquette." 
 
 Sir Edward Goschen, unlike other British Ambas- 
 sadors I knew in Berlin, was never at any moment of 
 his career there under any delusions as to the leitmotif 
 of German policy toward Great Britain. No Teutonic 
 wool was ever pulled over his eyes. During the week 
 of tension which ended with war, he bore himself with 
 tact and firmness characteristic of the highest diplo- 
 matic traditions. Though never surrendering a posi- 
 tion in the trying negotiations with the Kaiser's Gov- 
 ernment, the Ambassador did not cease, up to the hour 
 
 173
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 when he asked for his passports, to labour for such 
 peace as would be consistent with British interests. It 
 is not customary in the British service, I believe, to 
 send a diplomatic official back to a country with which 
 England has meantime been at war, but Sir Edward 
 Goschen could return to Berlin with his head high, 
 enjoying not only, I am sure, the limitless confidence 
 of his own Government, but the unalloyed respect of 
 Germany as well. 
 
 Our party having been politely herded into the royal 
 waiting-room of the station, a couple of silk-hatted 
 and frock-coated young Foreign Office officials now 
 buzzed busily about us, checking off our respective 
 names and identities on their duplicate lists, lest no 
 unauthorized Englander should escape through the 
 ring of steel drawn tight around Germany's frontiers. 
 Our safe-conduct train had meantime pulled in. We 
 found ourselves a somewhat indiscriminate collection of 
 refugees. Besides Sir Edward Goschen, there was, of 
 course, the full embassy family of secretaries, attaches, 
 clerks, the wives of one or two of them, and one 
 bonny group of babes with their blue-and- white 
 " narmies." Sir Horace Rumbold, the Counsellor of 
 the Embassy, who had conducted the initial negotia- 
 tions with Germany, monocled and unruffled, was as 
 calm as if he were starting off for a week-end in the 
 country. Captain Henderson, the Naval Attache, 
 a prince of sailormen, had no inkling of the undying 
 discomfiture soon to be his, as an ingloriously interned 
 captive in neutral Holland, for his first assignment 
 from the Admiralty was to command a detachment 
 of the ill-starred naval expedition to Antwerp. Colonel 
 Russell, the Militar\^ Attache, was leaving German 
 174
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 soil with emotions a little different from those of the 
 rest of us, for he had seen the light of day at Potsdam 
 in 1874, while his late father, Lord Ampthill, was 
 British Ambassador to Germany. It was only a few 
 weeks previous that the colonel's own Berlin-bom 
 son had been christened " William " under the august 
 godfatherhood of the Kaiser, who sent the babe a 
 golden cup emblazoned with the Hohenzollern arms. 
 With us, too, were Messrs. Gumey, Rattigan, Monck, 
 Thomas and Astell, Sir Edward Goschen's able staff 
 of secretaries and young attaches, who had all " sat 
 tight," in their British way, so splendidly during 
 the preceding forty-eight hours. The official party 
 also included the British Minister to Saxony, Mr. 
 Grant-Duff, and Lady Grant-Duff, whose windows 
 in Dresden had been broken, too, and Messrs. Charlton 
 and Turner of the Berlin and Leipzig consulates, 
 respectively. 
 
 The journalist-refugees consisted of Mackenzie and 
 Jelf of The Times, Tower and Nevinson of The Daily 
 News, Long of The Westminster Gazette, Lawi'ence of 
 Reuter's Agency, Byles of The Standard, Dudley 
 Ward, of the Manchester Guardian and his newly-wed 
 German wife, and Muirhead, the " camera man " of 
 The Daily Chronicle. Poor Jelf, who enlisted within 
 a week after his arrival in England, was killed in 
 action during the great offensive fighting in Artois, in 
 September, 1915 . Among the others whom Sir Edward 
 Goschen had rescued from the maws of Hate was a 
 little Australian woman, Mrs. Gunderson, trapped in 
 Germany with her husband at the outbreak of war. 
 They had journeyed around the world on their honey- 
 moon to enable him to participate in an international 
 
 175
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 chess match at Mannheim. He has been stalemated 
 ever since at the British concentration camp at Ruhle- 
 ben — Berlin. Then there was an estimable old English 
 couple who had spent a night in jail on the charge of 
 being " spies " prowling about the German country-side 
 in their touring-car. They were not bemoaning the 
 loss of their automobile in the presence of their own 
 escape and that of their chauffeur. One of the luckiest 
 of our travelling companions was Captain Deedes, a 
 British army officer who was passing through Germany 
 on his way home from service in Turkey, and just 
 gained the precincts of the British Embassy before 
 being nabbed by the police. We shuddered to think 
 of the fate of Captain Holland of the British navy, 
 also en route from Constantinople, who had not been 
 so fortunate, and was now locked up at Spandau. 
 I was the sole and lonely American member of the 
 caravan. 
 
 The Germans provided Sir Edward Goschen with a 
 " corridor train " of first-class cars, including saloon 
 carriages which were a combination of parlour and 
 sleeping cars, for himself and his immediate entourage, 
 and for Baron Beyens, the Belgian Minister to Berlin, 
 and his staff, who, appropriately enough, were con- 
 ducted to the frontier along with the British. Baron 
 Beyens has contributed to the genesis of the v/ar 
 not the least noteworthy evidence of Germany's 
 felonious designs on European liberties and peace. 
 As has been revealed bj' a Belgian Grey Book, the 
 Baron was able to report to his government as early 
 as July 26 that " the German General Staff regarded 
 war as inevitable and near, and expected success on 
 account of Germany's superiority in heavy guns and 
 176
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 the unpreparedness of Russia." Baron Beyens also 
 described his final and dramatic conversation with the 
 German Foreign Secretary, who " announced with 
 pain " Germany's determination to violate Belgian 
 neutrality, and asked to be allowed to occupy Liege. 
 The request was refused, Herr von Jagow admitting 
 to the Minister that no other answer was possible. The 
 Belgians had another " answer " up their sleeve, 
 though von Jagow knew it not. It was the shambles 
 into which the flower of the German Guard plunged 
 at Liege a week later. 
 
 Lieutenant-Colonel von Buttlar, a dapper little 
 grey-haired Prussian officer with a Kaiser moustache 
 and a heel-clicking manner, presently approached Sir 
 Edward Goschen, saluted, introduced himself as the 
 military chaperon of the party, and invited us to troop 
 into the train. An armed guard, a strapping infantry- 
 man with glistening bayonet affixed to his shouldered 
 rifle, was already aboard. He turned out, as did the 
 lieutenant-colonel himself, to be a very harmless 
 warden. When the Oberstleutnant, gloved and 
 helmeted as if on dress parade, was not snoozing or 
 reading during the journey, he merely hovered about, 
 mother-like, to see that his charges were comfortable, 
 as well as not up to mischief. In addition to the 
 ordinary train-crew, we were shepherded by seven or 
 eight plain- clothes Prussian detectives, whom even 
 the ruse of regulation railway-caps could not disguise. 
 You can tell a German " secret policeman," as he is 
 idiomatically called, at least a mile off. He is the 
 last word in palpability. 
 
 Our destination, we learned, was the Hook of 
 Holland, where either a Great Eastern steamer or a
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 British cruiser would pick us up. We were to trave 
 via Hanover-Osnabriick to Amsterdam and thence to 
 the sea. Mackenzie, Jelf and I, having pre-empted a 
 compartment, settled down at the windows for a last 
 long look at Berlin as the train now tugged slowly out 
 of the station, a few minutes past eight o'clock. Speak- 
 ing for myself, I am quite sure that railway trucks 
 never rattled with such sweet melody as those beneath 
 us were producing, for with every chug they were 
 bringing us nearer to liberty. I rem.ember a distinct 
 feeling of consciousness that I should not consider 
 myself an utterly freed felon until German territory 
 was actually no longer under my feet. It was an 
 indescribably gratifying sensation, all sufficient for the 
 moment, to realize that Berlin at least was fading into 
 oblivion. Whether any of my British colleagues were 
 throbbing with similar emotions, I never knew. It is 
 un-English, I believe, to reveal emotions even if one is 
 battling with them. Whatever thoughts were in their 
 minds, I myself was obsessed with a distinct desire, 
 at that moment, to blot Berhn from my mind for all 
 eternity. Perhaps, as I thus soliloquized, I was giving 
 way unconsciously to a passing spell of that unreason- 
 ing malice which infested hate-maddened Berlin. I 
 suppose I ought to have shed briny tears, as we skirted 
 Spandau and sped across the dreary plain of the Mark 
 of Brandenburg, and familiar landmarks passed from 
 view. Certainly in the long ago, I had firmly made up 
 my mind that when my time to leave Germany came 
 I should go away with genuine regret. Life in the 
 Fatherland had meant much to me and mine. Although 
 I never adopted it, like Lord Haldane, as my " spiritual 
 home/* a man cannot spend thirteen years of middle 
 
 178
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 life in the same community, however ahen to its 
 spirit and institutions, without forming deep-rooted 
 attachments. But the circumstances which precipi- 
 tated me out of Germany conspired, I fear, to quench 
 old-time affection. So, ungrateful as it may appear, 
 my handkerchief was not brought into play and my 
 eyes were uncommonly dry as the sand-wastes of 
 Brandenburg vanished from our vision. . . . 
 
 It was evident that we were in for a tedious journey 
 and that our trek across Western Germany was to be 
 agony long drawn out. Berhn to Hanover, the first 
 leg of the trip, was one I had accomplished times 
 innumerable under three hours, and even a Bumynelzug 
 hardly took longer. It was to take us nearly three 
 times as long to-day. Mobilization was technically 
 complete, but every railway track in the country, 
 especially if it fed the great trunk-hne to the west along 
 which we were travelling, was still choked with troop 
 trains. In consequence, though ours was a " special," 
 we had to halt, back up, side track and perform every 
 other gyration of which a train is capable, whenever 
 we came up with battalions en route toward one of the 
 three frontiers on which German blood was now being 
 spilled. At every station we encountered trainloads 
 of men in grey, singing, cheering and laughing as if 
 bound for a picnic instead of slaughter. It was always 
 they who had the right of way, for it was soon borne 
 in upon us that the meanest detachment of resemsts 
 bulked larger in Germany's eye just then than " the 
 whole bally British diplomatic service put together/* 
 as Jelf irreverently expressed it. Never at any time 
 were we doing anything dizzier than twenty miles an 
 hour, and we figured that if we reached Hanover by 
 
 179
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 dinner-time, we should be fortunate. As to London, 
 where one used to arrive twenty hours after leaving 
 Berlin, it became painfully obvious that it would be 
 nearer forty this trip. 
 
 But there was much to see, and to think and talk 
 about. As we were being held up everywhere along 
 the line by seemingly the entire male population of 
 the Empire in uniform, it was not surprising, for one 
 thing, to find the fields on either side of us almost as 
 denuded of men as if Adam had never lived. None but 
 women was discoverable at work on this eve of harvest, 
 excepting here and there an old man, while children, 
 too, were being pressed into service. At bridges, 
 culverts and crossings, instead of the customary rail- 
 way guards, who used to stand at salute with a flag 
 as a train whirled past, there were now soldiers with 
 jifles. No restrictions were placed upon our recon- 
 noitring the adjacent country as long as we were in 
 motion; but Lieutenant-Colonel von Buttlar, always 
 heel-clicking and saluting beforehand, intimated to 
 Meine Herren that the curtains of their compartment- 
 windows must be drawn as the train approached or 
 halted at stations. There was no suspicion, he begged 
 to assure us, that we might attempt to practise espion- 
 age about troop movements. On the contrary, the 
 suggestion was a precaution recommended in our own 
 interests. Unfortunately, quoth the apologetic colonel, 
 it had not been feasible to conceal the identity of our 
 train. Western Germany was bursting with patriotic 
 frenzy, and it was just within the range of possibilities 
 that their exuberance might beat itself into disagree- 
 able " demonstrations." Therefore, discretion was 
 obviously our cue. 
 i8o
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 But what we could not see at Nauen, Rathenow, 
 Stendal, Gardelegen, Obisfelde and Lehrte, we could 
 hear, for all the inhabitants of eveiy hamlet and town 
 in Central Germany appeared to have orders from 
 somewhere to assemble at their railway-stations and 
 sing themselves red in the face for Kaiser and Empire. 
 Manifestly the Supreme War Lord had not only called 
 up his armed legions, but mobilized the country's 
 Singvcreine besides, and man, woman and child of 
 them were now in the trenches ^^dth their throats 
 bared to the foe. I suppose they were chanting Die 
 Wacht am Rhein and Dentschland, Deutschland ilher 
 Alles in other parts of Germany, too, but I have often 
 thought that the country's most vociferous and tireless 
 choral artists were concentrated on that day on the 
 strategic line of the British safe-conduct train's 
 route. If the Great General Staff at Berlin, ^^ith that 
 incomparable attention to detail which is one of its 
 vaunted accomplishments, schemed to send us out of 
 Germany convinced, by the evidence of our o\^^l ears, 
 that the Kaiser's people were sallying forth to war like 
 Wagnerian heroes with music and triumphant cheers 
 on their lips, the ruse succeeded. My own indelible 
 recollection of that farewell ride across Germany, 
 at any rate, is the memory of song. For many days 
 and nights afterward. Die Wacht am Rhein and 
 Deutschland, Deutschland liber Alles, rang and 
 rang through my head. At the time it all seemed 
 beautifulty spontaneous, for the Germans are a singing 
 folk, who put soul into their anthems, but reflection 
 makes me wonder if that continuous song-service 
 which so mercilessly accompanied us from Berhn to 
 the Netherlands was not a stage-managed extravaganza 
 
 i8i
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 with a motive. The Germans are a thorough race, 
 and in war they overlook no opportunity. 
 
 It was only at times that the singing was anything 
 else than merely monotonous — the periodical occasions 
 when, if we halted longer than usual at a station, the 
 singers would line up alongside the train so closely 
 that they could fairly shout in our ears. Then there 
 would be a note of ill-mannered defiance in their song. 
 At Hanover we happened to be drawn up in the station 
 at the very moment when the British Ambassador and 
 the Belgian Minister were in the dining-car, and there 
 was a particularly vehement vocal endurance competi- 
 tion outside of the window at which they were sitting. 
 But from my own table on the opposite side of the car 
 I observed that Sir Edward Goschen was not visibly 
 diverted from his Wiener-Schnitzel, for, while the 
 Deutschland, Deutschland iiher Alles chorus was doing its 
 worst, he remarked, cheerily, to his Belgian colleague : 
 " Rather fine singing, isn't it ?" 
 
 Next to the songs which knew no ending the most 
 conspicuous manifestation of Furor Teutonicus was 
 the chalking of troop-trains with exuberant inscriptions 
 symbolical of expected great German victories to come. 
 *' Special to St. Petersburg " was a prime favourite. 
 " Excursion to Paris " was extremely popular. That, 
 we know, is exactly what the War Party expected the 
 western campaign to be. " Through Train to Moscow " 
 ran a particularly sanguine sentiment and " Death to 
 the Blood-Czar," a more sanguinary one. Then there 
 would be rude caricatures of Nicholas H or President 
 Poincare either at the end of a noose or of the boot of 
 an equally rudely-cartooned Kaiser. And, of course, 
 there were plenty of jests at Great Britain. " We'll 
 182
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 soon be chewing roast-beef in London " was the way 
 one artist epitomized his hopes. " Special Train to the 
 Peddler-City " — a shaft at London, the home of the 
 " shopkeeper nation " which " organized war against 
 Germany " in order to " crush an unpleasant commer- 
 cial rival." " Death to our enviers !" was the language 
 in which another Anglophobe thought found expres- 
 sion. Beneath the British Ambassador's car- windows, 
 I was told, some one had chalked a John Bull drooping 
 ignominiously from the gallows, with " Race-Traitor " 
 for an epitaph ! 
 
 The night was fitful for us all. Curled up on the 
 seats of our compartments, such attempts at sleep as 
 we ventured were effectually defeated by Deiitsch- 
 land, Deutschland uher Alles and Die Wacht am Rhein. 
 All through the night they were hurled at us. At 
 every town, regardless of the hour, the choristers 
 were on the j ob. We welcomed our arrival at Bentheim, 
 the final station in Prussia, at seven next morning, not 
 half so eagerly because it was the last of Germany as 
 because it was the last of Deutschland, Deutschland 
 fiber Alles and Die Wacht am Rhein. For any sins we 
 ever committed in the Fatherland, we felt we had been 
 richly chastised. I understood now why General 
 Sherman once crossed the Atlantic to escape March- 
 ing through Georgia — only to be bombarded with it 
 beneath his \vindows before breakfast by an Irish band 
 in Queenstown before he had been in Europe twelve 
 hours. I am morally certain that when old Tecumseh 
 proclaimed that " War is hell," he was thinking about 
 Marching through Georgia. That is what Deutschland, 
 Deutschland uher Alles made me think about Arma- 
 geddon. 
 
 183
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 None of us experienced any special difficulty in re- 
 straining our emotions when Lieutenant-Colonel von 
 Buttlar and our other German chaperons handed us 
 over at Bentheim tr a Dutch train crew awaiting our 
 arrival there with a Dutch locomotive. The colonel 
 clicked and bowed his farewell respects to Sir Edward 
 Goschen and Baron Beyens, accepted their apprecia- 
 tions of his courtesy and helpfulness, saluted for the 
 last time, and then formally transferred us to Queen 
 Wilhelmina's tender mercies. The hour of our libera- 
 tion was at hand. And for the first time in a week a 
 score of Englishmen and at least one American thought 
 out aloud their opinions about Germany and all her 
 works. WTiat we said about the Hohenzollerns has 
 been put by Colonel Watterson of Kentucky in more 
 immortal diction than my poor pen is capable of. 
 
 At Rozendaal, the first station in Holland, there was 
 a wild scramble from the newspaper coach for the 
 railway telegraph-office. All of us had reams of 
 " copy " to release, after having been muzzled for five 
 days. German money, we were distressed to observe, 
 was already at a discount in the Netherlands, and those 
 of us who did not hand in Dutch or British gold had 
 to put our " stuff " on the wire after more fortunate 
 colleagues had beaten us to it with legal tender. A 
 couple of hours later found us at Amsterdam, where 
 representatives of the British Legation at The Hague 
 and the local Consulate-General were on hand to greet 
 Sir Edward Goschen's party, and furnish us with the 
 first news of actual war operations which we had had. 
 Fighting at sea had begun. England had drawn first 
 blood. The German mine-layer Konigin Luise, within 
 eighteen hours of the declaration of hostilities, i.e., on 
 184
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 Wednesday, August 5, was overtaken by the British 
 destroyer Lance and sunk in six minutes. There was 
 reason to fear that a fleet of enemy mine-layers, 
 masquerading as fishing-boats and in other pacific dis- 
 guises, had been occupied for the better part of a week 
 strewing mines through an area reaching from a point 
 off Harwich — which we were soon to approach — 
 along the east coast far up into Scottish waters. On 
 the next day, Thursday, August 6, the British light 
 cruiser Amphion struck a mine planted by the Konigin 
 Luise and went down with heavy loss of life. Much 
 more cheering was the news that gallant Belgium was 
 giving the Germans a welcome they had not bargained 
 for. The ]\Ieuse was being gloriously defended. Liege 
 was menaced, but still untaken. Germans had been 
 mown down by the regiment — if reports could be 
 believed — and we devoured them eagerly. No news 
 is ever so welcome as that which one longs to hear — 
 even before it is confirmed. 
 
 The Hook was ready for us, we were told. The 
 Great Eastern Steamer St. Petersburg was there await- 
 ing our arrival, having the night before landed Prince 
 Lichnowsky and the other mxcmbers of the German Em- 
 bassy in London. The Kaiser's emissary had passed 
 to the ship through a British guard of honour, while 
 shore batteries fired an Ambassador's salute. How 
 unlike Sir Edward Goschen's slinking departure from 
 Berlin, we thought ! Shortty after two o'clock the 
 St. Petersburg lifted anchor and amid t3rpical North 
 Sea weather, raw, rainy and misty, got under way. 
 Few thought of German submarines at that time, 
 but the Berhn Government, we pondered, had not 
 guaranteed Sir Edward Goschen " safe conduct " 
 
 185
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 through an indiscriminately sown field of floating 
 mines. Quite obviously, we had now to pass through 
 a zone bristling with uncertainty, to put it mildly. 
 But w^e had not steamed far into the open sea before 
 the sight of a British torpedo-boat flotilla on patrol con- 
 vinced us that we were in a well-shepherded course. 
 Then we had our first ocular demonstration of Jelli- 
 coe's unremitting vigilance, for the crescent of de- 
 stroyers far forward now began rapidly to close in 
 upon us. Our identity was apparently not known to 
 them, and they were taking no chances. " They sent a 
 shot across our bow yesterday, with the Germans on 
 board," explained the skipper of the St. Petersburg to 
 Captain Henderson, the Naval Attache, who was with 
 him on the bridge. Captain Henderson was not dis- 
 turbed by the possibility of our getting an innocuous 
 three-pounder in our wireless rigging or some other 
 harmless token of the destroyers' sohcitude, but he 
 was concerned lest so innocent a craft should cause 
 British destroyer captains to burn up valuable oil fuel 
 needlessly at such an hour. So the next I saw of Hen- 
 derson he was wig-wagging mysterious messages with 
 signal-flags from the bridge of the St. Petersburg, which 
 told the destroyers, I suppose, that we weren't in the 
 shghtest respect worthy of their attention or shell. They 
 wig-wagged something back .which must have pleased 
 Henderson, for presently he clambered dowm smihngly 
 from the upper regions, and said: " Thafs all right 1" 
 
 Harwich hove into view at what should have been 
 sundown. By six o'clock we were at the pier, boarded 
 by the naval authorities of the port and the customs- 
 men. Sir Edward Goschen's party, after the Ambas- 
 sador himself had vouched for the identity of each 
 1 86
 
 SAFE CONDUCT 
 
 and every one of us, was disembarked without formali- 
 ties, and at six-forty-five p.m. of Friday, August 7, we 
 found ourselves treading British soil. There were 
 policemen, soldiers, reporters and photographers on the 
 dock, but no formal welcoming delegation for the 
 Ambassador. Somebody whispered to him that a 
 special train would convey him and his refugees to 
 London, and to it he took his way as undemonstratively 
 as if he were a Cook's tourist back from a " tripper's " 
 jaunt to the Continent. I remarked to Tower that I 
 was afraid Americans would have made a real fuss over 
 Goschen if he were our Am.bassador home from the 
 enemy's country; whereupon The Daily News man 
 ejaculated something which was to ring in my ears for 
 a year or more, whenever I presumed to comment on 
 the strange phenomenon with which it is now my task 
 to deal — England and the EngHsh in war-time : ' ' Wile, 
 you Americans cannot understand the English char- 
 acter." Tower was right. 
 
 An American is general manager of the Great 
 Eastern Railway. I strongly suspect that he must 
 have had an alien hand in even the semblance of a 
 " demonstration " of greeting which Sir Edward 
 Goschen encountered when our train puffed into Liver- 
 pool Street Station a little after eleven o'clock. I did 
 not wait to watch it, nor even to claim my baggage, for 
 there was a hungry first edition waiting for my " story " 
 at The Daily Mail office, and to Carmelite House I flew 
 in the first taxi into which I could leap. By midnight 
 Beattie, the night editor, was tearing " copy "' from my 
 hands as fast as an Underwood could reel it off, and it 
 was rapidly approaching breakfast -time when I called 
 it a night's work and went to bed — in England at last. 
 
 187
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 MORE than once during the last phase of our 
 exciting journey to England, across the mine- 
 strewn waters between the Hook and Harwich, I re- 
 flected that I seemed doomed to take up my residence 
 on British soil in war-time. It was in the spring of 
 1900, in the anxious days between Ladysmith and 
 Mafeking, when the tide of victory was still running 
 in favour of the Boers, that I first arrived in London, 
 and my lot was cast there for the succeeding year and 
 a half of the South African struggle. I felt certain 
 that the feverish interest with which even the sluggish 
 British temperament had followed every detail of a 
 campaign ten thousand miles away, and which en- 
 grossed only a fraction of the Empire's strength, 
 would pale into tepid insignificance compared to the 
 concern which would be generated by a tremendous 
 European war only a channel-crossing distant. But I 
 had time for only one breakfast and one morning's 
 papers before I realized that John Bull had donned, 
 even for Armageddon, the garment in which his bosom 
 swells the proudest — the armour of invincible inex- 
 citability. 
 
 Actually the only wrougft-up people in the British 
 Isles during the first week of the war appeared to 
 be the frantic American tourist refugees, who, of 
 course, heavily outnumbered their brothers and sisters 
 188
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 in wretchedness whom I had left behind in Germany. 
 If it had not been for the frantic transatlantic sob 
 and w^orry fraternity storming the steamship and ex- 
 press companies' offices in Cockspur Street and the 
 Haymarket on the morning of Saturday, August 8, 
 when I went out to look for the war in London, no one 
 could possibly have made me believe that such a thing 
 existed. Such portions of the community as had not 
 started for the links, the ocean, the river or the coun- 
 try " as usual " were demeaning themselves as self- 
 respecting, imperturbable Britons customarily do on 
 the edge of a week-end. The seaside hoHday season 
 was at its zenith. The immortal " Twelfth," when 
 grouse -shooting begins, was approaching. Everybody 
 who was anybody was *' out of town," and stayed 
 there. It was only those fussy, fretting Americans 
 who insisted upon losing their equilibrium and con- 
 verting the most placid metropolis in the universe into 
 a bedlam of unseemly agitation and alarm. It was 
 " extraordinary," Englishmen said, how Americans 
 resolutely declined to take a lesson from the composite 
 stolidity of Britain, preferring to give their emotions 
 unrestrained rein and to keep the cables hot in imperious 
 demands for ships, gold and other panaceas for the 
 scared and stranded. Which reminds me to say that 
 traditional British hospitality to the stranger within 
 the gate was never showered more graciously on 
 American friends than in that trying hour. 
 
 The British had worried a whole week about the 
 war already. That was a departure and a concession 
 of no mean magnitude, for it is their boast and pride 
 that they never *' worry." Having, however, yielded 
 to such un-British instincts in the earliest hours of the 
 
 189
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 crisis, they pulled themselves together and swore a 
 solemn resolve, come what may, not soon again to suc- 
 cumb to indecorous habits which the world associated 
 exclusively with the explosive French or the irrespon- 
 sibly impulsive ' ' Yankees. ' ' I felt instinctively that an 
 effectual rebuke was being administered to me person- 
 ally by the writer of the following newspaper review 
 of London after three days of war : 
 
 " A new metal has come into the London crowd out 
 of the crucible of these last few days. The froth and 
 fume of flag-wagging have evaporated; so, too, have 
 lifted bone-quaking mists of dread and suspense. Ex- 
 ultation and depression are alike unhealthy. It is good 
 that we are now free from them. 
 
 " The faces in the street are the barometers of the 
 souls that men hide. It does one's heart good to walk 
 London and to behold that very notable rise — apparent 
 to every one and swift in its example — of the mercury 
 of the people. The great war took all our comprehen- 
 sions unawares. Although it has boded for years, it 
 walked at last like an unbelievable spectre into a warm 
 and lighted room. \\^iat wonder that we were shaken ? 
 What wonder at a creeping ague of the spirit in front 
 of the unknown ? 
 
 " The dizziness has gone. The trial before us, black 
 as it is, is not so black as our anticipation of it. We 
 have already surprised ourselves no less than we have 
 confounded our enemies by our rally and our readi- 
 ness. The financial situation is saved, the banks re- 
 open, the food supplies are safeguarded, and prices 
 controlled. 
 
 ** A tremendous accession of calmness and reliance 
 190
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 has come to the nation by the appointment of Lord 
 Kitchener to the War Office. The news that the iVrmy 
 is in his hands, a rock of a man, has swept through 
 London Hke a vivifying breeze. 
 
 " London is swinging back to as much of its normal 
 life as possible. She has found herself. She is bravely 
 being the usual London — the great city serene." 
 
 Far more profitable, obviously, than huntmg war 
 excitement was examination of the causes which ac- 
 counted for its absence, and to that I forthwith devoted 
 myself. In the first place there was the na\y, " Eng- 
 land's All in All." By a fortuitous circumstance, for 
 which, with all his faults, the Empire must render 
 imperishable gratitude to its young half-American 
 late First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, 
 the Fleet was instantly at " war stations," fully mo- 
 bilized, and in a state of battle-readiness and general 
 efficiency unparalleled in British history. War ma- 
 noeuvres on an unapproached scale had been in pro- 
 gress for the preceding fortnight or three weeks. Only 
 the merest word of command was wanting to convert 
 the Grand Fleet into the battering ram and " sure 
 shield," to constitute which in the hour of emergency 
 it had been created. " Ringed by her leaden seas," 
 which were held, moreover, by a *' supreme " armada, 
 there seemed every justification for equanimity, for the 
 United Kingdom has no fron'tiers which an invading 
 army can violate as long as Britannia rules the waves. 
 
 The domestic political situation, more menacingly 
 turbulent than at any time within the memory of living 
 Englishmen, had been resolved with miraculous rapid- 
 ity and completeness. " Revolution " in Ulster, on 
 
 191
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 which the Germans had so fondly banked, subsided as 
 effectually as if it had never raised its head. " We will 
 ourselves defend the coasts of Ireland," declared John 
 Redmond in the House of Commons in a speech which 
 will never die, '' and I say to the Government that they 
 may to-morrow withdraw every one of their troops 
 from Ireland." Mrs. Pankhurst, freshly released from 
 a periodical hunger-striking sojourn in Brixton jail, 
 announced that the suffragettes had stacked arms and 
 now knew only womankind's duty to England. That 
 sent another Berlin dream careening into oblivion. 
 ** His Majesty's Loyal Opposition " proclaimed in Par- 
 liament through the mouth of the Conservative leader, 
 Bonar Law, that the Government's political opponents 
 were prepared to accord it " unhesitating support." In 
 the Government itself the " Potsdam Party," as that 
 relentless iconoclast, Leo Maxse, long termed the co- 
 terie which was for peace with Germany at almost any 
 price, was either weeded out or suppressed. Lord 
 Morley, the Lord President of the Council; " Honest 
 John " Burns, still true to convictions. President of the 
 Local Government Board; and Charles P. Trevelyan, 
 Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of Education, 
 unobtrusively retired from Mr. Asquith's official 
 family in consequence of their inability to sanction the 
 war. They have played their parts meantime with 
 honourable consistency — by mamtaining an hermetical 
 silence on questions of the war. And finally, though 
 primarily in popular judgment. Lord Haldane, the 
 graduate of Gottingen, the translator of Schopenhauer 
 and the admirer of German Geist, was driven by scan 
 dalized public opinion from the War Office, whither 
 he had just come as an '' assistant " to the Prime Minis- 
 192
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 ter, whose cabinet portfolio was the Secretaryship for 
 War. Most of England sighed with thankful relief 
 when the able Scotch lawyer and philosopher whom 
 many of his contemporaries accuse of responsibility for 
 Britain's military unpreparedness, beat an ignominious 
 retreat back to his regular post, the wool-sack, which, 
 as Lord Chancellor, he by general consent conspicuously 
 adorned. The country's relief became enthusiastic 
 assurance when the lawyer, Asquith himself, retired 
 from the War Office, to make way for the soldier, Kit- 
 chener, who was recalled by telegram the day before 
 from Dover, just as he was about to board ship for 
 Cairo, to resume his duties as the ruler of Egypt. With 
 the " Potsdam Party " banished or made harmless, 
 the Cabinet was now regarded as satisfactorily purged. 
 The public heard with boundless gratification that the 
 " strong men " of the Government — Grey, Lloyd- 
 George and Churchill — had been uncompromisingly 
 for war from the start as the only recourse compatible 
 with British honour, to say nothing of the elementary 
 dictates of self-preservation. It was at length pos- 
 sible for Mr. Asquith to assure the country that he pre- 
 sided over an administration of whose unity of view 
 and determination there was no shadow of a doubt — a 
 Government which was resolved, as Sir Edward Grey's 
 great speech in the House of Commons on August 3 
 set forth, to accomplish three cardinal purposes: 
 
 1. To protect the defenceless French coast against 
 attack by the German navy; 
 
 2. To defend the integrity of Belgium; and 
 
 3. To put forth all Britain's strength and not run 
 away from, the obhgations of honour and interest. 
 
 o 193
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 WTien the events of the Great War, and perhaps the 
 chief actor-, in it themselves, have passed away, some 
 British historian wall almost certainly arise to tell the 
 world the story — the " inside story " — of how Mr. 
 Asquith's Cabinet, through three days and nights of 
 doubts, uncertainties, trials and tribulations, crossed 
 the Rubicon to the shore of unanimity on the subject 
 of British participation. There were moments, beyond 
 all question, when that issue hung perilously in the 
 balance. The French Government's frantic eleventh- 
 hour appeals for a decision in DowTiing Street are 
 graphic evidence of the vacillation which prevailed — a 
 species of tentativeness which has seldom been missing 
 from the British conduct of the purely diplomatic 
 affairs of the war. The ministerial debates during 
 which the die was cast in favour of war will make im- 
 mortal reading, even if only a digest of them is all that 
 is vouchsafed to posterity. The " strong men " of the 
 Government, if report is reliable, were called upon to 
 fight valiantly and ceaselessly to avoid England's 
 *' running away from the obligations of honour and 
 interest." The tense interval which ensued while they 
 were battering down the trenches of scepticism, 
 chicken-heartedness and nonchalance among their 
 Cabinet colleagues caused a delay which might easily 
 have proved of fatal import ; for the decision to throw 
 the strength of the British army, as well as the navy, 
 into the scales was under discussion, and it is conceiv- 
 able that the Expeditionary Force, which it was eventu- 
 ally determined to send, might have been kept back for 
 weeks, or even altogether, instead of the mere days its 
 dispatch was actually retarded. Disaster incalculable 
 would almost inevitably have resulted in that event. 
 194
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 The indispensable and all-governing preliminary 
 measures for war in respect of domestic politics, the 
 Government and the naval and military administration 
 having thus been taken, equally radical precautions 
 were invoked to put the nation's economic house in 
 order. The Stock Exchange, following the lead of 
 New York, Paris and Berlin, had shut dowTi as early 
 as July 31, in order that mere insensate panic on the 
 part of the speculative and investing world might not 
 degenerate into irretrievable rout. War having de- 
 scended with irresistible suddenness during the " week- 
 end " preceding the traditional August Bank Holiday 
 (Monday, the 3rd), a meeting of great financiers in 
 the Bank of England on the holiday itself decided to 
 prolong it, as far as banks and bankers were concerned, 
 for three days, i.e., until Friday, the 7th, in what 
 turned out to be the well-grounded hope that public 
 excitement would meantime subside and prevent 
 " runs " ruinous alike to banks and depositors. A 
 moratorium was estabhshed. The Bank discount -rate, 
 which had already vaulted from four to eight per cent., 
 was now raised to ten, an unheard-of figure, which 
 effectually curbed the lust of persons anxious to profit 
 from war abnormalities or otherwise indulge in opera- 
 tions not consistent with the gravity of the hour. 
 
 It was mainly these things — wholesome, substantial 
 proofs that their rulers had grappled with the situation 
 with bold initiative — ^that inspired the people of London 
 with reassurance, which, diluted with the stoicism 
 of the British character, became calm confidence 
 Gibraltar-like in its inflexibility. She had " the men," 
 England was saying; she had " the ships," and, 
 Parhament having voted an initial war fund of one 
 
 195
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 hundred million pounds as unconcernedly as if it were a 
 thousand-pounds grant for a new stores-shed at Wool- 
 wich arsenal, she unmistakably had " the money," too. 
 But even more self-comforting, if possible, than this 
 iron trust in her own inexhaustible resources was 
 England's conviction in the invincibihty of her Allies. 
 Was not even little Belgium holding back the flower 
 of the German army before Liege ? Even in the un- 
 likely event of Liege's fall, would not the impregnable 
 fortress of Namur provide Krupp guns with a still 
 tougher nut to crack ? Those were, alas ! the hours in 
 which the existence of the forty-two-centimetre siege 
 gun was not even mooted in ostrich England. France ? 
 The Germans would find a vastly different antagonist 
 awaiting them this time in the Ardennes, the Vosges 
 passes and along the Meuse and the Sambre. There 
 was a " New France," a France of elan and iron. It 
 was the virile Republic of Poincare, Delcasse, Joffre, 
 Bleriot, Pegoud and Carpentier, with w^hich the 
 Prussian hosts must this time measure lances, not 
 the degenerate Empire of the third Napoleon, which 
 crumbled at Sedan and Metz and surrendered Paris. 
 Russia ? " Can't you just hear the steam-roller 
 rumbling across East Prussia and thundering at the 
 gates of Berlin ?" a great English peer asked me, in all 
 seriousness, during my first week in London. " Isn't 
 the tread of the Czar's countless millions, pounding 
 remorselessly toward the w^est, almost audible ?" he 
 persisted. Milhons of EngHshmen were thinking and 
 saying the same thing. As for the German army, almost 
 as many of them were convinced that that " over- 
 organized, peace-stale " military establishment, which 
 was a magnificent spectacle on parade, but "lacked 
 196
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 leaders experienced in modern campaigning," would 
 crash to pieces not only against " superior numbers " 
 but against Allied troops and commanders who had 
 been fighting great wars this past quarter of a century 
 in Africa and Asia ! 
 
 London's feeHngs toward Germany seemed, indeed, 
 almost compassionate. Many people, otherwise sane, 
 talked about the war being over by Christmas. 
 The Kaiser's navy would come out and be smashed, 
 they calculated, and such work as had not already 
 been accomplished by the Allied armies within the 
 Fatherland's eastern and western frontiers would 
 soon be completed by " internal collapse," industrial 
 stagnation, national impoverishment and universal 
 starvation. Poor Germany ! She had brought it on 
 herself. Her end, after a peace soon to be dictated 
 in Berlin, would manifestly be speedy and annihilating. 
 The Social Democrats, it was true, were bamboozled 
 into support of the war by fictitious assurances that 
 the sword had been " forced " into Germany's un- 
 willing and blameless hand, but the scales would 
 presently fall from their eyes, and then woe betide 
 whatever remained of the Hohenzollerns' ravished, 
 defenceless realm ! Street-hawkers in the Strand were 
 selling blatant copies — a penny each — of The Kaiser's 
 Last Will and Testament. Would William II be sent 
 to St. Helena, like the other Napoleon, or be interned 
 in some more accessible point in the British Empire, to 
 pass the remaining days of his humiliation and re- 
 morse ? And the " Clown Prince " with him, of course. 
 These were the reveries of Britain in the early days of 
 August, 1914. Nothing disturbed them except the 
 creaking and the rumbling of the Russian steam-roller. 
 
 197
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Those being dulcet reverberations, John Bull paused 
 eagerly in the midst of his musings to let them lull him 
 
 into a still deeper siesta of complacency and optimism 
 
 Serene and imperturbable as the vast majority of 
 Englishmen were, the responsible leaders of the nation 
 were under no delusions as to the magnitude of the. 
 task now confronting them. To the country's intense 
 astonishment, though Lord Roberts had been dinning 
 it in their ears incessantly for at least five years 
 previous, England found itself in a state of practical 
 impotence as far as effective participation in modern 
 large-scale military operations was concerned. In the 
 same five minutes during which Parliament voted 
 one hundred million pounds as a first war credit, it 
 also sanctioned an increase of the British army by 
 five hundred thousand men. At that moment the 
 Home military establishment, which was immediately 
 mobilized as " The British Army Expeditionary Force " 
 when England decided to enter the war with her soldiers 
 as well as her sailors, consisted of eight divisions of 
 all arms — roundly, one hundred sixty thousand men. 
 An organization of another half-million troops, officered 
 and equipped for a great Continental campaign, could 
 not be stamped out of the ground. Its production, 
 even in a country with the glorious military traditions 
 of England, was manifestly fraught with stupendous 
 difficulties. There was no mistrust of British patriot- 
 ism; but when men recalled the futility of Lord 
 Roberts' efforts to implant in England's conscience 
 the necessity of some form of National Service — how 
 he not only failed, but was ridiculed and vilified for 
 pursuing his sagacious crusade in the face of merciless 
 rebuff — and when inherent British repugnance to 
 198
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 " soldiering " and even to wearing uniforms was 
 remembered, there were widespread misgivings. 
 
 Prussian militarism long filled me with abhorrence. 
 I had learned to detest it not as an institution, but for 
 its numerous disgusting manifestations, principally the 
 arrogance of its gilded popinjays and the brutal and 
 overweening contempt in which their traditions and 
 training taught them to hold mere civilian microbes. 
 Yet in those frantic hours when hopelessly unready 
 military England was compelled to patch up an army for 
 battle against the world's most scientific war-machine, 
 I pondered over what a blessing a little " mili- 
 tarism " would have been for the British democracy. 
 I had seen Germany trooping off to war, singing, 
 cheering and flower-garnished; and I knew that her 
 debonair demeanour was due less to lust for the fray — 
 the great mass of the nation was animated by no such 
 sentiment as that — than to the realization, which 
 sprang from immutable facts and numbers, that her 
 citizen army was equal to almost any emergencies it 
 would be called upon to meet. Germany was a nation 
 in arms. England was a nation in difficulties. How 
 grotesquely unprepared to play a commensurate part 
 in a military war, compared to her Continental allies 
 and foes, this table showing the size of the various 
 armies indicates : 
 
 
 Peace Footing. 
 
 War Footing. 
 
 Guns. 
 
 Great Brita-n 
 
 234,000 . . 
 
 380,000 . 
 
 1,000 
 
 Austria- Hungary. . 
 
 500,000 . . 
 
 2,200,000 . 
 
 2,^oo 
 
 France (including Algeria] 
 
 790,000 
 
 4,000,000 
 
 4,200 
 
 Germany . . 
 
 850,000 
 
 6,000,000 
 
 5,500 
 
 Russia 
 
 1,700,000 . . 
 
 7,000,000 
 
 6,000 
 
 Lord Kitchener was obviously the man of the hour. 
 A " driver " primarily, rather than a strategist, tactician 
 
 199
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 or field-marshal, his appointment to the War Secretary- 
 ship demonstrated that whoever was responsible 
 for it — men said it was Lord Northcliffe — recognized 
 instantly the all-overshadowing requirement: a re- 
 cruiting sergeant. Joffre, the French Commander-in- 
 Chief, would necessarily retain the supreme direction 
 of the Allied forces operating against the German front 
 in France and Belgium. England's part was to send 
 him men. And the one to find, drill and equip them 
 was unmistakably Kitchener of Khartum, South Africa, 
 India and Egypt, the " organizer " of victory against 
 the fuzzy-\vuzzies and the Boers, the disciplinarian 
 who had galvanized the Indian army into new^ life, 
 and the administrator who was licking Egypt into 
 Imperial shape. There would be time enough for the 
 war itself to produce another Wellington or Roberts. 
 What was needed now was men, rifles and guns, cart- 
 ridges, shells and uniforms, war-planes, motor-lorries 
 and hospital-trains and all the other innumerable im- 
 pedimenta of modern man-killing. The summoning to 
 the task of the big bluff soldier who first saw the light 
 in County Keriy, who was looked upon as the incarna- 
 tion of initiative and relentless efficiency, and who had 
 proved his right so to be considered, was elementary 
 and inevitable. It was work for a " sergeant-major " 
 and a " drill-sergeant " rather than for a Napoleonic 
 genius; and when England learned that " K.," as he is 
 affectionately known in the army, was engaged on the 
 prodigious job, England took heart. She responded 
 with a will to his first appeal for men. I found the 
 hoardings of London were plastered with it on the 
 morning of August 8. It read as follows* 
 
 200
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU. 
 
 A CALL TO ARMS. 
 
 An addition of 100,000 men to his Majesty's Regular x^rmy 
 
 is immediately necessary in the present grave National 
 
 Emergency. 
 
 Lord Kitchener is confident that this appeal will be at once 
 
 responded to by all those who have the safety of our 
 
 Empire at heart. 
 
 TERMS OF SERVICE. 
 
 General Service for a period of 3 years or until the war is 
 
 concluded. 
 
 Age of Enlistm.ent between 19 and 30. 
 
 HOW TO JOIN. 
 
 Full information can be obtained at any Post Office in the 
 Kingdom or at any Military depot. 
 
 GOD SAVE THE KING ! 
 
 In the past England's volunteer army had been 
 maintained by a recruiting system which produced, on 
 the average, about thirty-five thousand new men a 
 year. They did not come easity, even in halcyon peace 
 times, and the gaily-caparisoned recruiting sergeant in 
 Trafalgar Square, who would buttonhole a hundred 
 likely " Tommies " in a day, earned well his fee if he 
 succeeded in inducing ten of them to " take the shilling." 
 It remained to be seen if " the present grave National 
 Emergency " would find dormant in Britain military 
 talent and inclination hitherto undreamt of. In the 
 opening flush of the excitement and enthusiasm which 
 the war engendered. Lord Kitchener's hopes were satis- 
 
 201
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 factorily realized. Recruiting offices in numerous 
 districts were literally stormed. The response from 
 the middle, " upper-middle " and upper classes was par- 
 ticularly buoyant. Duke, peer, aristocrat, nobleman, 
 " nut," banker, la\vyer, doctor, merchant, teacher and 
 clerk came forward splendidly. But artisan, docker and 
 miner lagged. The lower class revealed somewhat of an 
 inclination to throng the public-houses rather than the 
 recruiting-offices. It seemed evident at the outset that 
 it was not they who were bent on saving England. 
 They gave disquieting indication that their sort of pa- 
 triotism was primarily individual self-preservation ; that 
 for them, love of country began at home. A waking-up 
 process in their unenlightened ranks was destined to 
 come to pass, thanks mainly to " separation allowances" 
 for missus and the kids, but it was never to attain the 
 dimensions of a rousing which extorted from their 
 atrophied intelligence even an approximate apprecia- 
 tion of their obligations or their country's peril. Bri- 
 tain's war is being waged, as it will be won — speaking 
 broadly — by the patriotism and blood of the ex- 
 coriated ''better classes." The struggle had been 
 in progress for more than a year, at a cost of nearly 
 five hundred thousand British casualties, when it 
 was still necessary for Lloyd-George to remind work- 
 ing-class England, in as unqualified language as a poli- 
 tician dare speak to the nation's electoral masters, that 
 it was not doing its full duty. 
 
 While Britain at large still hugged the delusion of 
 easy victory, in grotesque underestimation of the 
 enemy's power, and while Kitchener's recruit-finding 
 machinery was being put in vigorous motion, the War 
 Office, in co-operation with the navy, was accomplish- 
 
 202
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 ing as magnificent a piece of military work as army 
 annals hold — the silent landing of the British Expedi- 
 tionary Force of one hundred and sixty thousand men, 
 with its full complement of horses, guns and stores, on 
 the shores of France. That feat will live as immortal 
 disproof of the charge popular in the United States 
 that " hustle '' is a word which is conspicuously missing 
 from the British lexicon. Compared to it, our " hustle ' ' 
 in landing an army in Cuba in 1898 was the quint es- 
 sense of procrastination and muddle. The British 
 railways had been taken over by the Government co- 
 incident with the arrival of war, an " Executive Com- 
 mittee " consisting of the General Managers of the 
 main companies having been established more than a 
 year previous as an advisory council for such an emer- 
 gency as had now supervened. Embarkation of the 
 Expeditionary Force commenced on the night of Au- 
 gust 7. Admiral Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief of 
 the Grand Fleet, assured Lord Kitchener that the 
 channel passage was as safe as the Thames itself. The 
 British public, receiving its first lesson in relentless 
 censorship of war news, was kept so effectually in the 
 dark as to the dispatch of the largest army which ever 
 left English shores that it knew nothing whatever of 
 it till the host was at its destination, with breasts bared 
 to the foe. The landing of Sir John French's legions 
 on the soil of France was accomplished, complete in 
 every detail, by August 17. 
 
 British railways, when the record of that marvel of 
 transportation is compiled, will share the honours with 
 the ironclads of Britain's navy and the liners of her 
 mercantile marine. Southampton being the main port 
 of departure, the performance of the London and 
 
 203
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 South-Western Railway, which has carried so many 
 thousand Americans in pacific days from Waterloo 
 Station to the ship's side, is a case in point. I heard 
 Sir H. A. Walker, the " South- Western's " general man- 
 ager make before the American Luncheon Club in 
 London the first announcement of the railways' part 
 in England's military mobilization. With his subse- 
 quent permission, I was privileged to give the British 
 public its first information on that subject. The L. & 
 S. W. had been assigned the task of making ready for 
 dispatch to Southampton within sixty hours three 
 hundred and fifty trains of thirty cars each. It did the 
 trick in forty-five hours. During the first three weeks 
 of war there were dispatched to and unloaded at the 
 ships' sides seventy-three of such trains every fourteen 
 hours. They arrived from the four quarters of the 
 kingdom, and none of them was late. " I come from 
 the land of ' big railway stunts,' " said Henry W. 
 Thornton, the American general manager of the Great 
 Eastern railway when Sir H. A. Walker had told this 
 convincing story of British " hustle." " We think we 
 are ' pulling off ' some feat when we handle G. A. R. 
 encampments and national conventions, but what Bri- 
 tish railways accomplished in the ten days between 
 August 7 and 17 last may fairly be claimed as a unique 
 record in railway history." What Mr. Thornton 
 modestly failed to add was that he himself, as a col- 
 league presently bore testimony, had played a con- 
 spicuous role in the drama of British military mobiliza- 
 tion. Certain inanimate things, almost as well known 
 to Americans as Mr. Thornton, played big parts, too. 
 The palatial Mauretania, with her suites de luxe bat- 
 tered into cargo-room for Tommy Atkins, and her big 
 204
 
 COMPLACENCY RULES THE WAVES 
 
 new sister, Aquitania, with only a maiden crossing or 
 two to her credit, similarly knocked to pieces, made in- 
 cessant trips back and forth between Southampton and 
 other channel ports to Dieppe, Boulogne, Calais and 
 Dunkirk, landing in France on each occasion no less 
 than five thousand British fighting-men, ready for 
 death and glory. 
 
 Each mother's son of them carried with him this 
 little personal message from Lord Kitchener: 
 
 '* You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King 
 to help our French comrades against the invasion 
 of a common enemy. You have to perform a task 
 which will need your courage, your energy, your 
 patience. 
 
 " Remember that the honour of the British army 
 depends on your individual conduct. It will be your 
 duty, not only to set an example of discipline and 
 perfect steadiness under fire, but also to maintain the 
 most friendly relations with those whom you are 
 helping in this struggle. The operations in which 
 you are engaged will, for the most part, take place 
 in a friendly country, and you can do your own 
 country no better service than in showing yourself in 
 France and Belgium in the true character of a British 
 soldier. 
 
 " Be invariably courteous, considerate, and kind. 
 Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property, 
 and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You 
 are sure to meet \\dth a welcome, and to be trusted; 
 your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust. 
 Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. 
 So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. 
 
 205
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 In this new experience you may find temptations in 
 wine and women. You must entirely resist both 
 temptations, and, while treating all women with 
 perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy. 
 
 " Do your duty bravely. 
 
 " Fear God. 
 
 " Honour the King. 
 
 " Kitchener, Field-Marshal." 
 
 I remained in England only a week after my arrival 
 from Germany. Part of the time was pleasantly 
 spent editing a special " American edition " of The 
 Times for Lord Northchffe, who placed the full 
 machinery of his journalistic organization at the 
 disposal of the " Yankee War Refugees." He was 
 only prevented from extending them the hospitality 
 of Sutton Place, his lovely estate in Surrey, now a 
 hospital, for a " week-end " outing by the inability of 
 the railways to guarantee the necessary special train 
 facilities. To my astonishment but unalloyed dehght 
 Lord Northcliffe " ordered " me to take a month's 
 vacation in the United States. He thought my family 
 and kinsmen would hke to have a look at an " Enghsh 
 spy," fresh from Germany, before the earmarks of his 
 nefarious trade had entirely evaporated, and so, having 
 obtained the last available bunk in that veteran Cunard 
 hulk, s.s. Campania, which had brought my wife 
 and me to Europe on our honeymoon voyage, in 1901, 
 I sailed away from Liverpool on Saturday, August 15, 
 along with twelve hundred or fifteen hundred other 
 sardines packed in an eighteen-knot tin. 
 
 206
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 PRO.ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 SOMEWHERE in E. W. Hornung's Raffles, there 
 is this homely bit of epigrammatic philosophy: 
 
 " Money lost, little lost. Honour lost, much lost. 
 Pluck lost, all lost !" 
 
 The aphorism was paraphrased by my fellow war 
 refugees in the Campania, tucked away in couples, 
 trios, quintettes and baker's dozens into cabins which 
 the Cunarder's designers back in the dim mid- Victorian 
 past built for a half or a third as many passengers. 
 
 They made it read like this : 
 
 " Luggage lost, all lost !'* 
 
 Now and then some particularly sentimental soul 
 would spare a humanitarian thought for the minor 
 horrors of the calamity which had fallen upon Europe 
 and civilization. But his heart would not throb for 
 long when somebody would break in upon his maudHn 
 reflections with a really harrowing tale of trunks left 
 behind in Berlin, Hamburg or Cologne, in Carlsbad, 
 Lucerne or Ostend, at the Gare du Nord in Paris, or 
 the quayside in Boulogne or Calais; or of suit-cases 
 and " innovations " lost, strayed or stolen in the 
 maelstrom of military traffic in Germany, Belgium 
 or France; or of Packard, Peerless, Studebaker or 
 Overland cars summarily abandoned somewhere in the 
 war zone. What were Europe's travails to these 
 genuine disasters ? It was all right for the war-mad 
 
 207
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Continent to deck itself in battle-paint if sanguinarily 
 inclined, but ruthlessly and without notice to break 
 up Americans' travelhng plans, knock Cook tours into 
 a cocked hat, interrupt " cures," and on top of that, if 
 you please, actually to play ducks and drakes with the 
 personal effects of free-born iVmerican citizens — all 
 because, forsooth, eight or ten million troops required 
 the right of way and insisted upon getting it — that 
 was manifestly the last word in inconsiderateness. 
 Incidentally, of course, it denoted how hopelessly 
 inefficient Europe was, anyway, in the presence of a 
 sudden emergency. Why, the general manager of 
 a cross-town transfer company in New York would 
 have tackled the job without turning a hair. Bah ! 
 It served Americans right — quoth a promenade -deck 
 psychologist. Year in and year out they'd been 
 lavishing " good United States dollars " on Europe, 
 and this was her gratitude to her best paying guests. 
 There was no dissent from the view, which prevailed 
 from rudder to bow, that it was the ragged edge of 
 what Bostonians call " the limit." " See America 
 first 1" ceasing to be mere admonition, was burnt there 
 and then into the hearts of our luggage-bereft ship's 
 company with all the force of a fervid national aspira- 
 tion. " Never again !" was the way my Chicago 
 millionairess deck-chair neighbour, who looted the 
 Rue de la Paix annually, sententiously epitomized not 
 only her aggrieved sentiments, but those of nearly 
 everybody else. All swore a virtuous vow henceforth 
 to practise the stay-at-home habit and for the rest of 
 eternity let man-kilHng Europe wallow in its savagery. 
 The story of the exodus which the Second Book of 
 Moses records Wiii probably outhve the flight of the 
 208
 
 PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 children of Columbia across the Atlantic in the summer 
 of 1914. But that hegira will outrank its Egyptian 
 prototype in one gleaming respect — its atmosphere of 
 indomitable good humour, once the Campanians sur- 
 mounted the initial stage of grousing, groaning and 
 gnashing of teeth. 
 
 Bank presidents and college dons willing to be 
 buffeted across the ocean in the steerage; society 
 women who bunked contentedly on sofas in the 
 " ladies' saloon " of the stuffy second cabin; Pittsburgh 
 plutocrats game enough to sleep six in a stateroom 
 built for four ; pampered folk with French chefs at home, 
 who sat uncomplainingly through the interminable 
 and usually refrigerated " second serving " in the 
 Campania s old - fashioned dining - room ; company 
 lawyers with incomes the size of a King's civil list, 
 who considered themselves lucky to have captured the 
 hammocks of the fourth engineer or the hospital 
 attendant in the odoriferous hold; all these compatriots, 
 grinning and bearing, proved that after all we are the 
 most adaptable people on earth. After each and all of 
 us had exchanged tales of woe — everybody had one, 
 even Doctor Ella Flagg Young, the septuagenarian 
 Superintendent of Chicago's public schools, who was 
 chased out of the war-zone across Scandinavia into 
 England — and swopped stories of arrest or less thrilling 
 inconveniences, and abused the incompetent authorities 
 of the belligerent governments to our hearts' content, 
 with a slap now and then, to vary the monotony, at 
 our own United States — the Campania's passengers 
 soon shook down to what turned out to be as jolly a 
 crossing as any of us, I daresay, ever had. Between 
 thrills about imaginary " German cruisers " and equally 
 
 p 209
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 fantastic ** rumbling of naval artillery," and our 
 amusing discomforts, the week passed almost before we 
 knew it, and more quickly than some of us even wished. 
 There was, of course, that irrepressible Illinois State 
 Senator who circulated a petition to " censure " the 
 Cunard line for not sending us all home in the 
 Aquitania, even though the British Government had 
 requisitioned her for transport work ; but a much more 
 popular note was struck by my young friend, Miss 
 Marjorie Rice, a typical New York belle, who collected 
 a couple of hundred dollars with which to present 
 Captain Anderson with a souvenir of our gratitude 
 for having so gallantly brought us through invisible 
 dangers. German cruisers were still roaming in the 
 Atlantic, and, though we travelled at night with 
 masked lights and took various other precautions like 
 an occasional zigzag course, one never could tell, though 
 I think most of us banished all thought of peril once 
 we heard that British ironclads were keeping a lane 
 of safety for Uncle Sam's fretting sons and daughters 
 all the way from Fastnet to the Fire Island lightship. 
 Asked by the ship's ofhcers to tell " How the Germans 
 Went to War " at the last-night-out concert, to which 
 the Cunard Line with British reverence for tradition 
 still religiously adheres, I could confidently interpret 
 the sentiment of ever}' American aboard in voicing 
 deep thankfulness for the fact that Britannia ruled 
 the waves. Going back with us to the United States 
 was a batch of three or four young Germans, evidently 
 of university education, because their jowls were 
 embellished with sabre-cuts. They had been stopped 
 in England on their way home to fight, but were 
 graciously permitted to return whence they came 
 
 2IO
 
 PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 Timorous friends beseeched me to beware of " saying 
 too much " about the Germans in the hearing of 
 these would-be soldiers of the Kaiser; but I escaped 
 molestation and even heard next day that they thought 
 I had been " most fair." 
 
 Not till many days after we landed in New York 
 did I know that two very eminent representatives of 
 Allied Powers were sandwiched among the Campania's 
 home-fleeing American passengers — Sir Cecil Spring- 
 Rice, British Ambassador at Washington, and his 
 colleague of France, the cultured Monsieur Jusserand. 
 They had crossed in impenetrable incognito. Not only 
 were their names missing from the passenger-list 
 but if they had ever promenaded or eaten or smoked, 
 they must have done it in solitary enjoyment of their 
 o\vn ambassadorial society, as nobody during seven 
 whole days and nights ever heard of them or saw them, 
 or, what is vastly more miraculous aboard-ship, ever 
 even talked about them. American newspapermen 
 afloat in a liner like to flatter themselves that nothing 
 with even the remotest odour of news ever escapes their 
 insatiable quest. I had myself bored with strenuous 
 pertinacity into every news-well in the Campania, and 
 there were many. But Spring-Rice and Jusserand 
 eluded me as thoroughly as if they had been contra- 
 band stored away in the hold, or stokers who only 
 come to life out of the black hole of Calcutta once or 
 twice a trip, when everybody with a white face is 
 tight asleep. Bernstorff came in two days later like a 
 brass band. The British and French Ambassadors 
 broke into the United States, apparently, in felt-slippers 
 through a back door on a dark night. The manner of 
 the respective arrivals of the Allied and the German 
 
 211
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Ambassadors was to be characteristic of their conduct 
 in the country throughout the war. 
 
 On Monday, August 24, 1 was lunching in New York's 
 Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Bernstorff had landed that fore- 
 noon in the Dutch liner, Noordam. To my astonish- 
 ment, the Ambassador, whom I had noticed eating, a few 
 tables away, with James Speyer, arose and advanced 
 across the restaurant to where I was sitting. Bernstorff 
 and I were old acquaintances. I liked liim. Most 
 newspapermen did. Through long residence in 
 Washington, he had acquired an almost Rooseveltian 
 art in dealing with us. I used to see him regularly 
 during his periodical official visits to Berlin, having 
 known him professionally from the days he was 
 Counsellor of the German Embassy in London during 
 the Boer War. Few Englishmen are aware that Count 
 Bernstorff was born in England while his father was 
 serving as Prussian Minister to the Court of St. James. 
 History was destined to repeat itself in the case of the 
 son, who not only adopted the career of his father, but 
 when he became an ambassador to a neutral country 
 during one of Germany's wars was called upon to 
 occupy himself just as the elder Count Bernstorff had 
 done in London in 1870-71. The father put in most 
 of his time in a vain endeavour to persuade 
 Queen Victoria's Government to place an embargo on 
 shipment of British arms and ammunition to the 
 French. He failed as lamentably in that effort as his son 
 and heir was destined to do in the United States under 
 almost identical circumstances forty-four years later. 
 
 Smihng his most persuasive diplomatic grimace, 
 Count Bernstorff went straight to the object of his 
 luncheon-table call on me. 
 212
 
 PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 " Wile," he began, *' you've gone back on us ! I can 
 see your hand at work in the attitude the New York 
 Times has taken up." 
 
 I could not imagine at what the genial Count was 
 driving. Perhaps he had read in the preceding day's 
 Times my long account of the beginnings of the war as 
 I observed them in Berlin, or my introduction to the 
 Times' exclusive publication of the German White 
 Paper, printed that day. 
 
 " Your Excellency flatters me," I ventured to rejoin. 
 " I have only been in the country since Saturday night, 
 and my activities at the Times office have been limited 
 to the very prosaic duty of handing in several wads of 
 * copy ' written aboard-ship." 
 
 But Bernstorff knew better. I had poisoned the at- 
 mosphere of Times Square against Germany's holy 
 cause. He insisted upon thrusting upon me some oc- 
 cult influence over Mr. Ochs, the Times' able propri- 
 etor, and Mr. Miller, its brilliant editor, and said he 
 was going to see somebody or other at the Times later 
 in the day and " fix things up." Judging by the rivers 
 of interviews which thenceforth flowed in an unceas- 
 ing torrent from the Ambassador's headquarters in the 
 Ritz-Carlton, he must have seen not only some Times 
 men, but nearly all the journalists in Greater New 
 York. How satisfactorily he " fixed things up " with 
 the great newspaper which has proved to be the Allies' 
 most consistent and effective supporter in the United 
 States could be judged from next morning's Times, 
 which was about as anti-Bemstorffian as could be im- 
 agined. The Imperial German Press-Agent's palaver 
 about his ability to " fix things up " was bombast, pure 
 and unalloyed. There was never the slightest possi- 
 
 213
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 bility that he could " fix " anything in the New York 
 Times office or in any American newspaper office 
 where self-respect, journaHstic honour and rugged in- 
 dependence are enthroned. There are American news- 
 papers which lay no claim to these virtues, and their 
 names are undoubtedly, and long have been, carefully 
 card-indexed at 1435 Massachusetts Avenue, Wash- 
 ington, D.C. Some of their owners have decorations 
 bestowed by the Kaiser. 
 
 It proved to be a rare stroke of Fate which took me 
 to the Ritz-Carlton, for I was destined to be an eye- 
 witness of the assembling of the Kaiser's Great Gen- 
 eral Staff for the Germanization of American public 
 opinion on the war. Doctor Dernburg had arrived in 
 the Noordam with Count Bernstorff, and along with 
 them came Captain Boy-Ed, the Naval Attache at 
 Washington. I knew personally, from Berlin days, both 
 the ex-Colonial Secretary and the sailor. Dernburg, 
 before he was pitchforked into Government office from 
 the comparatively humble station of a bank director in 
 1906, was the most approachable of men. His com- 
 mand of the American language was remarkable — an 
 inheritance from his youth, part of which was spent 
 as a volunteer clerk in a Wall Street bank. I never 
 forgot my first call on him in Germany. I assumed 
 him to be a Jew, as his father was. Some Semitic 
 question of public interest was the news of the mo- 
 ment, and I regarded Dernburg an ideal man to inter- 
 view. With a smile I recall how, insistently disavow- 
 ing his origin, he told me I had come to " the wrong 
 address." Later I watched his tempestuous career as 
 administrator of the barren sand-wastes known as 
 German colonies, saw him give electioneering in the 
 214
 
 PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 Fatherland a new phase with his shirt-sleeves cam- 
 paigning methods, and observed his meteoric rise to 
 Imperial grace and political power, so soon to be fol- 
 lowed by his equally precipitate fall from those dizzy 
 heights. Dernburg's lack of manners and tact was 
 commonly said in Berhn to have led to his official 
 demise after less than four years of Cabinet glory. No 
 one ever questioned his eminent ability. But his repu- 
 tation as a banker rested on cold-blooded ruthlessness, 
 and when he attempted to carry those methods into a 
 bureaucratic government department, he struck snags 
 which \^Tecked his bark. Neither he nor I supposed 
 on August 24, 1914, when we chatted in the palm- 
 court of the Ritz-Carlton, that his attempt to trans- 
 plant Berlin ruthlessness into the Cnited States would 
 eventually prove his undoing there, too. 
 
 Captain Boy- Ed, as subsequent history was also to 
 show, was bent on practising in America the tactics 
 which won him renown and promotion in Germany. 
 Prior to coming to Washington as Count Bemstorff's 
 Naval Attache — the Kaiser had decided that the United 
 States navy was attaining dimensions which required 
 watching by a shrewd observer — the captain was von 
 Tirpitz' right-hand man at the Imperial Admiralty in 
 Berlin. He had charge of the so-caUed News Divi- 
 sion, nominally entrusted \vith the duty of informing 
 the Germian public of " routine naval intelligence, such 
 as accidents, transfers of ships and officers, etc., etc.," 
 as I once heard von Tirpitz persuasively and naively 
 describe the functions of the Xachrichten-Abte'ilung 
 during a periodical plea to the Reichstag for more 
 Dreadnoughts. Boy-Ed, the son of German parents 
 despite his exotic name, devoted himself chiefly in 
 
 215
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the years between 1906 and 1912 to conducting von 
 Tirpitz' astute propaganda for naval expansion. It 
 was the era in which the Kaiser's fleet was being con- 
 verted by leaps and bounds from a navy of obsolete 
 thirteen-thousand-ton ships of the Deutschlmid and 
 Braunschweig class into an armada of Dreadnoughts 
 and battle cruisers of the eighteen-thousand to twenty- 
 four-thousand-ton " all-big-gun " Ost-Friesland and 
 SeydUtz class. German public opinion required to be 
 carefully manipulated in order to secure parlia- 
 mentary sanction for " supplementary " appropriations 
 which rose by stealthy degree from ^12,000,000 to 
 5^23,000,000 a year. Boy-Ed was assigned the 
 responsible duty of organizing and carrying out the 
 necessary campaign of education, and right well and 
 thoroughly he did it. The shoals of pamphlets, books, 
 newspaper-articles, public-lectures, Navy League 
 speeches and other " educational " matter with which 
 the Fatherland was flooded — always with " England, 
 the Foe " as the leitmotif, — were to a large extent the 
 child of Boy-Ed's resourceful brain. He did not write 
 them all, of course, but he was their inspirer-in-chief. 
 I account him one of the real creators of the modern 
 German navy, second only to von Tirpitz himself. 
 It was " the chief's " idea, but Boy-Ed made its 
 materialization a practical possibility. 
 
 Knowing his methods, no revelations of his pernici- 
 ous activities in the United States ever surprised 
 me. He was only up to his old tricks, altering them 
 to suit the American climate and character but adhering 
 always to certain basic principles which had stood 
 him in such good stead in the Fatherland. It would 
 be ungrateful of me not to acknowledge numerous 
 216
 
 PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 professional courtesies received at Boy-Ed's hands 
 when he was misleading the press of Germany and the 
 world at the News-Division in Leipziger-Platz, Berlin. 
 He nearly had me arrested at the Imperial dockyard 
 in Wilhelmshaven in March, 1907, for gaining access, 
 despite thoroughgoing preventive measures, to the 
 launch of Germany's first Dreadnought, the Nassau, but 
 during his career at the Admiralty he more than made 
 up for that by enabling me, in the columns of The 
 Daily Mail, to be the medium of a formal discussion 
 between von Tirpitz and the British naval authorities 
 on the endlessly controversial question of Anglo- 
 German sea rivalry. For the best " copy " it was ever 
 my good fortune to send across the North Sea, my 
 unwithering gratitude is due, and is hereby expressed 
 to the shifty chieftain of Germany's war-time " intelli- 
 gence service " in the United States. 
 
 Who else besides Bernstorff, Dernburg, Boy-Ed and 
 Speyer attended the opening council of war of the 
 German field-marshals in the United States that broil- 
 ing August day at the Ritz-Carlton, I never learned 
 with certainty. Dernburg assured me that as far as 
 he was concerned, purely humanitarian business had 
 brought him to our generous shores; he had come to 
 collect funds for the German Red Cross, and he once 
 wrote me a letter on paper emblazoned with that 
 worthy organization's innocuous trade-mark. I sus- 
 pect that before the day was over Professor Miinster- 
 berg of Harvard, Poet Viereck of The Fatherland, and 
 Herman Ridder paid their respects to the propaganda- 
 chieftains, and received their orders; and probably 
 Julius P. Mayer, the New York manager of the 
 Hamburg-American Line, and Claussen, his expert 
 
 217
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 *' publicity manager," left their cards, too. Evidently 
 James Speyer thought his sequestered and palatial 
 home at Rhinebeck-on-the-Hudson, far from the 
 madding sleuths of the New York press, was a more 
 ideal retreat for so momentous a pow-wow, for it was 
 to that idyllic refuge that Count Bernstorff told me he 
 was immediately repairing. Purely diplomatic affairs 
 at Washington could obviously wait on the more tran- 
 scendent business the Imperial German Ambassador 
 now had in hand ; and before he quit the banks of the 
 Hudson for the shores of the Potomac, the Father- 
 land's marvellous attack on the natural sympathies of 
 the American Republic in the great war was launched 
 with all the force, skill and impudence of a German 
 assault on the frontier of a foe. 
 
 New York was clearly more feverishly interested in 
 the war than London. Nowhere in Fleet Street had I 
 seen such vibrant throngs in front of newspaper-offices, 
 as stood eager and transfixed by day and far into 
 the night in Times and Herald Squares, Columbus 
 Circle and Park Row. America might have been in 
 the fray herself, to judge by the one absorbing topic 
 which dominated men and women's talk and obsessed 
 their thoughts. Detached as we were, it was un- 
 mistakable that Europe's agony had eaten deep into 
 our souls, for even the baseball bulletin-boards were 
 now deserted in favour of those which were telling in 
 breathless telegrams of the German cannon-ball plunge 
 through Belgium toward the fatal Marne and of 
 Russia's seemingly irresistible advance into East 
 Prussia. I had heard no Englishmen arguing about 
 the issues of Armageddon or the kaleidoscopic events 
 of the battlefield with half the flaming ardour of those 
 218
 
 PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 Broadway war experts. In fact there were no black- 
 boards at all around which the British could hold 
 kerbstone parliaments, for Lord Kitchener's censorship 
 was not parting wdth news enough, apparently, to 
 make even the chalk worth while. In London I had 
 observed the inexplicable phenomenon that at the 
 moment when hell had broken loose for the British 
 Empire, great journals, instead of deluging the public 
 with news, actually reduced their ordinary size in some 
 cases to four pages, though I believe that fear of a print- 
 paper famine and disappearance of advertising had 
 something to do with those atrophied dimensions. 
 All in all, however, there Vv^as no doubt that isolated, 
 neutral America was excited about the war to a degree 
 which reduced British interest almost to nonchalance 
 by comparison. 
 
 Though I tarried in the East but forty-eight hours, 
 I was conscious of breathing almost exclusively pro- 
 Ally air. President Wilson's neutrality proclamation 
 was being respected in letter, as far as restraining 
 our people from actual breaches in favour of either 
 belligerent group was concerned, but every minute of 
 the day, everywhere, it was being vociferously violated 
 in spirit. Before the war was a month old, Americans 
 were already confessing freely that they were so 
 " neutral " that they didn't care who won as long as 
 Germany was " licked." They resigned themselves to 
 their Chief Magistrate's dictum that the country as such 
 must be guilty of no " un-neutral " acts, but it failed 
 lamentably to still the natural instincts of American 
 hearts which were beating fervently, irresistibly, for 
 the Alhes. Bernstorff's hour-by-hour interviews, 
 apologies and explanations, ^^liinsterberg's homihes, 
 
 219
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 The Fatherland^s vituperations, the Newyorker Staats- 
 zeitiing's editorials in English signed by Ridder and 
 *' boiler-plated " to any newspapers which would give 
 them space, " fair play " appeals from obsequious 
 ex-Berlin exchange-professors like Dean Burgess of 
 Columbia — all these things fell on deaf ears. None 
 of them could obliterate the crime of Germany, which 
 loomed ineradicable on the war horizon as Americans 
 scanned it — Belgium. All the instincts of American 
 justice, liberty, hum.anity and regard for treaty 
 obligations rebelled against " Necessity-knows-no-law " 
 and " scrap of paper " ethics. We had gone to war 
 ourselves, in 1898, to defend the rights of a small 
 nation. The spectacle of Military Germany trampling 
 little Belgium underfoot, causelessly, mercilessly, was 
 enough, had there been no other single issue to enlist 
 our sympathy, to vouchsafe it, whole-heartedly, to 
 the nations which were leagued in support of the old- 
 fashioned principle that Right is nobler than Might. 
 Thus was America's mind attuned in August, 1914, 
 and at least in the opinion-moulding area of the 
 country which lies between the seaboard and the line 
 where the Middle West begins, that mind was, with 
 American predilection for reaching right conclusions 
 spontaneously, irrevocably made up. The attempts of 
 the Propaganda Steam-Roller to flatten out the anti- 
 German prejudices provoked by the rape of Belgium 
 were frantic, but fruitless. The pre -digested baby 
 food which ambassadors and hyphenated pedagogues 
 and demagogues, brewers and rabbis now began to ladle 
 out for American consumption did not temper those 
 prejudices. Indeed, it was manifest that it was but 
 aggravating them. 
 220
 
 PRO-ALLY UNCLE SAM 
 
 The American General Brooke, attending the German 
 army manoeuvres in Silesia eight or nine years ago, 
 was asked by the Kaiser if he had ever been in 
 Germany before. " Never in this part," remarked 
 Brooke. " Where, then ?" persisted WilHam II. '* In 
 Cincinnati, Chicago and Milwaukee," replied the general. 
 I was about to enter " that part " of Germany now. 
 I was not there long before realizing that pro-Ally 
 sentiment was immeasurably less assertive, at any rate, 
 than in the outspokenly pro-Ally East. Chicago, of 
 course, has more Germans than Diisseldorf, and 
 Cincinnati and Milwaukee, in spots, are as Teutonic as 
 Hamburg or Bremen, so it was natural to find Deutsch- 
 land, Deutschland iiher Alles more than disputing 
 supremacy with Rule, Britannia. In Chicago pro- 
 Germanism was rampant and articulate. An article 
 written by me for the Chicago Tribune in the first 
 fortnight of September, in which I ventured to express 
 my opinion as to where the responsibility for the war 
 lay, how long it would last and who would win it, 
 brought do\\m on me as violent a torrent of abuse as if 
 it had been published in the Berliner Tageblait. For 
 saying that, in my judgment, the German War Party 
 had made the war ; that it would go on till Germany was 
 beaten to her knees, and that eventual exhaustion of 
 the Germanic Powers and the inexhaustible resources 
 of the Allies would win the war for the latter, I became 
 forthwith the target of all the forty-two-centimetre 
 guns in the Windy City. I almost felt I was back in 
 Germany again. 
 
 221
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 " We don't want to fight, 
 But, by Jingo I if we do, 
 We've got the men, 
 W^e've got the ships, 
 And we've got the money, too !" 
 
 WHEN during the dark hours of the Russo- 
 Turkish War in 1877 ^ London music-hall 
 comedian named McDermott popularized the chorus 
 of a ditty which has rung down the ages, he not only- 
 enriched the English language with a new synonym 
 for a war zealot — Jingo — but he epitomized British 
 faith in British invincibility and the basis on which 
 it is founded. McDermott's blustering ballad, the 
 Tipperary of its day, interpreted, by a fate which 
 seems strangely ironical in the light of current events, 
 Britain's determination to go to war to prevent the 
 Bear from grabbing Constantinople. 
 
 The song appHed precisely to conditions in this 
 country in midsummer, 19 14. Englishmen " didn't 
 want to fight " — abroad, at least, for they were looking 
 forward to coohng their belligerent ardour nearer 
 home, in Ireland. But when the violation of Belgium 
 dissipated all dissension in the British Government 
 on the question of intervention in a conflict which, 
 up to then, concerned purely the Dual and Triple 
 Alliances, and literally dragged Britain into the vortex 
 in the name of both her honour and interest, English- 
 222
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 men did want to fight. Taking quick stock of their 
 resources, they felt assured, in McDermott's immortal 
 words, that they had got '' the men, the ships, and the 
 money, too." But men, ships and money, vital as 
 they are, are useless without leaders, and it was natural 
 that Briton's first thoughts, in the dawn of the Empire's 
 supreme emergency, should be concerned with the 
 personnel of the helmsmen. A super-crisis calls 
 insistently for super-men, and in the midst of an era 
 which cynics call the age of mediocrities doubts were 
 not few that England might find herself fatally lacking 
 in a plight as stupendous as any Pitt, Nelson and 
 Wellington had ever faced. 
 
 With their astonishing capacity to stifle domestic 
 controversy and party bickerings on the threshold of 
 a foreign crisis. Englishmen decided that the first 
 essential was to repose implicit confidence in the 
 existing Government. Ireland, Labour, Suffragettes, 
 Opposition, the four thorns in the Asquith Administra- 
 tion's side, withdrew, leaving the cleavage they once 
 made so completely healed that hardly a scar remained. 
 The Liberal Cabinet, admittedly stale with nearly a 
 decade of uninterrupted power, might not contain all 
 the talents of statesmanship essential for the conduct 
 of a struggle on whose issue hung Imperial existence. 
 It was a Government overweighted with " tired 
 lawyers," consisting (with the exception of Lord 
 Kitchener) of exclusively professional pohticians, and 
 even tinged in important directions (like Lord Haldane) 
 with confessed Germanophihsm. It was a Govern- 
 ment long and openly charged by its foes with desiring 
 office at any cost and placing the perpetuation of its 
 hold on the fleshpots before any other interest. It 
 
 223
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 was a Government which had confessedly temporized 
 with the Irish yesterday and the Labour Party to-day 
 as the price of maintaining its Parhamentary existence. 
 It was finally a Government notoriously consisting of 
 rival internal factions best typified by the aristocratic 
 Imperialism of Sir Edward Grey on the one hand, and 
 on the other by the rugged and radical Democracy of 
 Mr. Lloyd-George. Yet the nation, in the presence 
 of peril palpably incalculable, relegated its criticisms, 
 its doubts and its carpings, and with one voice agreed 
 that " Trust the Government !" must be the slogan of 
 the hour. The Anglo-Saxon spirit of Fair Play 
 asserted itself. The country said that the Asquith 
 Administration must be given a chance to exhibit its 
 mettle. If it failed, there was always time for a reckon- 
 ing. The British Government of August, 1914, 
 entered upon the war clothed with a mandate as 
 sweeping in its powers as formal conferment of a 
 Dictatorship could have been — a woof of national 
 confidence amounting to little short of carte bla?iche, 
 John Bright once said that a British Government is 
 always annihilated by the war which it is called upon 
 to wage. But Englishmen wished Mr. Asquith's 
 Cabinet Godspeed, and by their unquestioning support 
 of every measure it proposed showed that their loyalty 
 and trust were real and sincere. 
 
 Although the British Government (by which is 
 meant only the Premier's Administration) consists of 
 twenty-one ministers of Cabinet rank, the war regime, 
 it was manifest from the start, would be confined to 
 five outstanding men combining the motive force of 
 the entire organization. These five were the Prime 
 Minister himself, the Foreign Secretary (Sir Edward 
 224
 
 PItolo] [Rcgiiialii Ifaiiie^ 
 
 KI(}H1 HUN. LLUVl) (iEOKGE. 
 
 [lo face p. 224.
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 Grey), the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Lloyd- 
 George), the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Win- 
 ston Churchill), and the Secretary for War (Lord 
 Kitchener). Although the highest -salaried member 
 of the Cabinet, the Lord High Chancellor (Lord Hal- 
 dane), drew ten thousand pounds a year, and there 
 were half-a-dozen others like the Home Secretary, the 
 Colonial Secretary, the Secretary for India and the 
 Presidents of the Board of Trade and Local Govern- 
 ment Board whose financial status (five thousand 
 pounds a year), outranked the four thousand five 
 hundred pounds which Mr. Churchill received, the 
 quintette named, by reason of their posts and person- 
 alities, was the logical inner Government to deal with 
 the war. That brilHant EngHsh essayist and bio- 
 grapher, Mr. A. G. Gardiner, even further deHmited 
 the numerical dimensions of the real War Government 
 when he said that " if Mr. Asquith is the brain of the 
 Cabinet, Sir Edward Grey is its character and Mr. 
 Lloyd-George is its inspiration." 
 
 Herbert Henry Asquith, Yorkshireman by birth 
 and barrister by profession, has been Prime Minister 
 for seven years, succeeding his late Liberal chieftain, 
 Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in 1908. Asquith, 
 whom Bannerman used to call " the sledge-hammer," 
 because of his lucidity of thought and expression, was 
 sixty-three years old in September, 1915. Although 
 not a Pitt, nor even a DisraeH or Palmerston, th^ 
 statesman who looks hke a Roman senator and is 
 gifted with eloquence in keeping was considered in 
 many respects a Heaven-sent blessing in the melting- 
 pot era of British history, for as a purely steadying 
 influence he is probably without a peer in contem- 
 
 9 225
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 porary politics. As a politician in the narrower sense 
 of a party disciplinarian, manager and leader he \vi\\ 
 rank with the craftiest names in his country's tortuous 
 history. British Liberalism has skated on perilous ice 
 following the reaction which swept the Conservative 
 Party from power after the Boer War and throughout 
 the era of Democratic radicalism in which Great 
 Britain has meantime had its being. That Mr. 
 Asquith's party is enabled to celebrate ten years of 
 sovereignty still strongly entrenched is by general 
 consent due to the astute generalship of its commander- 
 in-chief. Asquith is not commonly accused of imagin- 
 ativeness. He is too typical a British statesman for 
 that. His temperament is devoid of the adventurous, 
 like that of the true intellectual, and he is psycho- 
 logically fonder of harking to public opinion than 
 boldly leading it. When he coined the " Wait and 
 See " epigram during the Ulster crisis, he gave utter- 
 ance to a phrase which accurately epitomizes the ten- 
 tativeness so preponderant in his political career. 
 British procrastination and vacillation at vital periods 
 of the war were undoubtedly the reflex action of the 
 Prime Minister's own low-speed mental processes. Yet 
 in the revolt of the Curragh Camp olhcers, that strange 
 curtain-raiser of the impending Ulster crisis, which 
 threatened to embroil these fair isles in another Crom- 
 wellian trial of strength between Parliament and the 
 army, Mr. Asquith, by a courageous stroke of positive 
 genius — his own assumption of the Secret ar^^ship for 
 War in succession to the compromised Colonel Seely — 
 resolved into tranquillity and hope a situation more 
 menacing to civil peace in England than living Britons 
 had ever before lived through. Beneath Mr. Asquith's 
 226
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 polished exterior, unemotional mask and sweet reason- 
 ableness Germany, mistaking his for a peace-at-any- 
 price nature, made one of the most egregious of her 
 numerous and glaring miscalculations. 
 
 Only the results of the Peace Conference will deter- 
 mine the true ramifications of Sir Edward Grey's 
 reputation. It was deservedly high when the war 
 began. No Foreign Secretary in Europe approached 
 him in stature, with the possible exception of Delcasse. 
 He had long been Germany's hete noire, being looked 
 upon as the incarnation of the British diplomatic 
 policy of blocking German ambitions for a " place in 
 the sun," wherever and whenever they manifested 
 themselves. As long before as December, 1912, Pro- 
 fessor Hans Delbriick, the sanest of German political 
 professors, told me in a prophetic interview for The 
 Daily Mail on " WTiat Germany Wants " that unless 
 England abandoned her policy of " arbitrary opposi- 
 tion to legitimate German political aspirations; if she 
 had no inclination to meet us on that ground; if her 
 interests rather pointed to a perpetuation of the 
 anything-to-beat-Germany policy, so let it be. The 
 Armageddon which must then, some day, ensue will 
 not be of our making." That was a fairly plain 
 warning of coming events. The Germans, as I have 
 said, considered Sir Edward Grey anti-Germanism 
 personified. They regard him to-day as the " or- 
 ganizer of the war." Taking an obviously short- 
 sighted view, I used sometimes to think that it would 
 have been good politics for Britain to buy off Germany 
 with a Trinkgeld (tip) of some sort. If Bismarck was 
 right when he called the Germans " a nation of house- 
 servants," they could obviously have been bribed. 
 
 227
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Delbriick himself once confessed to me that Germany 
 did not need more oversea territory; she only hankered 
 for it for window-dressing purposes. She wanted as 
 expensive millinery and high-powered a car as her rich 
 neighbour across the way. Colonies were fashionable, 
 and she had to have them. I occasionally thought 
 that England would be staving off trouble for herself 
 by bribing avaricious Germany with a coaling-station 
 on some inconsequential trade-route or even shutting 
 the eye to some burglarious descent on territory or 
 concessions in Asia Minor or Central Africa. But such 
 notions left the German character, the Oliver Twist in 
 it, fatally out of account. The German is the most 
 eager person in the world to covet a mile if given an 
 inch. Concessions to his rapacity would have meant 
 purchasing turmoil for the conceding party, not 
 averting it. British opposition to Pan-Germanic 
 designs, typified by Sir Edward Grey, was based on 
 thoroughgoing insight into the German nature and 
 German ambitions, epitomized for all time by Bern- 
 hardi when he said that nothing would appease the 
 Fatherland except World Power or downfall. Hush- 
 money to Germany in the shape of periodically new 
 " places in the sun " would have kept her quiet for 
 spells. But the blackmailing process would have been 
 resumed. It is the German way. " Mr. Balfour tells 
 us we must not expect Englishmen to support our 
 aims in the direction of territorial expansion," said 
 Delbriick. " What remains then for us, except to 
 enforce the accomplishment of our purposes by 
 strengthened armaments ?" Could avowal be plainer- 
 spoken ? 
 
 Sir Edward Grey is fifty-three years old and has 
 228
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 been a childless widower since 1906. He has been a 
 Member of Parliament continuously since he was 
 twenty-three years of age. Though an Oxford grad- 
 uate and trained for the bar, he is in no sense a scholar, 
 and his experience of foreign affairs up to his becoming 
 Foreign Secretary in the Campbell-Bannerman minis 
 try in 1905 was confined to an under-secretaryship of 
 the Foreign Office in the preceding (Rosebery) Gov- 
 ernment. Grey, who is also of the smooth-shaven 
 Romanesque type of statesman in external appearance, 
 is an amazing example of natural British aptitude for 
 the higher politics, for he is not a linguist (he speaks 
 nothing but English), and except for a visit to France 
 with the present King a couple of years ago is said 
 never to have been abroad in his life. His hobbies are 
 tennis, fly-fishing and birds. The only book he ever 
 wrote is a treatise on the piscatory art and he tramped 
 through the New Forest with Colonel Roosevelt talking 
 ornithology all the way. Yet a man has only to read 
 the British White Paper — he need not, indeed, do 
 much except read Sir Edward Grey's dispatches to his 
 ambassadors on July 29, 1914 — to realize that the 
 Foreign Secretary is a statesman of marvellous force 
 and capacity to grapple with the essentials of a situa- 
 tion. No state papers of modern times outrival Grey's 
 diplomatic correspondence on the eve of the war. 
 They ought to insure him, as I believe they will, 
 immortality, no matter how the war ends. Sir 
 Edward Grey's speeches are like his dispatches — devoid 
 of irrelevancy or rhetorical claptrap and incisive in the 
 highest degree. They ring conviction and sincerity 
 and their argument is usually unanswerable. Doctor 
 von Bethmann Hollweg's clumsy attempts to parry 
 
 229
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Grey's mid-bellum dialectics have only brought out 
 the latter in bolder relief. 
 
 The war has notoriously eaten into Grey's soul. 
 Germany calls it guilty remorse. Men who know are 
 conscious that he laboured for peace to the last minute 
 with unflagging enthusiasm. His industry during the 
 war has been intense, and his insistence upon looking 
 at things for himself has threatened more than once 
 to cost him his eyesight. As it is, intermittent relaxa- 
 tion has to be forced upon him by his colleagues and 
 his medical advisers. Sir Edward Grey's permanent 
 disappearance from Downing Street would rejoice 
 Germany like a victorious battle. Grey has been 
 violently blamed for the futility of Britain's mid-war 
 diplomacy, more especially in the Balkans. His own 
 defence against charges of failure in that region is 
 likely to seem plausible in the light of history, viz., 
 that, unaccompanied by commensurate military suc- 
 cesses, the efforts of Allied diplomacy in the Near East 
 were almost hopelessly handicapped. 
 
 One night during the South African War a Radical 
 M.P., advocating the dowmtrodden brother Boer's 
 cause at a mass-meeting in Birmingham, received such 
 a warm reception from the crowd that he had to flee 
 for his life through a back-door, disguised as a police- 
 man. His name was David Lloyd-George, whose 
 present occupation is that of England's man of the 
 hour. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer when war 
 broke out and introduced the initial war budgets, 
 earning thereby encomiums from the financial com- 
 munity, which for years before looked upon him as 
 capital's demagogic arch-foe. To-day, Minister of 
 Munitions — the circumstances under which he became 
 230
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 such are treated in a subsequent chapter — Lloyd- 
 George comes far nearer being Britain's national hero 
 than any of his contemporaries. He is charged by his 
 detractors with the design to make himself Dictator. 
 England could have a worse one. 
 
 If Lloyd-George were an American instead of a 
 Welshman, he would have been President of the United 
 States by this time, or at least as close to it as Bryan 
 has ever been. There is in fact very little typically 
 British about him. He is emotional, for example, and 
 he has an imagination. His whole make-up is trans- 
 atlantic, which is a British synonym for sensational- 
 Picture, if you can, a strong solution of Booker Wash- 
 ington (I mean, of course, only the negro's eloquence), 
 of flamboyant and appealing Billy Sunday, of Mr. Bryan 
 at his silver-tongued best, and of our inimitable Roose- 
 velt in his most rampageous form, and you will have 
 Lloyd-George in composite. It was because he is all 
 this that he was chosen for the " shells portfolio " in the 
 reconstructed Asquith Cabinet. 
 
 He knew very little — probably nothing — about mu- 
 nitions seven months ago. It could not have been very 
 much before that when he probably thought that gun- 
 cotton was raw material for pyjamas. But he is the 
 prize " enthuser " of the Kingdom, a master of the 
 tedious art of welding drowsy Britons into a race of real 
 war-makers. All the ingredients for supplying the 
 army with the shells it needed were in existence; but 
 they needed organization. The manufacturers and 
 their works needed organization. The workmen 
 needed organization. The public spirit needed or- 
 ganization; and the whole business needed a Lloyd- 
 George. It got him ten months after it ought to 
 
 231
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 have had him, but not too late. Obviously the di- 
 minutive Welsh country lawyer who had brought 
 about the disestablishment of the State Church of 
 Wales, imposed State Insurance and Old Age Pen- 
 sions on a reluctant Kingdom, assailed the vested in- 
 terests of the House of Lords and demolished them, 
 was the man to impress the country with the true 
 meaning of the shells tragedy. He took the stump, his 
 natural element, for the purpose. He went to the 
 people, especially in the great industrial centres, and 
 told them the truth. He burned into their conscience 
 — that was the only way to get the stolid British to 
 wake up to a real peril — that shells, shells, and then 
 shells, and nothing but shells, were required if Britain 
 meant to win the war. 
 
 The people listened to Lloyd-George. He has a way 
 of making them listen to him. They gave him their 
 ear even in his pro-Boer days. They listened to him 
 when he (an ardent Baptist) cleared for action against 
 the Welsh Church. They listened to him even when 
 at Limehouse he invented a new word, " to limehouse," 
 which means violent political " oratory," second 
 cousin to demagogism, by the nature of his impassioned 
 appeals to the people to rise and slay the Lords. It 
 was inevitable that the country would listen to him in 
 his newest and greatest role as organizer of victory. 
 
 Lloyd-George's goal is undoubtedly the Premiership 
 — the ambition of every British politician. He has 
 plenty of time to wait — he is only fifty-two — and un- 
 failing week-end golf keeps him as " fit " as a man 
 fifteen years his junior. Of Napoleonic stockiness of 
 build, with a wealth of wavy grey hair worn long, he is 
 a figure which radiates strength and power, though un- 
 232
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 impressive of itself. He is a capital " circulator." That 
 fact is, indeed, his principal political asset. He is as 
 much at home labouring with a gang of recalcitrant 
 miners at the pit-mouth — ^he always goes straight to 
 headquarters when he essays to settle a strike — as he 
 is on the floor of the House of Commons or as modera- 
 tor at a Baptist convention. He likes Americans and 
 specializes in extending hospitality to interesting ones. 
 Unquestionably he has a strong hold on our imagina- 
 tions as a man of his temperament, career and talent is 
 bound to have. An eminent Chicagoan visited London 
 last summer, with introductions which would have 
 easily paved his way to the throne or any other 
 eminent British quarter. " Whom would you like to 
 meet most of all?" he was asked. "Lloyd-George," 
 he said, with the intuitive sense of a Yankee who only 
 has time for the things worth while. 
 
 Winston Churchill, the son of an English father 
 and an American mother, is the Peck's Bad Boy of the 
 British Government. His popularity has been sadly 
 dimmed since the war began, for he was looked upon 
 as not only the author of the grotesque naval " relief " 
 expedition to Antwerp — now either prisoners of war in 
 Germany or interned in Holland — ^but the culprit who 
 was chiefly responsible for the far more disastrous 
 Dardanelles adventure. Another misdemeanour is 
 charged against him, hardly less serious than the two 
 just named: his imperious administration of the x\d- 
 miralty drove from the First Sea Lordship the man 
 universally considered Britain's greatest sailor, Lord 
 Fisher. All agree, friend and foe, that to " Winston " 
 was due in a very marked degree, England's superb 
 readiness at sea when war broke out, but it is a matter 
 
 233
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 of grave doubt whether even that superlative service to 
 the country will be looked upon as great enough to 
 wipe out his subsequent and costly incompetencies. 
 When the upheaval in the Asquith Cabinet came about, 
 in the spring of 19 15, Churchill was nominally 
 squelched by interment in the harmless berth of the 
 Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, most of whose 
 official time is spent in licensing Justices of the Peace 
 and Notaries Public. That ennui hung heavily on his 
 hands was manifested by the announcement during the 
 summer that Churchill had taken up painting as a 
 pastime. 
 
 I have said that " Winston " was nominally sub- 
 jugated, for a petrel of his peculiarly irrepressible stormi- 
 ness can only be wholly curbed by annihilation. Asquith 
 is far too sagacious a politician to risk Churchill's 
 complete eclipse in the Government of which the latter 
 has always been the most picturesque constituent. 
 Churchill, too, aspires to the Premier's toga, though 
 many people fear that the defects of his quahties will 
 keep him, just as they kept his distinguished father, 
 Lord Randolph Churchill, from No. 10 Downing Street. 
 But "Winston" is far less dangerous to the Govern- 
 ment as a friend than as a foe. His enemies assert 
 that his chameleon political career justifies the fear 
 that he would turn on his old associates and party 
 cronies the moment he conceived that advantage to 
 self was thereby obtainable. Obviously such a man 
 is better in the Cabinet than out of it, especially if he 
 is of Winston Churchill's undoubted personal charm, 
 magnetism and resistless force. 
 
 Combining the best qualities of his dual ancestry, he 
 makes a lively appeal to the average heart. Aristo- 
 234
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 cratic to the core, with the blood of the Marlboroughs 
 in his veins, and a snob of snobs in his personal rela- 
 tions, it is an anomalous fact that Churchill is an end- 
 lessly popular figure with the crowd. Whether it is 
 his youth — he is only forty-one, was a soldier of no 
 mean renown at twenty-three, a Member of Parlia- 
 ment at twenty-six, a Cabinet Minister at thirty-two 
 and a force in Imperial politics long before he was 
 forty — or his impetuous . devil-may-care make-up, or 
 his bombastic platform style, the masses like him. He 
 has only one serious rival, indeed, in their affections, 
 and that is Lloyd-George. He is remembered in war 
 thus far not only for his Antwerp and Dardanelles 
 indiscretions, but for his equally unhappy oratorical 
 excesses, which are doomed, apparently, always to 
 precede some untoward naval or military event. 
 Within thirty-six hours of proclaiming at Liverpool 
 (in September, 1914) that " if the German navy does 
 not come out and fight, we shall dig it out like rats 
 from a hole," Ug sent the Cressy, Hogue and AhouMr 
 to the bottom. In the spring of 1915, discussing the 
 Dardanelles, Churchill blustered that " we are within 
 a very few miles of the greatest victory this war has 
 seen," and a few weeks later Kitchener announced 
 that twelve miles of precarious front in Gallipoli were 
 all there was to show for a campaign which had already 
 cost eighty-seven thousand casualties. WTien Churchill 
 prognosticates nowadays, the country^ trembles for 
 what the next day will bring forth. Yet he is a 
 rash prophet who would predict that '* Winston '' has 
 run his course in British politics. He took manfully 
 the discomfiture of the Coalition reshuffle, and although 
 his picture is no longer cheered when it is flashed on 
 
 235
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the cinematograph screen the shrewdest seers are 
 certain that he will " come back."* 
 
 Lord Kitchener has always boasted that he scorned 
 popularity. He has need for his philosophical tem- 
 perament to-day, for there is no manner of doubt that 
 his hold on the imaginations of his countrymen is at 
 least less firm than when the war began. " K.'s " 
 dramatic appointment to the War Office, in the earliest 
 hours of the conflict, heartened the nation to an extra- 
 ordinary degree. Britain had no army, Enghshmen 
 said, but it had Kitchener, who was a host in himself. 
 His name alone was an asset which bred indescribable 
 confidence. Men recalled his dominant traits — iron 
 determination, strenuous application to duty, imperious 
 disregard of hide-bound methods and red tape, and, 
 above all, his genius for getting things done. They 
 rejoiced to hear that he had accepted the War Office, 
 long cob-webbed with circumlocutory traditions and 
 petticoat influence, on the strict understanding that 
 he was to be monarch of all he surveyed — that he 
 would not tolerate that pernicious party interference 
 which intrudes itself on departmental affairs in general. 
 Immensely to the popular taste, because it confirmed 
 the masses' conception of " K.," was the story that 
 when he first arrived at the War Office and was 
 told there was " no bed here. Sir," he commanded 
 
 * Churchill resigned from the Cabinet in November, 191 5, 
 declaring that he was a soldier — " and my regiment is in France." 
 To it he said he preferred to go rather than continue in a position 
 of "well-paid inactivity" at home. In a theatrical speech in the 
 House of Commons, he took political farewell of the country and, 
 having pleaded " Not Guilty" to the capital charges of responsi- 
 bility for Antwerp and the Dardanelles, left England unostenta- 
 tiously for the trenches, as a major of cavalry. 
 236
 
 THE HELMSMEN 
 
 the affrighted and astonished caretaker, then, " to 
 put one in, as I am going to sleep here." Britain 
 said to herself that she indubitably possessed a match 
 for German Efficiency in her new Secretary for War, 
 and all thought of " losing " wdth such a man as the 
 supreme chief of the mihtary establishment vanished 
 from her mind. 
 
 Kitchener was never one of the war-will-be-over-by- 
 Christmas crew. His maiden speech as War Minister 
 in the House of Lords informed the country, bluntly, 
 that he expected a three years' struggle. During the 
 winter an anecdote ascribed to the taciturn War 
 Secretary's loquacious sister gained currency, and 
 passed from mouth to mouth. " WTien is the war 
 going to end ?" she asked him. " I don't know when 
 it's going to end," he was said to have rephed, " but 
 it is going to begin in May." It was in May, by the 
 pitiless irony of Fate, that the War Office's muddle of 
 the ammunition supply was exposed. 
 
 Like all else in Britain — men, measures and institu- 
 tions — the arbitrament of time will be required to pass 
 final judgment on Kitchener's part in the war. In the 
 principal field he was called upon to plough — the raising 
 of a huge anny from out of the earth — he accomplished 
 mar\^els. No nation within fourteen months evolved 
 from practically nothing an organization of, roundly, 
 three milHon soldiers. It is not enough, for the actual 
 requirements of the war call insistently for more and 
 more, yet " K.'s " recruiting achievement stands forth 
 without parallel in mihtary history. It is certainly 
 without precedent of even approximate magnitude in 
 the annals of a non-conscript democracy. Lord 
 Kitchener's accomplishments in other directions have 
 
 237
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 notoriously not kept pace with his successes as a 
 recruiting-sergeant. The shells affair can hardly fail 
 to dim his reputation. The deficiencies of the volun- 
 tary system cannot be called a failure directly charge- 
 able to him, in that it did not bring forward men in 
 quantity commensurate with the developed necessities 
 of the campaign. Kitchener hinted, but only that, 
 that he was prepared to resort to Conscription the 
 moment he was convinced that Voluntaryism had 
 collapsed. But it does not seem unlikely that history 
 may condemn him for clinging to the voluntary prin- 
 ciple too long, and hesitating to compel Englishmen 
 to do their duty, instead of relying endlessly on their 
 casual inclination to perform it. 
 
 Kitchener has ruled the British War Office prac- 
 tically as an autocrat. He is said to have brooked 
 no interference, even from the Cabinet. Viewed 
 from that standpoint, " K." would probably himself 
 acknowledge that he can hardly be absolved from 
 responsibihty for British military disappointments. 
 Before the end of 1915 General Sir Ian Hamilton had 
 disappeared from GalUpoh, Sir John French returned 
 from France, General Townshend retreated from 
 Baghdad, and the Allied " Relief " Expedition to 
 Serbia retired to Salonica, whence it had set out less 
 than ten weeks previous. 
 
 2 -.8
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE GENERAL AND THE ADMIRAL 
 
 'TT^HAT Sir John French, Commander-in-Chief of 
 -■- the British Forces in France and Flanders, an 
 army which reduces to comparative insignificance the 
 largest host ever marshalled by Napoleon, comes from 
 fighting stock is plain enough from the fact that he 
 has a sister, Mrs. Despard, who is a militant suffra- 
 gette. She herself provides homely evidence that the 
 appointment of her brother (whom she practically 
 " brought up ") to lead the British fight against the 
 Germans on land realized a boyhood aspiration. 
 " When w^e were children," Mrs. Despard relates, *' the 
 great province of Schleswig-Holstein was taken from 
 Denmark by what was then Prussia. We were dis- 
 cussing the disgraceful incident of poor little Denmark 
 losing the province, and a certain little boy, then ten 
 or twelve years of age, strutted about and said: ' If I 
 was only a man, I know what I'd do to them.' He 
 was very indignant. That little boy is now commander 
 of Britain's great army." 
 
 It has been said that South Africa is the grave of 
 British military reputations. Sir Redvers Buller's 
 was buried there, and though those of Roberts and 
 Kitchener emerged from the Boer War, the renown 
 of Botha and De Wet admittedly outshone them. One 
 British General at least was " made " by the three 
 
 239
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 years' conflict with the Dutch Republics — Sir John 
 French, the cavalryman who relieved Kimberley, and 
 whose escutcheon during the sorry South African 
 campaign was alone untarnished by blunder or reverse. 
 As Kitchener was the logical choice for organizer of 
 Britain's new armies, Sir John French was the natural 
 selection for their field-commander ship. French, fol- 
 lowing in paternal footsteps, began his fighting career 
 in the navy, but he has been a soldier for the past 
 fort^^-one years — he was sixty-three in September, 
 1915. A man whose entire manhood has been lived 
 in the army, who knows it through and through, loves 
 it passionately, has devoted himself to it with the zeal 
 of a student, and fought in all its campaigns for nearly 
 half a century, had an ideal claim upon its supreme 
 honour in the hour of superlative crisis. Doubtless in 
 the Government's mind when it entrusted " Jack " 
 French wdth the command of the British Expeditionary 
 Force was the reputation he had w^on in South Africa 
 as a fighting field-general. Unquestionably the broad 
 sweeping movements his cavalry divisions executed at 
 Elandslaagte, Lombard's Kop, Bloemfontein, Pretoria 
 and Barberton were operations which contributed, 
 perhaps, more than any other scheme of the brilliantly 
 mismanaged Boer campaign finally to bring it to a 
 victorious end. Neither the British nor the German 
 General Staff realized in August, 1914, that Arma- 
 geddon was going to develop into a trench or " posi- 
 tional " war, with little or no latitude for those 
 grandiose tactical manoeuvres which delighted the 
 heart of Moltke and made a Sedan the ambition of 
 every modem trctican. Yet Sir John French, whose 
 military virtues include adaptability, if not imagina- 
 240
 
 THE GENERAL AND THE ADMIRAL 
 
 tiveness, which is oftener born than acquired, turned 
 out to be ideally fitted for " spade warfare," in which 
 the qualities of endurance, steadfastness and patience 
 have displaced the more spectacular talents of daring 
 and recklessness and those bold strokes of magnificent 
 vastness known as Napoleonic. Bonaparte's scintil- 
 lating genius, his predilection for the stupendous, 
 would probably have counted for little amid such 
 immobile conditions as the Allied armies have had 
 to face in the West, just as the Germans' prized 
 strategic traditions in the same region have come to 
 naught. 
 
 Military history will unquestionably accord the 
 retreat of the British army from Mons a place among 
 the finest achievements of all times. It was due to Sir 
 John French's strategy that Berlin was cheated of 
 that fiendishly coveted orgy of gloating over the 
 " annihilation " of what the Kaiser is said to have 
 called " the contemptible little British army." Since 
 Mons and the Marne the British Field-Marshal's task 
 has been to " hold " the enemy and to inspire his men 
 to fulfil, unflinchingly, that prodigious but compara- 
 tively inglorious task. In the circumstances it was 
 fortunate that a man of Sir John French's tempera- 
 ment was in charge. He knew how to " sit tight." 
 Kinship with his soldiers has been his lifetime specialty. 
 He is fond of sharing their joys and sorrows not in 
 any stereotyped, dress-parade sense, but actually. 
 He likes to move among them, and does so. His 
 jaunty fighting bearing and unfailing good humour 
 are a constant inspiration. Short and stocky, straight 
 and energetic of movement, he looks every inch a 
 soldier, and he has a soldier's habit of saying what he 
 
 R 241
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 means, direct from the shoulder, whether it is a corporal, 
 a staff officer, a brigadier or a Cabinet Minister to 
 whom he is addressing himself. 
 
 The Allied military arrangement conferred supreme 
 authority on General Joffre, but the British Field- 
 Marshal's character and career were considered a 
 joint guarantee that Sir John French would not be 
 found lacking when called upon to do and dare greatly 
 on his own account. It would be going too far to 
 say that the'war has covered French with glory. He 
 would be the first to banish such a thought. Though 
 Britons have fallen laurel-crowned on a score of fields 
 in France and Flanders and irrigated the cock-pit 
 which lies between the Alps and the Channel with as 
 heroic blood as was ever spilled, the British offensives 
 in the West have been little more than brilliant failures. 
 Neuve Chapelle is an undying story of Anglo-Saxon 
 gallantry, as was Ypres before it; but it was nothing 
 else. The " big push " which England hoped had at 
 last begun with the fighting in Artois and the Cham- 
 pagne at the end of September, 1915, turned out to be 
 a victory of distressingly short life and little real 
 effectiveness. Yet when Germany lost the war — when 
 she failed to take Paris — the British army under Sir 
 John French wrote history of which Englishmen will 
 never be ashamed. WTio it was that most effectually 
 parried von Kluck and the Crown Prince's thrust at 
 the French capital will probably, among generations 
 of schoolboys yet unborn, be as fruitful a theme of 
 argument as is the question who won Waterloo — 
 Wellington or Bliicher — but whatever the T^erdict of 
 posterity the smashing of the Germans on the Marne 
 reeked glory for all concerned, and Britain's share of 
 242
 
 THE GENERAL AND THE ADMIRAL 
 
 it is a heritage which will survive with Blenheim, 
 Balaclava, Kandahar and Khartum.* 
 
 Another Sir John — Admiral Jellicoe — is commander- 
 in-chief of the British na\'y. Events still to come 
 must determine whether Anglo-Saxon history is to be 
 enriched with another Nelson. But as far as human 
 prescience could foretell, " Jack " Jellicoe was of all 
 men in the British Fleet preordained by talent, 
 temperament and training to be the admiral in whose 
 keeping could safety be entrusted British destinies 
 more priceless even than those which were safeguarded 
 at Trafalgar. 
 
 Jellicoe was one of the godfathers of the Dread- 
 nought, having been summoned by Lord Fisher, the 
 real author of that revolution in naval science, to 
 support and carry into execution the all-big-gun ship 
 idea. Fisher had years before associated young 
 Captain Jellicoe with him as assistant director of naval 
 ordnance, whereupon there ensued an intimacy w*hich 
 friends say will link their names together much as 
 history associated St. Vincent and Nelson as the tw^in 
 victors of Trafalgar — the one, the far-sighted planner 
 of preparatory reforms; the other, the faithful executor 
 of their purpose. 
 
 Jellicoe resembles Sir John French in more than 
 given name. Like him, he is of quite markedly small 
 stature. Neither the Generalissimo or Admiralissimo 
 of Britain in the Great War at all corresponds, physi- 
 cally, to the popular notion that the English are 
 
 * Sir John French returned to England in December, 191 5, 
 relinquishing (at his o\vn request, it was officially stated) the 
 commandership-in-chief in France for the command of the Home 
 Defence forces. King George conferred the dignity of a Viscountcy 
 on the Field-Marshal, who was succeeded by Sir Douglas Haig. 
 
 243
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 " big " men. Like French, again, Jellicoe is mild and 
 gentle, a pair of conspicuously pursed lips indicating 
 poise, reserve force and self-confidence. The chieftain 
 of the Grand Fleet — that is its official title and not an 
 effusive expletive — did not make his first acquaintance 
 with danger afloat when von Tirpitz' submarines began 
 to make life a burden for British sailors. He has been 
 snatched from the jaws of death on three separate 
 occasions. In 1893 Jellicoe was commander of Sir 
 George Tryon's Victoria, when it was sent to its doom 
 in the Mediterranean, and, although " below " in the 
 ship-hospital with fever at the moment of the disaster, 
 was miraculously rescued by a midshipman when he 
 came to the surface more dead than alive after the 
 vessel foundered. Seven years previous, as if Fate 
 was keeping a protecting hand over him for some 
 great hour, Jellicoe had an equally marvellous escape 
 from drowning when a gig he was commanding off 
 Gibraltar capsized and he was washed ashore. In 
 the Boxer war of 1900, Jellicoe was flag captain to 
 Admiral Seymour, the commander of the Allied 
 expedition which marched from Tien-tsin to the relief 
 of the Powers' legations in Pekin, and at the battle 
 of Peitsang Jellicoe was struck by a Chinese bullet, 
 incurring wounds which the flagship-surgeon considered 
 fatal. Again Jellicoe was spared. A brother- officer 
 tells a story of Jellicoe's agony on that occasion, which 
 illuminates his capacity for facing the music, however 
 doleful. He had asked how the advance to Pekin was 
 proceeding. Told that everything was going satis- 
 factorily, Jellicoe flashed back: " Tell me the truth, 
 damn it ! Don't lie !" 
 
 The triumvirate which has accomplished that amaz- 
 244
 
 THE GENERAL AND THE ADMIRAL 
 
 ing, silent victory of the British Fleet in the war — 
 the complete conquest of sea power without anything 
 savouring of a decisive action in the open — consists of 
 Lord Fisher, the creator of the Dreadnought ; Admiral 
 Sir Percy Scott, the inventor of the central " fire 
 control " system, and Sir John Jellicoe, to whose 
 gunnery science and innovations in that all-important 
 branch of naval warfare are ascribed, in large rtieasure, 
 the acknowledged pre-eminence of the British Fleet as 
 a striking force. He had not been director of ordnance 
 a year when the percentage of the na\^'s hits out of 
 rounds fired increased from forty-two to more than 
 seventy. " In other words," as a critic describes it, 
 " Jellicoe enhanced by more than a third the fighting 
 value of the British Fleet, and that without a keel being 
 added to its composition." 
 
 Jellicoe, who is fifty-six years old, has nothing but 
 sailor blood in his veins. His father was a captain in 
 the Mercantile Marine, and one of his kinsmen. Admiral 
 Philip Patton, was Second Sea Lord in Nelson's time. 
 Jellicoe is the incarnation of the spirit, traditions, 
 practices and brain-force of the British nav}^ of to-day. 
 He has the not inconsiderable advantage of having 
 had opportunity personally to take the measure of his 
 German antagonists, for he has visited their country, 
 where he made the acquaintance of von Tirpitz, 
 Ingenohl, Pohl, Behncke, Holtzendorff, Prince Henry 
 and all the other naval notables of the Fatherland, and 
 was even privileged to cruise over Berlin in a Zeppelin. 
 
 England has heard little and seen nothing of Jellicoe 
 during the war. The veil of mystery which envelops 
 the Grand Fleet is seldom lifted. Not one Englishman 
 in a million knows where the Fleet is, though all 
 
 245
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 know that it is where it ought to be. A ten days' 
 visit paid to the officers and men of the Armada by 
 the Archbishop of York in the late summer of 1915 
 resulted in imparting to the nation almost the first 
 glimmer of their life, of their indomitable watch 
 and wait, which had been forthcoming. 
 
 " It is difficult for our sailormen," wrote the Arch- 
 bishop, " to realize the value of their long-drawn vigil. 
 Their one longing is to meet the German ships and 
 sink them; and yet month after month the German 
 ships decline the challenge. The men have little time 
 or chance or perhaps inclination to read accounts in 
 serious journals of the invaluable service which the 
 Navy is fulfilling by simply keeping its watch; and 
 naval officers do not make speeches to their men. I 
 think, indeed I know, that it was a real encouragement 
 to them to hear a voice from the land of their homes 
 telling them of the debt their country owes them for 
 the command of the seas — the safety of the ships 
 carrying food and means of work to the people, supplies 
 of men and munitions to the fields of battle — which 
 is secured to us by the patient watching of the Fleet." 
 Speaking of Admiral Jellicoe, the Archbishop said : 
 " It was refreshing and exhilarating beyond words 
 to find oneself in a world governed by a great tradition 
 so strong that it has become an instinct of unity and 
 mutual trust. But to the influence of this great 
 tradition must be added the influence of a great 
 personality. I cannot refrain from saying here that 
 I left the Grand Fleet sharing to the full the admira- 
 tion, affection, and confidence which every officer and 
 man within it feels for its Commander-in-Chief, Sir 
 246
 
 THE GENERAL AND THE ADMIRAL 
 
 John Jellicoe. He reassuredly is the right man in the 
 right place at the right time. His officers give him the 
 most absolute trust and loyalty. When I spoke of him 
 to his men I always felt that quick response which to 
 a speaker is the sure sign that he has reached and 
 touched the hearts of his hearers. The Commander- 
 in-Chief — quiet, modest, courteous, alert, resolute, 
 holding in firm control every part of his great fighting 
 engine — has under his command not only the ships but 
 the heart of his Fleet. He embodies and strengthens 
 that comradeship of single-minded service which is 
 the crowning honour of the Navy." 
 
 More than once the criticism has been uttered in 
 England itself that the Fleet has been conspicuously 
 lacking in the " Nelson touch." Even Americans, 
 friendly observers, have ventured to suggest that there 
 seemed to be an absence of the Farragut or Dewey 
 " to-hell-with-mines " spirit. Up to the end of the 
 first year of war, Britons faced the fact that their 
 " supreme navy " had lost seven battleships aggre- 
 gating 97,600 tons (not counting a super-Dreadnought 
 reported by the foreign press to have been lost in the 
 early months of the war, but which was a loss never 
 " officially confirmed " in England), and ten cruisers 
 aggregating 81,365 tons. Submarines, in that nerve- 
 racking and troublous day before Jellicoe and Scott 
 solved the problem of sinking " U boats " almost faster 
 than German dockyards could launch substitutes, ac- 
 complished terrific havoc among the British merchant 
 fleet, even though the sea commerce of these islands was 
 never remotely in danger of being " paralyzed," as von 
 Tirpitz and the minions of Frightfulness fondly planned. 
 
 247
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Yet all this while, the British Fleet was tightening its 
 grip upon the command of the sea to an extent which 
 may now be described as absolute. The German flag, 
 war ensign and merchant pennant, has been swept 
 from the oceans as if it had never flown. Hamburg 
 and Bremen, the Fatherland's prides, are as completely- 
 demolished, as far as their usefulness to Germany for 
 war is concerned, as if they had been battered into 
 smoking ruins. German mercantile trade simply no 
 longer exists, except such of it as can be smuggled 
 in tramps and ferries across the narrow reach of the 
 Baltic between Pomerania and the Scandinavian 
 ports. The Germanic Allies can import and export 
 nothing oversea except by the grace of Jellicoe. Their 
 deported propaganda chieftains or compromised am- 
 bassadors and attaches cannot return to their homes 
 in Europe from the United States without gracious 
 " safe conduct " by the British Fleet. The toymakers 
 of Nuremberg cannot deliver a solitary tin soldier to 
 an American Christmas tree unless Jellicoe says yes. 
 Two score proud German liners, including the queen 
 of them all, the Vaterland, are rotting and rusting 
 in United States harbours, ingloriously imprisoned by 
 British naval power. In numerous other ports through- 
 out the world Hamburg and Bremen vessels tug at 
 anchor — greyhounds enchained. Germany is banned 
 from the oceans like an outlaw. Her people can eat 
 and drink only on the ration basis. The British Fleet 
 has done something else, of which, it seemed to me, an 
 American Presidential message might legitimately 
 have made public mention. It has enabled the people 
 of the United States for many months to traverse the 
 oceans in security. 
 248
 
 THE GENERAL AND THE ADMIRAL 
 
 I have mentioned the immediate effects of British 
 sea supremacy on the enemy, but even they are in- 
 commensurate with the advantages which accrue to 
 Britain herself. A navy has three cardinal functions: 
 to preserve its owti shores from invasion; to maintain 
 inviolate its country's oversea communications, includ- 
 ing cables, food supply, passenger trafhc and postal 
 transportation; and, finally, to destroy the sea forces 
 of the enemy. The first two of these functions have 
 been fulfilled by the Grand Fleet, and at a cost in men 
 and material, though not inconsiderable, which is 
 infinitesimal, measured by the results attained. To 
 absolve the third, and, of course, climacteric, function, 
 Jellicoe and his men and his ironclads stand ready 
 when the opportunity is given them — readier, by far 
 than when the war began. They have not lost a really 
 vital fighting unit (supposing unconfirmed reports to 
 the contrary to be unfounded). They have had a 
 priceless experience of sea warfare under almost every 
 conceivable condition. They are veterans of every 
 essential contingency. There is hardly a terror, military 
 or atmospheric, which they have not faced and sur- 
 mounted. They have added to their battle efficiency 
 by a great many new and powerful ships. Their 
 7norale is unbroken. 
 
 When the Kaiser's great Armada finally makes up 
 its mind, as I believe that German public opinion will 
 some day compel it to, to forsake the snug harbours of 
 Kiel and Wilhelmshaven and the screen of Heligoland 
 for the high sea, it will find that Jellicoe has up his 
 iron sleeve a welcome, as to the issue of which no one 
 in these islands is capable of cherishing the remotest 
 doubt. History is barren of an instance of a Power 
 
 249
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 defeated in war, who retained command of the sea. 
 Were there no other considerations which spell the 
 eventual, though probably not the early, frustration 
 of Germany's mad ambition to master Europe and, 
 as William II once sighed, to snatch the trident from 
 Britannia's grasp, the vice-like grip of naval power 
 which Jellicoe has wrested alone denotes that Arma- 
 geddon can have but one ending, however long it be 
 deferred. 
 
 25c
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 *' YOUR KING AND COUNTRY 
 NEED YOU'^ 
 
 LUNA PARK," in Berlin, once had an English 
 manager and an American " publicity agent." 
 In pursuit of his lime-light duties the transatlantic 
 hustler, who had been engaged because he was such, 
 reported to the manager one day that he had accom- 
 plished a feat on which he had been plodding for 
 weeks. The o\\Tiers of a building which commanded 
 the most prominent view in Berlin had finally con- 
 sented to let " Luna Park " affix a gigantic electric 
 flash-light sign to the roof. 
 
 '' It will be the greatest thing of the kind ever seen 
 in Germany," exclaimed the enthusiast from the 
 U.S.A. " They'll allow us to have ' Luna Park ' in 
 letters twenty feet high across a one-hundred-and-iifty- 
 foot front, and you'll be able to see 'em a mile av/ay !" 
 
 He expected his British superior fairly to jump for 
 joy. But this is what he said: 
 
 " Quite so. But don't you think that will be a bit 
 conspicuous ?" 
 
 ^\Tien I returned to London on September 24, 1914, 
 after four short, strenuous weeks in the United States, 
 I found Englishmen dominated seemingly by a genuine 
 fear that the war might become " a bit conspicuous." 
 It was true that stupendous things had happened in the 
 interval. Namur, " the impregnable," had melted be- 
 
 251
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 fore the merciless German 42 's like the other Belgian 
 fortresses. Brussels was in the enemy's hands, un- 
 scotched, thanks to the intervention of the American 
 Minister, Brand Whitlock, and through it were pass- 
 ing apparent endless streams of grey-clad Germans 
 bound for Antwerp and the sea. France had been 
 overrun, regardless of the cost in Teuton blood, Lille 
 and the industrial provinces were securely held, and, 
 although the Crown Prince and von Kluck had been 
 gloriously repulsed in their frenzied dash on Paris, the 
 capital had all but resounded to the clatter of Uhlan 
 hoofs, and Bordeaux was still regarded a far safer 
 seat of Government. England herself had lived 
 through hours of anxious crisis blacker than any 
 within the memory of the living generation. At Mons, 
 as official reports disclosed, the gallant little British 
 army narrowly escaped annihilation. As it was, it 
 lost hideously in killed and wounded. Gaping holes 
 had been ripped in the ranks of famous regiments, and 
 the Expeditionary Force, within six weeks of its land- 
 ing, was already sadly mangled. Sir John French 
 stirred the nation with his dispatch on the retreat from 
 Mons and told how his army, though hurriedly concen- 
 trated by rail only two days before, had tenaciously 
 withstood, in the dogged British way, the combined 
 attack of five crack German corps. In the subsequent 
 fighting which beat the Germans on the Marne and 
 saved Paris, British soldiers, battered and battle- 
 scarred as they were, had done even more than their 
 share. Two days before her arrival in Liverpool the 
 Campania's wireless — I returned to England in the same 
 veteran hulk which had taken me to America in August 
 — brought the dread tidings of the submarining of 
 252
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 the cruisers Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue in the channel 
 by the U(^ and Weddigen, with cruelly heavy sacrifice 
 of British lives. 
 
 All these things had happened, and yet London was 
 unshaken. She had been " a bit uneasy," my English 
 friends conceded, in the days and nights when the fate 
 of Paris and Sir John French's army seemed to be in 
 doubt, and the f/9's feat had " cost us three obsolete 
 boats," but the Germans were checked now, and the 
 worst was over. Churchill was sending a British 
 naval expedition to Belgium to save Antwerp, and what 
 was the use of worrying, anyhow ? Kitchener's army 
 was filling up with recruits by the thousand, and Eng- 
 land's motto was " Business as Usual." 
 
 Yea, verily, Britain was pursuing the even tenor of 
 her imperturbable way. The Savoy, at supper after 
 theatre, glittered with all its old-time flare. The tables 
 were thronged in the same old way with gaily-clad 
 women, romping chorus-girls, monocled " nuts " with 
 hair plastered straight back, opulent stock-brokers, 
 theatrical celebrities and all the other familiar people 
 about town. The band interpolated Tipper ary a little 
 oftener between rag-time one -steps and fox-trots, and 
 lordlings and other bloods in khaki gave a new tinge 
 to the picture, but otherwise it was night-time London 
 " as usual." The theatres and music-halls were full. 
 At Murray's and the Four Hundred — those abodes of 
 revelry called " night clubs," invented for law-respect- 
 ing English who can afford five guineas a year for the 
 privilege of wining, supping and dancing after the Acts 
 of Parliament send ordinary people to bed — you could 
 hardly wedge your way in. At the Carlton or the Picca- 
 dilly, or for the matter of that at any other popular 
 
 253
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 resort in all London, you found yourself lucky to locate 
 a single unpre-empted place. \^lierever you went or 
 turned, whomever you saw, it was dear old London " as 
 usual." If you were an impulsive, excitable, senti- 
 mental American and thought you were mildly rebuk 
 ing your British friends when you ventured to wonder 
 at the extraordinary naturalness of life in the West 
 End, or at Walton Heath golf links, or at Chelsea 
 football grounds, or at the NewTnarket race-course, you 
 found yourself unconsciously pa^dng a tribute to " Bri- 
 tish character." For John Bull, far from being 
 ashamed of adhering rehgiously to peace-time activi- 
 ties, was positively proud of the exhibition of " reserve " 
 and " poise " and " calmness " which he was now giving. 
 People talked about the war, of course. They hardly 
 mentioned anything else. But if you had the patience 
 to hsten to the airy, fairy converse of many of them, 
 you soon gathered that they spoke of it exclusively as 
 something about which no self-respecting Englishman 
 or woman purposed for a solitary moment to get in- 
 decorously agitated. There were even people who con- 
 fessed that the war was beginning to " bore " them. 
 
 As for myself, I had a fling at British acquaintances 
 from two entirely different standpoints. In the first 
 place, fresh from America, where the war had burnt 
 into people's minds as deeply almost as if it were their 
 own destiny which was at stake, I was still filled with 
 the energizing atmosphere omnipresent there. I re- 
 membered how even our puny war with Spain had 
 gripped the nation's thought and concentrated it to the 
 exclusion of all else. I could not, for the hfe of me, 
 understand how Englishmen, with the history of the 
 preceding eight weeks before them, could still look 
 254
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 upon " business as usual " as the desideratum for which 
 the moment insistently called. I knew, I thought, 
 how Americans would feel and act at such an hour; 
 and as I had in my time dozed through many after- 
 dinner speeches about the " kindred ideals " and 
 " identical habits of thought " which so indissolubly 
 bound the Enghsh-speaking nations, I ventured to 
 marvel, and even at times to swear, at the spectacle 
 of national nonchalance which Britain at the beginning 
 of October, 1914, so resolutely presented. It was 
 magnificent, but it was not war. 
 
 In the second place, I was conscious, with the 
 knowledge and conviction of a long-time eye-witness, 
 of both the visible and the dormant strength of Ger- 
 many. I had literally wTitten volumes, during the 
 preceding eight years, about Teuton preparations on 
 land, in the air and on the sea. I discussed the Gennan 
 War Party, its leaders and literature, its aspirations and 
 plans, till I often grew weary of the task, not so much 
 because pacifist critics in England and annoyed Ger- 
 mans pilloried me as a war-monger and an alarmist, but 
 because there was a monotony in that sort of news 
 about Germany w^hich strained even the patience of 
 those whose duty it was to report it. WTien English- 
 men now told me, as so many of them did, that they 
 would " muddle through this show," as they had 
 " muddled through " in South Africa and on all the other 
 occasions in Britain's martial past, I grew sick at 
 heart. I knew, as everybody who had lived in Ger- 
 many between 1904 and 1914 and kept his ears and 
 eyes open knew, that " muddling through *' would 
 never beat the Germans, even if it had finally over- 
 come the Boers. I knew, and anybody really ac- 
 
 255
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 quainted with the Germans knew, that they would 
 not be vanquished so long as there was a man or a 
 mark with which to fight. I knew that nothing short 
 of the supreme effort which the British Empire and 
 its Allies could put forth would suffice to overwhelm 
 the most highly-organized and efficiently patriotic 
 people which had ever gone to war. I knew that the 
 German General Staff and the other war-makers of 
 the Fatherland had long reckoned, in the emergency of 
 a struggle with England, on the very thing of which 
 my eyes were now witness — British reluctance to shake 
 off the shackles of ease and comfort and buckle down, 
 a nation in arms, to the inconvenient and grim realities 
 of war. Of these things I thought, and the reflection 
 was disquieting, as I saw the mad whirl of hght, 
 frivolity and care -free joy which the Savoy at supper- 
 time, plainly epitomizing London life at the moment, 
 presented night after night. " Business as usual !" It 
 was small comfort my Enghsh friends provided, when, 
 remonstrating with me for my foolish solicitude, they 
 assured me that my misgivings were misplaced because 
 I was hopelessly ignorant of " the British character." 
 
 England, it was obvious, was like the manager of 
 " Luna Park " in Berlin. She was afraid the war 
 might become " a bit conspicuous," and was, m.oreover, 
 determined that it should not. I remember well the 
 crushing rebuke administered to me by a Briton of 
 international renown when I intruded my view of 
 all these things. I had offered, in a desire to hold the 
 mirror up to Nature and let Londoners see how they 
 looked to foreigners at so transcendent a moment in 
 their national existence, to produce a little article 
 entitled " What an American Thinks of the Enghsh 
 256
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 in War-Time." I even went to the length of putting 
 my thoughts on paper and submitting the manuscript. 
 I did so with considerable confidence, because the 
 celebrity in question is a notorious " Wake up, Eng- 
 land !" man. But he returned my masterpiece with 
 a look and gesture mingling pity and contempt for my 
 wTetched unfamiliarity with " the British character." 
 
 " My dear Wile," he explained, " you do not under- 
 stand us. You forget that this war is not an American 
 World's Championship baseball series. You mustn't 
 try to foist transatlantic brass-band methods on us. 
 It is not the British way." 
 
 Lest I convey the impression that I had advocated 
 rousing the British lion from his slumbers by wild and 
 woolly western methods palpably unsuited to his 
 stoical temperament, let me make haste to explain that 
 I was pleading for nothing but a system which would, 
 spectacularly if necessar^^ do something to let the 
 British public at least know that they had a war on 
 their hands, and popularize it. A great contingent of 
 Indian troops, led by Maharajahs and Rajputs, Maliks, 
 Rajahs and Jams, was smuggled to Europe, and 
 landed at Marseilles before England ever knew of their 
 presence on this side of the globe. An entire army 
 from Canada was encamped on Salisbur^^ Plain, and 
 no one had seen a sign of it except an occasional 
 detachment of boisterous subalterns, many with a 
 pronounced " American accent," who had kicked up 
 a row in a Leicester - Square music-hall the night 
 before. The Nelson monument in Trafalgar Square 
 was desecrated with recruiting circus-bills which would 
 have dehghted the heart of Barnum, and every taxicab 
 wind-shield in town beseeched passers-by to " enlist 
 
 s 257
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 for the duration of the war." But why, I had had the 
 temerity to inquire in my httle " Wake Up, England !" 
 homily, which was rejected because it revealed no 
 insight into " British character," were not the turbaned 
 Gurkhas and the swarthy Sikhs and the brown men 
 from Punjab and Beluchistan brought to London- 
 town and paraded up and down the Strand and the 
 Embankment for all the metropolis to have a priceless 
 object-lesson in Imperial patriotism ? Why was 
 Kitchener allowed to intern the young giants in khaki 
 from Ontario, Quebec, Alberta, Saskatchewan and 
 British Columbia in the hidden recesses of the provinces, 
 instead of giving Londoners a glimpse of Colonial love 
 of mother country in the flesh ? It was due to the 
 Indians and the Canadians themselves, no less than 
 to London, I argued, that opportunity should be 
 provided to pay homage to the men who had crossed 
 the seas to fight for Motherland. Non-British though 
 I am, I felt morally certain that even my ''alien" 
 bosom w^ould swell with emotion in the presence of 
 so ocular a demonstration of Britain's Imperial solid- 
 arity in the day of trial. But my suggestions were 
 rejected as unbecomingly boisterous in their intent, 
 good enough for the Polo Grounds or Madison Square 
 Garden, but grotesquely out of place in England. If 
 carried out, you see, they would inevitably have made 
 the war " a bit conspicuous." 
 
 That the war was almost invisibly concealed, as far as 
 the daily life of the people was concerned, was primarily 
 due to the bureaucratic and autocratic methods of the 
 censorship. Bureaucracy and autocracy in Germany, 
 for instance, have their redeeming qualities. They 
 are usually highly efficient, and their arrogance and 
 258
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 high-handedness are tolerable because accompanied 
 by a maximum of practical effectiveness. When 
 England established her war censorship, she went over 
 to bureaucracy and autocrac3^ as made in Germany, 
 but lamentably lacking in the saving graces of the 
 system as there exemplified. In vain the Press, now 
 muzzled almost as effectually as if the Magna Charta 
 and free speech had never existed, stormed and fumed 
 against the tyranny of the " Press Burea^u," the in- 
 nocuous title chosen for the Juggernaut which, before 
 six months had passed, was almost to grind British 
 journalistic liberties into the dust. It was alleged that 
 the " Bureau " was staffed for the most part by amiable 
 gentlemen no longer fit for active duty in the army 
 and navy, who, having patriotically offered their 
 services to King and country, had been pitchforked 
 indiscriminately into billets which clothed them with 
 nearly as much influence on the war as if they had 
 commanded armies or fleets. It became painfully 
 apparent that news of the war was being suppressed, 
 mutilated and generally mismanaged either by military 
 men who knew nothing of journalism, or by journalists 
 who were profoundly ignorant of military matters — 
 for the official censor caused it to be announced, in 
 self-defence, that he had associated with the Bureau 
 in an advisory capacity a couple of eminent ex-editors. 
 Just who was responsible for annihilating the ele- 
 mentary rights of the British Press never became 
 quite clear. Some blamed Kitchener. His hostility 
 to journalists and journalism was notorious, though 
 " With Kitchener to Khartum," by the most distin- 
 guished special correspondent of our time, the late 
 G. W. Steevens, who died in The Daily Mail's service 
 
 259
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 during the South African war, probably did as much to 
 give " K." a reputation as anything which England's 
 War Minister ever did in the field. Others said Joffre 
 was the man who had put the lid on. Whoever laid 
 down the law saw that it was relentlessly enforced. 
 Petitions, protests, cajolings, threats, complaints, 
 abuse — all were in vain. The antics of the " Press 
 Bureau " became more exasperating and inexplicable 
 from day to day. Also more domineering, if common 
 report could be believed, for presently Fleet Street gos- 
 siped that " K." had intimated to a mighty newspaper 
 magnate that if the latter did not mend his ways, and 
 abate his insistence, " K." had the power, and would 
 not shrink from using it, to incarcerate even a peer 
 of the realm in the Tower and turn his entire " plant " 
 into junk. That dire threat, I imagine, was just one 
 of the myriad of chatterbox rumours with which the 
 air in England, all through the war, fairly sizzled. At 
 any rate, it failed utterly to curb the stormy petrel to 
 terrorize whom it was said to have been uttered, for 
 his onslaughts on the censorship grew, instead of 
 diminishing, in intensity as the " war in the dark " 
 proceeded. 
 
 But it was in its treatment of news destined for the 
 United States that the Press Bureau most convincingly 
 revealed its lack of imagination. Here was Germany 
 leaving no stone unturned to take American sympathy 
 by storm. The Bernstorff - Dernburg - Munsterberg 
 campaign was in full blast. Von Wiegand in Berlin 
 was interviewing the Crown Prince and Princess, von 
 Tirpitz and von Bemhardi, Zeppelin, Hindenburg and 
 Falkenhayn, and only narrowly escaped interviewing 
 the Kaiser himself. American correspondents arriving 
 260
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 in Germany were received with open arms, and had 
 but to ask, in order to receive. Sometimes they 
 received without asking. They could see anybody and 
 go anywhere. That was German efficiency — and 
 imagination — at work. The Germans realized that we 
 Yankees are a news-reading community. They knew 
 that the best way in the world to win American news- 
 papers' and American newspapermen's sympathy is to 
 give them news. So they did it. \Vhen the German 
 Crown Prince told the correspondent of the United Press 
 that he would " love " to see American baseball, that he 
 " longed" to hunt big game in Alaska, and that Jack 
 London was his favourite author, he broke a lance for 
 the Fatherland's cause in the United States that a 
 four-hundred-fifty-paged " unhuman " British WTiite 
 Paper could never hope to equal. Somebody with an 
 imagination — probably Bernstorff — had put a flea in 
 Berlin's ear, and the result was open-house for American 
 journalists for the duration of the war. 
 
 What was happening in London ? There w^ere 
 plenty of American newspapermen on the ground, not 
 only special correspondents who had come over to join 
 the British army in the field, like Will Irwin, " Bill " 
 Shepherd, Alexander Powell, Arthur Ruhl, or Frederick 
 Palmer, to name only a few of them, but resident 
 London correspondents who had lived in England for 
 years, like Edward Price Bell of the Chicago Daily 
 News, Ernest Marshall of the New York Times, John 
 Burke of the New York Herald, or James M. Tuohy 
 of the New York World, all well known as men of 
 judgment, integrity and responsibility. But resident 
 or newcomer, nothing but inconsequential facilities or 
 the cold shoulder awaited them w^hen they went to the 
 
 261
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Press Bureau, cap in hand, to ask sometimes even 
 rudimentary professional courtesies for themselves or 
 their papers. Quite apart from the indignities thus 
 heaped on American correspondents, the Press Bureau, 
 when it suppressed or butchered their dispatches, left 
 pitiably out of account the susceptibilities of the great 
 neutral news-devouring community which these men 
 represented. Therein lay the real infamy. Think of 
 it. Here were Great Britain and her Government 
 confessedly anxious for American moral support in 
 the war, and yet a subordinate department seemed 
 clothed with authority to flout, exasperate and bully 
 the agency directly responsible for the production of 
 public sentiment in the United States. I call it a 
 tremendous tribute to the sincerity and depth of our 
 loyalty to the Allies' cause that we never for a moment 
 allowed it to waver, even in the face of the British 
 Press Bureau's arrant provocation. The American 
 Press, asking for bread in England, received a stone. 
 That it accepted it, and went on playing the Allies* 
 game, has been one of the miracles of the war, for which 
 these British Isles have reason to be profoundly 
 grateful. 
 
 Inherent imperturbability and unimaginative censor- 
 ship thus combined in the early weeks of the war, on 
 the one hand to minimize popular conceptions of the 
 struggle's magnitude in England, and on the other to 
 smother enthusiasm for it. You cannot fully realize 
 the immensity of a task if you are not permitted by 
 your overlords to see it in its true proportions. You 
 can certainly not become ecstatic about it if they insist 
 on having it painted in exclusively drab, routine and 
 joy -killing tints, when they are not covering it up alto- 
 262
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 Px Questions 
 
 ^^ to those who 
 employ male servants 
 
 1. TTAVE you a Butler^ Groom, Chauffeur, 
 -*- -■- Gardener, or Gamekeeper serving you 
 
 who at this moment should be serving your 
 King and Country ? 
 
 2. Have you a man serving at your table who 
 should be serving a gun ? 
 
 3. Have you a man digging your garden who 
 should be digging trenches ? 
 
 4. Have you a man driving your car who should 
 be driving a transport wagon ? 
 
 5. Have you a man preserving your game who 
 should be helping to preserve your Countr}^ ? 
 
 A great responsibility rests on you. 
 Will you sacrifice your personal con- 
 venience for your Country's need ? 
 
 Ask your men to enlist TO-DAY. 
 
 The address of the nearest Recruiting Office can 
 be obtained at any Post Office. 
 
 God Save the King^. 
 
 263
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 gether. Yet British patriotism was triumphing over 
 all these natural and artificial handicaps. Kitchener 
 was not only calling for five hundred thousand volun- 
 teers, but intimated that he would soon be asking for 
 another five hundred thousand. He was getting them. 
 London and the provinces were now plastered with 
 recruiting posters, calling in compelling language for 
 soldiers. " Your King and Country Need You !" Thus 
 ran the most direct and frank appeal. By the tens of 
 thousands men answered it. The blatant bill-board 
 which we know in America is not quite as familiar an 
 excrescence in the British Isles, but, for the purpose of 
 advertising for men for "Kitchener's Army," practi- 
 cally every vacant space in the Kingdom was now 
 turned into a hoarding. The base of Nelson's Column 
 in Trafalgar Square was splashed red, white and blue, 
 black and yellow, green and orange, and every other 
 shade capable of lending distinction to an eye-arresting 
 poster. The great hotels and theatres, banks, govern- 
 ment offices, and even churches, turned their walls and 
 windows over to Kitchener's advertising department 
 or recruiting bills, and occasionally themselves put up 
 huge signs across their most imposing facades with 
 such legends as : 
 
 TO ARMS ! RALLY ROUND THE FLAG ! 
 
 TO ARMS ! YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU ! 
 
 TO ARMS! ENLIST AT ONCE FOR THE WAR ONLY! 
 
 or 
 
 TO-DAY, YOUNG MAN, YOU ARE NEEDED 
 TO FIGHT FOR YOUR COUNTRY'S DEFENCE ! 
 FALL IN ! JOIN THE ARMY AT ONCE ! 
 264
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 or 
 
 MEN OF BRITAIN, UPHOLD YOUR COUNTRY'S 
 
 HONOUR AND LIBERTY ! SERVE WITH YOUR 
 
 FRIENDS ! 
 
 or you would read what the King had said: 
 
 "NO PRICE CAN BE TOO HIGH WHEN HONOUR 
 AND LIBERTY ARE AT STAKE." 
 
 Even the fences of the parks, the windows and sides 
 of the omnibuses and the wind-shields of the taxicabs 
 reminded men every hour of the day and night that 
 " Your King and Country Need You." 
 
 I recall, with amusement, how " scandalized " some 
 Americans were at England's resort to " circus methods" 
 to manufacture an army. I remember that pert (and 
 extremely pretty) young Chicago newspaper-woman 
 who, having come over from Paris which had not 
 needed to advertise for an army, because France had 
 one, was mortified beyond words to find London 
 screaming with " Your-King-and-Country-Need-You " 
 sign literature. She was so stirred by this " undigni- 
 fied exhibition " that she sat down before she had been 
 in town forty-eight hours and dashed off to her paper 
 just what she thought about " degenerate Britain." She 
 was convinced that a nation so hopelessly unpatriotic 
 that it had to advertise for defenders was " doomed." 
 Her erudite observ^ations made a deep impression on 
 her pro-German employers, editors who, in a learned 
 leading article, asked gravely whether the British 
 Empire was " reaching the Diocletian period of the 
 Romans." 
 
 As a matter of fact, Kitchener's project to advertise 
 for an army was the one ray of imagination, and a 
 
 265
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 4 Questions 
 to the 
 Women of England 
 
 1. "V/'OL' have read what the Germans have 
 
 -■- done in Belgium. Have you thought 
 what they would do if they invaded England? 
 
 2. Do you realise that the Safety of your Home 
 and Children depends on our getting more 
 men now ? 
 
 3. Do you realise that the one word "Go" from 
 you may send another man to fight for our 
 King and Country f 
 
 -4. Wlien the War is over and your husband or 
 your son is asked, ^^What did you do in the 
 great War ? " — is he to hang his head because 
 you would not let him go ? 
 
 Women of England, do your duty ! 
 Send your men to-day to join our glori- 
 ous Army. 
 
 God Save the King. 
 
 266
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 boundlessly encouraging one, which the War Office 
 had so far revealed. It showed even more imagination 
 in entrusting the technique of the scheme to a profes- 
 sional, Sir Hedley F. Le Bas, who, besides bringing to 
 the task the expert knowledge of a publisher, had once 
 been a trooper in the 15th Hussars, and knew and 
 loved the army. Sir Hedley modestly disclaims credit 
 for originating the plan to create an army of millions 
 by advertisement. He says that the Duke of Welling- 
 ton " beat him to it." A hundred years ago, when 
 England was at grips with the oppressor of that day, a 
 poster appeal for soldiers was issued, which incidentally 
 i^ prima facie evidence that advertising is not a modern 
 invention. Only a few Englishmen, and probably still 
 fewer Americans, are aware that even in Napoleonic 
 times advertising for an army was de rigueur. As the 
 invitation to " The Warriors of Manchester " was, to a 
 certain extent, the spiritual inspiration of Kitchener's 
 remarkable recruit-getting campaign, I make no apolo- 
 gies, despite its raciness, for reproducing on the next 
 page a document of genuine historical value. 
 
 The methods to which the American Democracy 
 has resorted to secure soldiers for her wars were also in 
 the minds of Lord Kitchener and Sir Hedley Le Bas and 
 his coadjutor, Mr. H. E. Morgan. Indeed, the practices 
 of President Lincoln, in respect of raising armies, were 
 the model to which the British Government from the 
 start determined to adhere. It was discovered that 
 Lincoln had not shrunk from appealing to the men of 
 the North from the hoardings and through the nevv's- 
 papers, while the advertisements of the United States 
 army and navy during the Spanish-American Vvar 
 were a modern example of recruiting measures in a 
 
 267
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 To the Warriors of 
 Manchester, 
 
 IN thefe times of common clanger, when ths ruthless Plunderer of 
 Nations would convert EngliHi Libeity into French OppreHlon, there 
 is no alternative between Srefiftance or flavery: v;e mud all be 
 Soldiers; ouf fer^ices will be thankfully received either in England or 
 abroad. You, therefore, who feel a pleafure in feeing Foreign Countries, 
 have no\V an opportunity of viilting Gibraltar, where Sddiers are looked 
 upon as Kings, and are fo much rcfpeclsd, that Spaniards come into the 
 Garrifon, and returning to their fWends, cry " PFho ivoidd b^ a Spar.ich 
 Prince (hat had the power to be an Eiiglish Soldier?" Here you Will be 
 envied by the men. You will be courted and adored by the women. 
 Would you make your Fortune with the Sex ? Here are Ladles of all 
 Countries to chufe out of — Love fpeaks for itfelf; and they knov/ that 
 Briton: excel in its attributes, IVarnors of Manchester, clothe yourfelvcs 
 in red — convince thefe Ladies you ate Engllfhmen. Here alfo is an Afy- 
 lum for thofe noble-hearted Y'oung Men, v.-ho hrive had fpirit enough to 
 get into debt by drinking the Heakh of their Sovereign, and have not 
 the means of paying thofe who have been fo patriotic as to trufl them : 
 In addition to thcfs two advantages, Gibraltar affords many peculiar com- 
 forts ; a fine healthy climate, fubjefl to no excefs of heat dr cold, plenty 
 of provifions, fuch as beef, mutton, potatoes, &c,, abundantly'cheap; bell: 
 port wine three-pence per quart ; mm, gin, brandy, ditto, ten-pence; to- 
 bacco at t!ic following rates per pound : high dried, fourtecn-p^nce, fbort 
 cur, thii teen-pence half-penny, liiag and pigtail, one {hilling. Then there 
 is fruit of ail forts, in fuch quantities, that the price is not an objeftj me- 
 lons, grapes, pomegranates, peaches, apricots, are fold at a cheaper ratetbiH 
 apples in England; almonds, oranges, and figs, arc as common as hedge 
 nuts, crabs and floes. In fliort, the luxury is fo felf-e\adent, that \?hen . 
 onefcesa fat Soldier in this Country, it is a common proverb to fay, " Suck 
 a one has b(cn living at Gibraltar." Can any wife man, then, be To blind 
 to his own Intereft, as to relinquilh vhe certainty of fo many iafting ad- 
 var.ccgcs, .'for the tnomentavy gratification 'of a few guineas addicicna 
 bounty? No — Gibraltar is the place for a Soldier — Seven Pounds 
 Ten Shillings is the Bounty allowed by his Majefty, and is more than fuf- 
 ficicnt to make you comfortable on your pafTage. The only confideration 
 for you is, ^hat Regiment will be the moft defirablc for you to enter? j 
 
 Recruiting Poster of the Napoleonic Era 
 268
 
 '' KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU " 
 
 country where the absence of conscription compels a 
 Government, in the hour of emergency, to scrape an 
 army together by hook or crook. Then the constant 
 advertising by our War and Navy departments, even 
 in peace-times, proved that there must be efficacy in 
 asking men to serve their country in posters, magazines 
 or newspaper-columns in which they were also being 
 persuasively urged to buy motor-cars, ready-made 
 clothes or shaving-sticks. Kitchener's " advertising 
 campaign " was destined, before the war was old, to 
 be the target of bitter attack, but the skill, persistence 
 and comprehensiveness with which it was prosecuted 
 played an immense role in the creation of the greatest 
 volunteer army in history. It opened a new epoch in 
 "publicity" and clothed that art with a distinction 
 which will never be taken from it. The seal of an 
 Empire has been placed on the maxim that it pays to 
 advertise. 
 
 By the end of October, after three months of war, 
 the muster of the British Empire was in full progress. 
 Complacency and nonchalance in London were still 
 wretchedly wide-spread, but the call of the Motherland 
 for soldiers was echoing round the world. WTierever 
 Britons were domiciled, it was answered. It pene- 
 trated into far-off British Columbia, where young 
 Englishmen, comfortably settled in new existences, 
 abandoned them unhesitatingly. It was heard in even 
 more distant climes, like Australia, New Zealand and 
 Africa, where adventurous spirits who had crossed the 
 seas to seek their fortunes in lands of promise were 
 now dominated by no other ambition than to "do 
 their bit " for King and country. Even emigrated 
 Irishmen, long irreconcilable, were electrified by John 
 
 269
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Redmond's clarion message, and many of them, too, 
 turned their faces homeward. By the ides of Novem- 
 ber whole shiploads of repatriated Britons, returning 
 from the four pomts of the compass, were reaching 
 the island shores, fired by one consuming purpose. 
 
 These home-coming patriots were not only render- 
 ing valiant service by placing their lives at the King's 
 disposal, but they were demonstrating, along with 
 whole armies of Canadians, South Africans, New Zea- 
 landers, Australians and Indians, that one of Ger- 
 many's fondest dreams was the hollowest of fantasies. 
 I had been familiar for years with a German political 
 literature based on the roseate theory that, once Great 
 Britain was embroiled in a great European war, her 
 world-wide Empire would crack and tumble like a 
 house of cards in a holocaust. Had not Sir Wilfrid 
 Laurier on a famous occasion declared that Canada 
 would never be " dra\vn into the vortex of European 
 militarism "? Were not the Boers thirsting restlessly 
 for revenge and the hour of deliverance from the 
 British yoke ? Were not Republican sentiments 
 notoriously rife in Australia and New Zealand, and 
 would not Labour Governments in those remote 
 regions seize eagerly on coveted opportunity to snap 
 the silken cord which bound them to England, and 
 declare their independence ? Would not India, the 
 enslaved Empire of the vassal Rajahs, leap at the 
 throat of an England preoccupied in Europe and drive 
 the tyrant into the sea ? These were the thoughts 
 which were discussed by Teuton political seers as 
 something more than things which Germany merely 
 desired and hoped for. They were treated as axiomatic 
 certainties. The rally round the Union Jack by the 
 270
 
 " KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU '' 
 
 Britons of Australia and New Zealand, Canada and 
 South Africa, Nova Scotia and Jamaica, Barbadoes 
 and Ceylon, British Guiana and Mauritius, Newfound- 
 land and New Brunswick, was Germany's great illusion. 
 When the " conquered Boers " under Botha and 
 Smuts, the " alienated Irish " under Redmond, the 
 " rebellious Indians " under maharajahs and princes, 
 even the " downtrodden " black Basutos, Barotses, 
 Masai and Maoris of Africa and Australasia under 
 their native chieftains, announced that they, too, were 
 ready to bleed for the Empire, Germany's awakening 
 was rude and complete. The Empire was alive both 
 to the peril and the duty of the hour, and when it 
 vowed to face the one and absolve the other an oath 
 was sworn which spelled British invincibility 
 
 271
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 TT is November, 1914. Britain is waking, but is far 
 -■- from awake. Nearly everybody and everything 
 are proud to be " as usual." The Fleet has been able 
 to secure but one action with the Germans — Beatty's 
 smashing blow at the Kaiser's cruiser squadron in 
 the bight of Heligoland. A great trophy of the en- 
 gagement is in hand — Admiral von Tirpitz's son, watch- 
 officer in the Mainz, a prisoner in Wales. For a month 
 and more the war has been raging furiously in the west 
 all the way from the Alps to the North Sea. Antwerp 
 is taken, after a farce-comedy attempt at relief by 
 levies of raw British naval reserves. Joffre is at 
 sanguinary grips with the " Boches " in the Aisne 
 country. The twelve or fifteen miles of British front 
 in the northernmost corner of France and that patch 
 of Flanders not yet in the enemy's hands are the 
 scene of ceaseless, desperate combat. British battle- 
 ships and destroyers take part at intervals in the 
 grim battle for the Channel coast. Ostend has fallen. 
 The German objective farthest west is now clear. 
 The Berlin newspapers head-line the tidings from 
 Flanders " The Road to Calais." Major Moraht in the 
 Tagehlatt acknowledges that the campaign for the 
 base from which Napoleon essayed to invade England 
 is " a matter of life or death " for the Germans. Sir 
 John French and the remnant of Belgium's little army 
 272
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 steel themselves for a stone -wall defence. Again and 
 again they keep the frenzied enemy at bay. Have you 
 ever seen Harvard holding the Yale eleven on the five- 
 yard line three minutes before the call of time in the 
 last half, with dark gathering so fast that you could 
 hardly distinguish crimson from blue ? Do you re- 
 member Yale's ferocious first, second, third, yet always 
 vain, attempts to batter and plunge her way through 
 Harvard's concrete, immobile phalanx ? If you do, 
 and if your red-blooded heart has tingled at some such 
 spectacle of young American bulldoggedness, which 
 can be seen West as well as East, in the North and in 
 the South, just as commonly as in the New Haven 
 bowl, you will be able to visualize, infinitesimally, the 
 titanic grapple around Dixmude, Ypres and the Yser 
 in the bloody days and hellish nights of October and 
 November, 1914. " The Watch in the Mud " was the 
 way German military critics paraphrased their national 
 anthem, to describe the situation in Flanders, for the 
 Belgians had now flooded the region contiguous to the 
 Yser Canal, and the Kaiser's legions, in their breathless 
 thrust for Calais, were fighting in mire and slush to 
 their boot-tops. More than one company of Feld- 
 grauer was ingloriously drowned. 
 
 The British were engaged in precisely the operation 
 for which their temperament ideally fits them — " hold- 
 ing." The German attack rocked against them re- 
 morselessly, giving neither assailant nor defender rest 
 or quarter. But the bulldog " held." He was mauled 
 unconscionably and bled profusely. Thousands upon 
 thousands of his teeth were knocked out, and he was 
 half-blind, and limped. Yet he " held." Winter had 
 come. Men lived in trenches which had been merely 
 
 T 273
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 water-logged ditches, but were now frozen into rock. 
 The German eagle, hammered, of course, no less 
 cruelly than the bulldog, was still screaming and claw- 
 ing, in his mad desire to cleave a way to Calais. But^ 
 mangled and scarred as he was, the bulldog barked 
 " No !" He had set his squatty bow-legs, disjointed 
 though they were, squarely across " The Road to 
 Calais." There he intended to stay. It could be 
 traversed, that road, only through a welter of blood 
 which, regardless as German commanders are of the 
 cost when they set themselves an objective, gave the 
 General Staff at Berlin furiously to ponder. 
 
 I have already intimated that Britain all this tempes- 
 tuous while was rubbing her eyes, but was only partially 
 open-eyed. It was not altogether Britain's fault. The 
 immutable Censorship still withheld from the public any 
 real glimmer of the history-making struggle proceed- 
 ing almost within ear-shot of the chalk-cliffs of Dover. 
 Throughout the entire month of October, four weeks 
 as crammed with death and glory as in all England's 
 martial history. Sir John French was permitted to take 
 the public into his confidence but on one single occa- 
 sion — and that, a dispatch dealing with operations six 
 weeks old ! For its news of the heroic deeds and 
 Spartan sufferings of the greatest army it ever sent 
 abroad, the British Empire was compelled to depend 
 on stilted French communiques and the fantastic or 
 irrelevant narratives of an official " eye-witness at 
 British Headquarters," who was allowed to bam 
 boozle the nation for months before his flow of medi- 
 ocrity and piffle was choked off by disgruntled public 
 opinion. England was fighting her greatest war in 
 Cimmerian darkness. Casualty lists, terrible in their 
 2/4
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 regularity and magnitude, kept on coming, but of the 
 coincident imperishable triumphs of British sacrifice 
 and courage, not a word. One's Illustrated London 
 News and Sphere printed depressing double-pages 
 weekly, filled with pictures of England's masculine 
 flower killed in action " somewhere in France " or 
 ** somewhere in Flanders." But of the manner in 
 which their precious lives had been laid do\\Ti, of the 
 price they had made the Germans pay for them, not 
 a syllable. If by accident some correspondent or 
 newspaper secured the account of an engagement, 
 which ventured so much as to hint with picturesque- 
 ness of detail how Englishmen were dying, the Press 
 Bureau guillotine came down on the narrative with a 
 crash which taught the offender to mend his ways for 
 the future. 
 
 Under the circumstances it was not surprising to 
 hear well-founded reports that recruiting was falling 
 off. In the clubs men said that Kitchener's " first half- 
 million " was in hand, but that men for the second 
 five hundred thousand, for which the War Office had 
 now called, were holding back to a disappointing, and 
 even disquieting, degree. Meantime the popular ballad 
 of the hour was, appropriately, Paul Rubens' " Your 
 King and Country Want You " — " a women's recruit- 
 ing song," as its subtitle runs. Its opening verse and 
 chorus tell their own story : 
 
 We've watched you playing cricket 
 
 And every kind of game. 
 At football, golf,]and polo, 
 
 You men have made your name. 
 But now your country calls you 
 
 To play your part in war, 
 
 275
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 And no matter what befalls you, 
 
 We shall love you all the more. 
 So, come and join the forces 
 
 As your fathers did before. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 Oh ! We don't want to lose you, 
 
 But we think you ought to go. 
 For your King and your Country 
 
 Both need you so ! 
 We shall want you, and miss you, 
 
 But with all our might and main 
 We shall cheer you, thank you, kiss you, 
 
 When you come back again ! 
 
 These words, in prosaic type, look banal. Their ap- 
 peal seems trite. Yet rendered to plaintive melody 
 by such an operatic artist as little Maggie Teyte, 
 they went straight to men's hearts. They must have 
 sent thousands upon thousands of cricketers, foot- 
 ballers, golfers and poloists — that is a classification 
 which takes in pretty nearly all Englishmen — into 
 khaki and training-camps. But the growing insistence 
 wath which the walls and wdndows of Old England 
 were plastered with recruiting posters — even entire 
 front pages of newspapers were now employed to ad- 
 vertise that " Your King and Country Need You " — 
 indicated that Kitchener's army was not being built 
 up yet by the desired leaps and bounds. Obviously 
 the war needed some other kind of advertising than 
 even the accomplished Sir Hedley Le Bas could give it. 
 It was not strange that the enthusiasm of Englishmen, 
 cheated of the chance to know what was really going 
 on at the front, was beginning to find expression in 
 other directions. 
 
 It was not inspiring, for example, but it was natural, 
 276
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 that Englishmen should, in all the circumstances, 
 reveal a very materialistic passion to " capture Ger- 
 many's trade." Denied the opportunity of " en- 
 thusing " over events at the seat of war, they proceeded 
 to dedicate themselves energetically to the task of 
 eliminating the Germans as a factor in the markets of 
 the world. A profound book on the subject appeared 
 — The War on German Trade, wdth the subtitles of 
 " Ammunition for Civihans " and " Hints for a Plan of 
 Campaign." Mr. Sidney Whitman, the distinguished 
 author of Imperial Germany, and personal friend of 
 Bismarck, dignified it with a preface. England had 
 not entered upon the war " in a commxcrcial spirit or 
 with a commercial purpose," he said, " yet it behove- 
 her to seize and hold fast the ripe fruit which has 
 dropped into Englishmen's lap — as a first incident in 
 the clash of nations." The volume was frankly pub- 
 Hshed, explained WTiitman, " with the purpose of stimu- 
 lating the English manufacturer and the Enghsh trader 
 to seize the opportunities thrust upon them by the war.' ' 
 Then, as the Censorship, as callous to criticism and 
 abuse as if it were a sphinx, still insisted that English- 
 men must fight and die in the dark, as far as their kith 
 and kin were concerned, patriotism at home found 
 vent in a crusade against the Germans still at large on 
 British soil. They numbered thousands. As a class, 
 they were a distinct and undeniable danger. In days 
 of peace they spied patriotically and flagrantly, thanks 
 to John Bull's easy-going, guileless toleration of the 
 stranger within his gate. Personally I never beheved 
 that the German waiters and barbers in the Savoy or the 
 Carlton, and their myriad of confreres elsewhere in the 
 country, were the advance guard of the German army 
 
 277
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 of invasion in disguise. Nor did I imagine (as I actu- 
 ally made a very British friend once seriously believe) 
 that Appenrodt's restaurants in the Strand and Picca- 
 dilly were in reality masked commissariat -stations of 
 the Kaiser's General Staff. Nor could even so persua- 
 sive an authority as William Le Queux, author of 
 German Spies in England, convince me that every 
 German resident who kept homing-pigeons, owned a 
 country-place near the East Coast suitable for wireless, 
 or got drunk on the Kaiser's birthday in the Gam- 
 brinus restaurant in Glasshouse Street, was a paid 
 member of the Berlin secret-service. Most of these 
 stories made me smile as broadly as the classic rumour 
 of the war — the tale that seventy thousand armed 
 Russians had been " actually seen " by Heaven knows 
 how many veracious Britons sneaking across England 
 from Newcastle to Southampton, on their stealthy way 
 from Archangel to theAlHed Western front. 
 
 Yet it was obviously not the hour for Germans, any 
 number of whom was of miHtary age and ardour, 
 to be at large in England. So Britain, in a tardy mani- 
 festation of self-preservation, began to arrest and in- 
 tern the Kaiser's hapless subjects, who hitherto had 
 suffered no impairment of their hberties except deten- 
 tion in the country, compulsory visits to the police, and 
 restriction of movement (except by special permission) 
 within five miles from their domicile. The unnatural- 
 ized German is far too much of a patriot to be trusted 
 to do as he pleases in a country with which his Father- 
 land is at war. He never forgets that he is a German 
 first, and a stock-broker earning commissions in Lon- 
 don, a barber taking English tips, or a waiter spilHng 
 English soup, afterward. It is^^'always Deutschland, 
 278
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 Deutschla'nd uher Alles with him. He may not have 
 made a profession or habit of wrriting home to Berhn 
 or Hamburg, Cologne or Breslau, Kiel or Wilhelms- 
 haven what he noted of interest at Aldershot, Ports- 
 mouth, Dover, Woolwich, or Sheerness, or what his 
 English friends might from time to time tell him of in- 
 terest at the Admiralty or the War Office. But it 
 was " bomb-sure," as the Teuton idiom rather appro- 
 priately puts it, that if ever a British state secret fell 
 into Herr Apfelbaum's hands on the Stock Exchange, 
 or into Johann's in the " hair-dressing saloon " of the 
 Ritz, or into Heinrich's at the grillroom of the 
 Piccadilly, that morsel would sooner or later find 
 its way to Germany. WTien one considered that 
 Englishmen of the highest class were attended night 
 and day, in their homes, their clubs, their offices 
 and their favourite " American bars," hotels, grill- 
 rooms, cafes and restaurants by aggressively patriotic 
 Germans, with eyes to see and ears to hear, it was small 
 wonder that an irresistible cry was sent up before 
 the first winter of war had advanced very far, that 
 these " enemy aliens " should not be merely ticketed, 
 labelled and superficially watched, but placed behind 
 barbed wire, with British sentries on guard. And so 
 it came to pass that Mr. McKenna, Home Secretary, 
 whose reluctance to intern the Germans West End 
 gossip absurdly ascribed to his " German connections," 
 finally ordered " the enemy in our midst " to be rounded 
 up. Not all of them were at first taken. Thousands 
 remained at liberty. The British are a patient and 
 a trusting clan. 
 
 It was not only the acknowleged German sub- 
 ject in Great Britain who was the object of the anti- 
 
 279
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Teuton crusade. The naturalized German, in many 
 cases the holder for years of a certificate of British 
 citizenship, was made to feel the blight of the wave of 
 passion sweeping over the country. Naturalized Ger- 
 mans have won in England wealth and eminence out- 
 stripping even the heights to which they have 
 climbed in the United States. In the preceding reign 
 they were the bosom companions of the Sovereign. 
 King Edward's intimate circle contained the Cologne 
 financier, Sir Ernest Cassel, and another Prussian native, 
 Sir Felix Semon, was His Majesty's Physician Extra- 
 ordinary. In the " City," London's Wall Street, Ger- 
 man financiers almost dominated the picture. Baron 
 Schroeder (naturalized onty \^ithin a few hours of 
 the outbreak of the war) was so great a power that 
 citizenship was practically thrust upon him as a mea- 
 sure of vital British self -protection. Sir Edgar Speyer, 
 like Cassel a member of the King's Privy Council, and 
 a Baronet besides, was not only a City magnate, but 
 controlled London's vast system of surface and under- 
 ground traction lines, including the omnibus service; 
 yet his English counting-house was an intimate associate 
 of a parent establishment in Frankfort -on-Main. These 
 we.L a few of the outstanding names among the " Ger- 
 mans " in high place in England. They by no means 
 exhausted the list. Domiciled in this country for years, 
 their bearers had, while openly maintaining sentimental 
 relations with their Fatherland, played no inconspicuous 
 role in British affairs, economic and political. Any 
 number of naturalized Germans were married to Bri- 
 tish women and were fathers of British-bom famihes. 
 Scores of their sons were already wearing King 
 George's khaki in Kitchener's army. Sir Ernest Cas- 
 280
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 sel had given five thousand pounds to the Prince of 
 Wales' National Relief Fund. Yet rumour shortly after- 
 ward had him locked up in a traitor's cell in the Tower 
 of London ! No matter how acclimatized these nat- 
 uralized Germans had became, no matter how long they 
 had been British subjects — in many cases their title to 
 that distinction was half a century old — they found 
 themselves as a class under a ban. They were not phy- 
 sically maltreated. Their windows were not broken. 
 Men did not spit in their faces. They were permitted 
 (like the rest of the British) to do " business as usual," 
 except the stock-brokers, who were invited to keep off 
 'Change. But they were a marked set. If they ven- 
 tured to visit clubs in Pall Mall or St. James's Street, to 
 which they had paid dues for years, they were con- 
 fronted with notices reading: 
 
 Members of German or Austrian nationality 
 are requested, in their own interests, not to 
 frequent the club premises during the war, and 
 British members are asked not to bring to the 
 club any guests of enemy origin. 
 
 Or, if the naturalized German, no matter whether 
 his boy had just fall en at Ypres or not, went to his 
 favourite golf-club of a Saturday or Sunday, he 
 received a greeting to the same effect. The virtue of 
 tolerance, a prized British quality, was vanishing from 
 the face of these war-ridden isles. 
 
 The anti-German fury in England claimed an early 
 victim and a shining mark — His Serene Highness 
 Vice-Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, who, as 
 First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, was practically in 
 
 281
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 supreme control of British strategy at sea. Prince 
 Louis is a native-born Austrian, and although he had 
 been a naturalized British subject and attached to the 
 Royal Navy since 1868, and in 1884 married into the 
 British Royal Family by wedding his own cousin, 
 Princess Victoria of Hesse, a granddaughter of Queen 
 Victoria, a campaign inaugurated and mercilessly 
 prosecuted by the aristocratic Morning Post, led, on 
 October 29, to the Prince's resignation. Public opinion 
 unreservedly approved the disappearance from a post 
 from which it was not too much to say the destinies 
 of the Empire were controlled, of a man who was 
 brother-in-law of Prince Henry of Prussia, the In- 
 spector-General of the German Navy, and of the 
 Grand Duke of Hesse, one of the Kaiser's federated 
 allies. The same spirit of " Safety First " which sent 
 the German barbers and waiters to camps in Frith Hill 
 and the Isle of Man dispatched Vice-Admiral Prince 
 Louis of Battenberg into official oblivion. Nobody 
 actually distrusted his patriotism. But England was 
 in no humour to run even remote risks. He had to 
 go. Satisfaction over Battenberg's retirement was 
 only slightly modified by a later revelation that it 
 was Prince Louis himself, and not Mr. Churchill, 
 as universally supposed, who was chiefly responsible 
 for the mobilization of the British Fleet just before 
 the outbreak of war in consequence of having " com- 
 manded the ships to stand fast, instead of demobilizing 
 as ordered." 
 
 November, 19 14, was a month of kaleidoscopic sorrow 
 and joy for the British. It began in gloom, with 
 Turkey's entiy into the war and the inherent menace to 
 Egypt which that event denoted. Then came the great 
 282
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 naval action off Chili, with first blood to the Kaiser in 
 the only regulation stand-up battle in which British 
 and German warships had so far met. The sinking 
 of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock's flagship, the 
 cruiser Good Hope, and her companion, the Monmouth, 
 by Admiral Count von Spee's cruiser squadron, with 
 the loss of one thousand four hundred precious lives, 
 was a bitter blow. Lord Charles Beresford, under 
 whom Cradock had once served, told me that his 
 death " was a more serious loss to the British Fleet 
 than a squadron of cruisers." 
 
 It was a depressing beginning for the First Sea 
 Lordship of Lord " Jackie " Fisher, who succeeded 
 Prince Louis of Battenberg. Churchill was still First 
 Lord of the Admiralty — what we in the United States 
 should call Secretary of the Na\^ — but Fisher, as First 
 Sea Lord, was in practical control of everything 
 connected with the actual activities of the Fleet. The 
 First Lord of the Admiralty's business is to get ships 
 for the navy. The First Sea Lord's task is to man, arm 
 and fight them. Fisher lost no time in angry remorse 
 over Cradock's disaster. He set about to repair it. 
 He applied forthwith the " Fisher touch." He ascer- 
 tained (so one heard) that it was Rear-Admiral Sir 
 Frederick Doveton Sturdee, Chief of the War Staff, 
 who had been chiefly responsible for dispatching 
 Cradock's squadron to waters in which it might have 
 to meet a German force superior in both tonnage and 
 gun-power. Whereupon Fisher ordered Sturdee to 
 place himself at the head of a squadron which was to 
 find and destroy von Spee, and not come back until 
 it had done so. Sturdee " delivered the goods " with 
 magnificent neatness and dispatch. Almost a month 
 
 283
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 later to the day — it is a fortnight's journey from British 
 waters to the Southern Atlantic even for twenty- 
 seven-knot battle-cruisers — he carried out Fisher's 
 imperious orders. On December 8 Cradock was 
 gloriously avenged. Von Spee in his flagship, the 
 Scharnhorst, together with the sister cruiser Gneisenau 
 and the smaller Leipzig, was sent to the bottom off 
 the Falkland Islands, and the remaining units in the 
 German squadron, the Dresden and Ntirnberg, were 
 accounted for later. Britain breathed easier. The 
 bull-dog breed in her navy was still to be relied upon. 
 Everybody instinctively felt that there was any 
 number of more Sturdees and ships and guns and 
 sailors ready to do equally invincible service for 
 England if the Germans would but give them the 
 chance von Spee had offered at the Falklands. 
 
 Spirits which had drooped when Cradock was lost 
 were revived ten days later by the most welcome piece 
 of naval news the British people had had since the 
 war began — the destruction of the Kaiser's champion 
 commerce-raider Emden by the Australian cruiser 
 Sydney off the Cocos Islands and the capture of her 
 intrepid commander. Captain von Miiller, and many 
 of his crew. The Emden sank seventeen ships and 
 cargoes worth £2,200,000 before her career was ended. 
 But von Miiller won universal renown and even popu- 
 larity in Great Britain for his daring " sportsmanship " 
 and gallantry to vanquished merchantmen. Germans 
 do not appreciate such a spirit, and do not deserve 
 to be its beneficiary — the utter lack of the sporting 
 instinct in the Fatherland is responsible for that 
 unfortunate fact — yet if von Miiller had been landed 
 a prisoner of war in England and could have been 
 284
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 paraded down Pall Mall, he might have counted 
 confidently on a welcome w^hich Englishmen customa- 
 rily reserve for their own heroes. Here and there in 
 London protests were raised against the encomiums 
 which almost every newspaper, and for the matter of 
 that almost every Englishman, uttered in praise of von 
 Miiller's vindication of the nobility of the sea, but the 
 overwhelmingly prevalent opinion was that he had 
 " played the game " and, pirate though he was, 
 deserved well of a race which still holds high the 
 traditions of the naval service. 
 
 Ever-changing and stirring were November's events 
 — the capitulation of Germany's prized Chinese colony 
 of Kiau-Chau to the besieging Japanese; Lord Roberts' 
 tragic death in the field among the soldiers he loved so 
 well, the Indians who had come to Europe to fight 
 Britain's battles; the still victorious advance of the 
 Russians in East Prussia, though Hindenburg's smash- 
 ing blow in the Tannenberg swamps had been delivered 
 many weeks before; the honourable acquittal of 
 Rear-Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge, commanding the 
 ^Mediterranean cruiser squadron, on the charge of 
 having allowed the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau 
 to slip through his meshes into Constantinople — the 
 Admiral had applied for a court-martial, to clear 
 himself of a grotesque accusation that a relationship 
 with the captain of the Goeben had induced him to let 
 the Germans through. But all these things combined 
 left no such indelible impression on my mind as the 
 Lord Mayor's dinner at the Guildhall in the City of 
 London on the night of November 9. That function, 
 the inauguration of the new chief magistrate, is cele- 
 brated in British history as the annual occasion on 
 
 285
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 which leaders of the State promulgate some great new 
 line of Governmental policy — a national keynote for 
 the year to come. The Guildhall dinner in the midst 
 of Britain's greatest war was sure to be of immemorial 
 significance, and my heart beat high with anticipation 
 when Lord Northcliffe assigned me to attend it and 
 record an American's impressions of England's most 
 august feast. 
 
 Guildhall was the scene of a famous flamboyancy 
 by the Kaiser not so many years ago, when he 
 talked about the comparatively firmer consistency of 
 blood as related to water and consecrated himself to 
 the cause of Anglo-German peace and friendship, I 
 was keenly anxious to hear what sort of sentiments 
 would echo through the century-old sanctuary of the 
 City to-night, with men like Asquith, Balfour, 
 Kitchener, Churchill and Cambon, the French Am- 
 bassador, as the speakers. I looked forward to an 
 evening sure to be crowded with imperishable memories. 
 I was not disappointed. At midnight when it was all 
 over, I sat down to write " an American's impressions " 
 for The Daily Mail, and as they were exuberant with 
 the freshness of mental sensations just experienced 
 and have not cooled in the sincerity of their utterance 
 in the long interval which has supervened, I make no 
 apology for repeating them herewith verbatim: 
 
 " When I became the joyful recipient of an invita- 
 tion to attend last night's Guildhall banquet I revelled 
 in the prospect of a feast of Bacchanalian pomp and 
 pageantry. I expected to witness nothing much ex- 
 cept a Lord Mayor's ' show,' translated into LucuUian 
 environment, a riot of food, drink, cardinal robes, 
 286
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 gold braid, gold chains, gold sticks, powdered \^dgs and 
 the other trappings of mayoral magnificence. I came 
 away utterly disillusioned, for I had spent three hours 
 in what will live in my recollection as the Temple of 
 British Dignity. 
 
 '' Those stately Gothic walls, whose simple groups 
 of statuary tell of Welhngton and Nelson and 
 Beckford ; those amazingly non-panicky war speeches 
 of your Romanesque premier, your grim Kitchener, 
 your — and our — ^Winston Spencer Churchill, and your 
 polished Balfour, all made me feel that I was tarry- 
 ing for the nonce wdthin four walls which, if they did 
 not envelop all the great quahties of the British race, 
 at least typified and epitomized them. 
 
 " Guildhall is dignified by itself beyond my feeble 
 powers of description. I have never trod its historic 
 floors before, but I have the unmistakable impression 
 that it has taken on fresh dignity to-day for the words 
 which were spoken in it yestereve. I was about to 
 say, in the idiom which springs more naturally to the 
 lips of an American, * for the words which rang 
 through it.' Words were not made to ' ring ' through 
 Guildhall. They would be ludicrously out of place. 
 An American political ' spellbinder,' no matter how sil- 
 ver-tongued, would pollute the atmosphere of London's 
 civic shrine. Its acoustic quahties, which I should 
 think were not faultless, are intended for exclusively 
 such oratory as put them to the test last night. 
 
 " Guildhall's tone is the tone of Mr. Asquith — 
 ' practising the equanimity of our forefathers, the fluc- 
 tuating fortunes of a great war will drive us neither 
 into exaltation nor despondency.' I thought that strik- 
 ing phrase of a brilliant peroration British character in 
 
 287
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 composite. It was more than that. It was Guild- 
 hallian. The cheers for the Premier, hke those for 
 Balfour, Churchill and Kitchener, would have been 
 more vociferous in my country. But my country is 
 not British. We are not devoid of dignity, I hope, but 
 we have no Guildhall." 
 
 It was left to other hands to report in detail the 
 speeches of the Prime Minister, the First Lord of the 
 Admiralty and the Secretary of War. Each uttered 
 phrases of golden significance. Mr. Churchill was 
 evidently still his ebullient self, although he had not yet 
 fulfilled his promise of September that the German 
 navy, if it remained in port and refused to come out, 
 would be " dug out like a rat from a hole," nor had his 
 generally considered personal responsibility for the fiasco 
 of the Antwerp naval expedition perceptibly staled his 
 infinite buoyancy. " Six, nine, twxlve months hence," 
 he declared, " you will begin to see the results that will 
 spell the doom of Germany." I had never heard " Win- 
 ston " speak before, but I understood now the charm of 
 his personahty and the attractiveness of an oratorical 
 style made even more magnetic by the suggestion of a 
 combined stammer and hsp. " In spite of its losses," he 
 continued, " our Navy is now stronger, and stronger 
 relatively to the foe, than it was on the declaration of 
 war." Asquith read his speech, and Kitchener was 
 about to do the same, but Churchill, youthful, vibrant, 
 tense, spoke extemporaneously, and the consequent 
 effect was indubitably the most striking of all the 
 oratory of the night. 
 
 Lord Kitchener, in khaki and with a mourning band 
 on his arm, was redolent of strength and impressive- 
 288
 
 WAR IN THE DARK 
 
 ness, but when he rose, clumsily adjusted a pair of 
 huge horn-rimmed reading glasses, and began to chant 
 his carefully-prepared " speech " in monotone from 
 manuscript, he was far less convincing, and certainly 
 not approximately so electrifying as Churchill. But 
 he had messages of no less magnitude and cheer. " We 
 m.ay confidently rely on the ultimate success of the 
 AlHes in the west," he said simply. " But we want 
 more men and still more men. We have now a million 
 and a quarter in training." 
 
 But it was Asquith's peroration, at which my im- 
 pressionistic sketch in The Daily Mail only hinted, 
 which was the nugget of the night. Enghshmen still 
 repeat it as something which puts in more terse and 
 concrete words than anybody else has clothed it the 
 solemn spirit in w^hich they have consecrated themselves 
 to the task now trying the Empire's soul : 
 
 " It is going to be a long, drawm-out struggle. But 
 we shall not sheathe the sword until Belgium recovers 
 all, and more than all, she has sacrificed ; until France 
 is adequately secured against the menace of aggres- 
 sion ; until the rights of smaller nations are placed on 
 an unassailable foundation ; until the military domina- 
 tion of Prussia is finally destroyed." 
 
 It was in that incorrigible resolve that Britain en- 
 tered upon the second calendar year of war, bleeding 
 uncomplainingly, losing stoically, taking what came and 
 rueing it not; determined, as she lived, to carry on 
 until her vow to herself was vindicated and her duty 
 to civihzation performed. 
 
 :89
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 THE "INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 BRITAIN'S 1914 autumn of complacency faded un- 
 ruffled into a winter and spring of lassitude and 
 bungle. Nothing, no matter how ominous or catastro- 
 phic, seemed capable of rousing the nation to a real 
 realization of the immensity of its emergency. The 
 Kingdom was aflame with recruiting posters, in ever 
 increasingly lurid hues and language, but the popu- 
 lace was animated by amazingly little red-blooded 
 interest in or enthusiasm for the war. If one com- 
 mented on the oppressive and disconcerting non- 
 chalance, one was called a '' Dismal Jimmy," or a 
 " professional whimperer " whose mind was poisoned 
 by the " Northcliffe Press." If you remarked that 
 indications were countless that the enemy seemed 
 vastly more alive to the stupendousness of the 
 moment than England, you were set dovm for a 
 " pro-German," and the patriot whose guest you 
 were when you ventured that suggestion probably 
 never invited you to dinner again. If you were an 
 Englishman, you were perhaps snubbed henceforth. If 
 you were a foreigner, your name may have been 
 handed in to Scotland Yard as that of an " alien " 
 worth watching. WTioever you were, or whatever 
 3'Our views, unless the^^ represented unadulterated ad- 
 miration of unshakable British calm, you were headed 
 fairly straight for a crushing rebuke. Retribution took 
 290
 
 THE ''INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 the form of branding you either as pitiably ignorant of 
 " British character " or not knowing history well 
 enough to realize that the British are " slow starters " 
 and always " muddle through somehow." You were 
 advised to squander your qualms on a needier cause. 
 The boys " of the bulldog breed " were " all right." 
 
 You wondered, if you were a blithering, neurotic 
 American, for example, what would stir the British 
 temperament into something faintly resembling ardour 
 and emotion. Zeppelins came, despite Mr. Churchill's 
 swagger that a horde of " aeroplane hornets " was ready 
 to greet and sting them. They came periodically, 
 leaving destruction in their wake. They had demon- 
 strated, it was true, that England was no longer an 
 island, but " they can't reach London — that's abso- 
 lutely certain," and, "anyway, the time to worry about 
 that is when they try it." Was not the metropolis 
 magnificently equipped with searchlights, even if the 
 sky-pirates should attempt the impossible and try to 
 pick their way up the Thames in the dark? Then, 
 always, there were those "hornets," and '' British 
 coolness." 
 
 " Scarborough Shelled by German Cruisers !" So ran 
 the newspaper posters in the streets at mid-day of De- 
 cember i6th, 1914, an announcement grim with histori- 
 cal import. For the first time in centuries the sacred 
 shores of these sea-girt isles had felt the impact of bom- 
 bardment. The raid extended far along the Yorkshire 
 coast. Whitby and Hartlepool had been attacked — 
 there were a hundred deaths in the latter alone. Ma- 
 terial damage was extensive; homes, shops, hotels, 
 churches, hospitals were struck and shattered. Yet 
 England was " calm." It did not matter in the least 
 
 291
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 that there was a list of seven hundred Britons dead 
 and injured, or that the Kaiser's " Canal Fleet " appar- 
 ently was able to risk a sortie in the North Sea. What 
 mattered most was that the islanders still alive were 
 unmoved and unmovable. That the " baby-killers " by 
 air and water had signally failed to " excite " or 
 " frighten " the country was the circumstance which 
 made incomparably the liveliest appeal to the imagina- 
 tion. Kitchener's astute recruiting advertisers shrieked 
 " Remember Yarmouth !" (where the Zeppelins had 
 been) and "Avenge Scarborough !" across the top of their 
 newest posters, but West End London, where the seats of 
 the mighty are, and where the opinion which gives tone 
 to national thought is moulded, remained Gibraltarian. 
 A flock of British aeroplanes assailed Cuxhaven on 
 Christmas Day by way of " reprisal "for the intermittent 
 Zeppelin raids over English territory. The attack was 
 not noteworthy in its results, but it gave a fresh fillip 
 to British confidence that " everything was all right." 
 As a matter of fact, many things were about as all 
 wrong as they could be. Beneath the surface of national 
 life a volcano was boiling and sputtering, and though 
 it gave early and unmistakable evidence of its erup- 
 tion, British calm with invincible indifference ignored it 
 as a sporadic manifestation unworthy of serious con- 
 sideration. I refer to the Labour question — to profes- 
 sional trade-unionism's revolt against reorganization 
 of industry for the purposes of war, and to its stubborn 
 opposition to the introduction of compulsory military 
 service. As early as January, 1915, the Labour contro- 
 versy raised its hydra-head, and yet, in October, de- 
 spite nine months of subsequent turmoil, it only began 
 to be recognized for what it is — the peril which 
 292
 
 THE '' INTERNAL FOE " 
 
 threatened these isles with danger hardly less gigantic 
 than invasion itself. It was the decade-old British story 
 of temporizing with impending menace, oblivious of its 
 portent, serenely conscious only that it, too, can be 
 " muddled through," like everything else in Britain's 
 glorious past. It is the complacent spirit in which 
 Britain almost invited war with Germany, the flaming 
 warnings of which the islands had for years. 
 
 The workmen on the Clyde, the engineers, mechanics 
 and artisans responsible for the maintenance of British 
 life itself — for in their hands rests the creation of the 
 ironclads to preserve England from invasion and the 
 merchantmen to bring food to her shores — were the 
 first to cause the volcano to rumble. They objected 
 to "overtime." The process of "speeding up "in every 
 department, due to the iron necessities of war, was 
 violating the most sacred traditions of trade-unionism. 
 If not forcibly checked, practices tolerated in the name 
 of emergency were in imminent peril of becoming 
 fixed rules. The Clyde workmen struck. They paid 
 no heed to Sir George Askwith, the Chief Industrial 
 Commissioner, when he declared that " the require- 
 ments of the nation were being seriously endangered." 
 Jellicoe urgently needed those six new destroyers wait- 
 ing to be riveted. But the union engineers wanted the 
 overtime question settled, and settled in their way, and 
 until it was, the navy, for all they apparently cared, 
 could go to blazes. Englishmen were disappointed 
 when they read such news from Glasgow and Greenock, 
 but they were not upset. Matters would " right them- 
 selves." Trade-unionists were an "unreasonable lot." 
 But they always " came around." At any rate, there 
 was no cause to " worry." 
 
 293
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 One man, a big man, was " worrying." He was 
 Lloyd-George, whose specialty is taking bulls by the 
 horns. Being Welsh, it was not " un-English " of him 
 to dignify an emergency with its intrinsic importance 
 and act accordingly. He grasped instantly the menace 
 which the situation on the Clyde conjured up. With 
 decision of Napoleonic boldness in a politician to whom 
 report ascribed the ambition to hoist himself into a 
 dictatorship on the shoulders of the " masses," Lloyd- 
 George determined to " speed up " industrial England 
 for war by Act of Parliament. If Labour would not 
 voluntarily throw trade-union dogma to the wind 
 when national existence was at stake, the possibility 
 of imperilling it should simply be taken from it. 
 Thereupon he introduced in the House of Commons 
 an amendment to the " Defence of the Realm Act," 
 which provided for nothing short of Industrial Con- 
 scription. Emerged later as the Munitions Act, it 
 conferred enormous powers upon the Government. 
 Reduced to essentials it robbed Labour of the right to 
 strike. It forbade lockouts, as well. It provided for 
 compulsory arbitration of all disputes. It withheld 
 from a workman the right to leave one employment and 
 take another. It obliterated primarily and absolutely 
 that holiest of holy trade-union regulations, by which 
 output is restricted. On the other hand, it provided 
 for the limitation of employers' profit by establishing 
 a system of " controlled establishments," i.e., works 
 engaged exclusively in the production of munitions 
 for the Government and whose financial operations 
 could, therefore, be exactly checked. 
 
 The Munitions of War Act was Great Britain's 
 longest step in the direction of Industrial Socialism. 
 294
 
 THE '' INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 It emanated with singular appropriateness from Lloyd- 
 George, the father of the German-imported system of 
 old-age pensions and workmen's insurance introduced 
 six years previous. Trade-unionism was aghast at the 
 radicalism of the new proposals, which Mr. Balfour 
 rightly described as the most " drastic " for which 
 British Parliamentary sanction had ever been sought. 
 Lloyd-George only partially subdued Labour's mis- 
 givings by pledging the Government's word that the 
 scheme applied for the duration of the war only, and 
 that with peace the old order of things would be 
 automatically re-established. 
 
 The men on the Clyde had no sooner gone back to 
 work, reluctantly and sullen after a " compromise " 
 settlement, when the dockers of Manchester, Birken- 
 head and Liverpool struck on the overtime issue. 
 Lord Kitchener, while reviewing troops in the district, 
 formally notified the Dock Labourers' Union that if 
 they " did not do all in their power to help carry the 
 war to a successful conclusion," he would have to 
 " consider what steps would be necessary " to hammer 
 patriotism into their souls. " K.'s " unambiguous 
 language signally failed to impress the dockers. They 
 remained on strike. A deputation of shipbuilding and 
 shipowning firms now waited on Lloyd-George. They 
 told him that drink, more truly the curse of the 
 British working classes than of any other in the world, 
 was at the bottom of the rebellious, lazy spirit of the 
 men. They urged prohibition for the period of the 
 war. The deputation declared that eighty per cent, 
 of avoidable loss of time could be ascribed to drink. 
 Lloyd-George sympathized with that view. " We 
 are, plainly," he said, " fighting Germany, Austria and 
 
 295
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 drink, and as far as I can see, the greatest of these three 
 deadly foes is drink." 
 
 Now the miners became restless. They demanded 
 a revision of the wage scale in accordance with the 
 mine-owners' notoriously swollen war profits. Their 
 Federation decided that notice should be given on 
 April I to terminate all existing agreements at the end 
 of June. There were hints that the miners intended 
 pressing not only for a " war bonus," but for an advance 
 of twenty per cent, on current wages. From the pits 
 of South Wales comes the coal which is the Navy's 
 black breath of life. A week's idleness means one 
 million tons unproduced. The Government summoned 
 the Miners' Federation to conference. Coal prices 
 were already soaring. Here and there there was a 
 shortage of supply. Germany was jubilant. Labour's 
 temper in the Clyde country, the docker districts and 
 in the colliery regions was far from improved by 
 Lloyd-George's support of the suggestion that drink 
 was the root of the industrial evil. The Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer essayed to play a trump card. He 
 announced that King George, " deeply concerned over 
 a state of affairs which must inevitably result in the 
 prolongation of the horrors and burdens of this terrible 
 war," was himself prepared to set an august example 
 to Labour by giving up all alcoholic liquor, " so that 
 no difference should be made as far as His Majesty is 
 concerned between the treatment of rich and poor in 
 this question." 
 
 The sequel, though not, of course, the immediate 
 result of King George's total abstinence proclamation, 
 was the outbreak of the South Wales miners' dispute 
 in full fury a few weeks later. Joint conference between 
 296
 
 THE ''INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 the Federation, the owners and the Government ended 
 in hopeless deadlock. The miners stubbornly refused 
 to accept the principle of compulsory arbitration 
 provided by Lloyd-George's now enacted Munitions 
 Law. Two hundred thousand men stopped work. 
 Threats to enforce the punitive provisions of the law 
 did not terrify them. The establishment in Wales and 
 Monmouthshire of a " Munitions Tribunal," before 
 which they could be haled, only made them more 
 defiant. In London one heard irresponsible mutter- 
 ings that " a few leaders of the Federation " might 
 usefully be shot, and it was suggested that if England 
 were Germany, they would be. More than one voice 
 advocated lynching "a few owners," too. The country 
 waited dutifully for the Government to employ the 
 " drastic powers " it had arrogated to itself only a few 
 short weeks before. Instead of anything so heroic, 
 it flung Lloyd-George into the breach. It sent him 
 to South Wales, and in his entourage went Arthur 
 Henderson, the new Labour member of the Cabinet, 
 and Mr. Runciman, the President of the Board of 
 Trade. 
 
 The little Welshman drew forth from his inex- 
 haustible arsenal the weapon he seldom unsheathes 
 in vain — his persuasively silver tongue. New terms 
 were drawn up between the miners and the colliery 
 owners. The men got about everything they wanted. 
 " Fill the bunkers," Lloyd-George cried to them amid 
 their cheers in a farewell speech at Cardiff. " It 
 means defence. It means protection. It means an 
 inviolate Britain." The miners went back to work. 
 But peace had been dearly bought by the Government. 
 It had not cared to enforce the coercive paragraphs of 
 
 297
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the vaunted Munitions Law. To invoke its machinery 
 to browbeat two hundred thousand organized miners 
 was manifestly a horse which the British Government 
 was not prepared to back. Industrial Conscription 
 was magnificent in theory. In its first great test in 
 practice it had proved to be fire with which the authori- 
 ties obviously preferred not to play. Some one (I 
 think it was the late Price Collier) called England the 
 Land of Compromise. The Welsh miners seem to have 
 shown that he was right. 
 
 Events were not long in forthcoming to demonstrate 
 that neither forceful persuasion by a popular Cabinet 
 Minister nor " drastic " Acts of Parliament were in 
 themselves capable of regenerating certain classes of 
 British working men or inspiring them with full and 
 patriotic realization of the national emergency. Shortly 
 after becoming Minister of Munitions in May, Lloyd- 
 George began a speech-making tour of the industrial 
 districts. He pleaded eloquently to Labour to forget its 
 " isms " and its " rules " and throw the full weight of 
 its Titan strength into the balance for the winning of 
 the war. He addressed his appeal alike to masters 
 and men. Passionately he begged both to relegate 
 traditions, suspicions and prejudices and join hands 
 for the common cause. He did not mince words as 
 to the national consequences if either of them per- 
 mitted ancient antagonisms to restrict their producing 
 power at a moment when nothing short of the Empire's 
 existence was trembling in the balance. " Pile up 
 the shells !" was the burden of his plea. Bristol, 
 Birmingham, Sheffield, Coventry, Leeds, Nottingham, 
 Manchester, all the great industrial centres of the 
 Kingdom, listened, and promised. By the beginning 
 298
 
 THE " INTERNAL FOE " 
 
 of autumn Lloyd-George had pledged nearly one 
 thousand establishments, hitherto engaged in the 
 peaceful arts, to devote their plants exclusively to the 
 manufacture of sinews of war, and employers and 
 workmen passed automatically under the " control " 
 of the Ministry of Munitions. The country seemed to 
 be yielding effectively to Lloyd-George's project for 
 " speeding up " war industry. 
 
 Yet, as sporadic announcements in the newspapers 
 presently indicated, the system was by no means 
 producing desired results. Dogmatic trade-unionism 
 was dying hard. The Government's call to men and 
 women to do their " bit " for the war, either by enlist- 
 ing in the fighting forces or engaging in munitions 
 work, naturally sent tens of thousands of people to 
 the factories who never possessed a " union card " in 
 their lives. Organized Labour was horrified b}^ the 
 hordes of black-legs thus created. It saw the results of 
 decades of crusade for " union shops " and for privilege 
 for skilled hands swept away like chaff in the wind. 
 Another phenomenon of no less disagreeable omen 
 was making its appearance. Marvellous American 
 automatic lathes for shell-making were being installed 
 on a prodigious scale — machinery so simple in con- 
 struction that one man, or even a woman or girl, could 
 easily learn to keep five lathes running at one time. 
 This conjured up disquieting visions for the devotees 
 of a system which looks upon arbitrary limitation of 
 output and minimum employment of maximum 
 numbers of skilled men as an inalienable heritage of 
 Organized Labour. War might be war, national exist- 
 ence might be at stake, nothing else might count except 
 victory, to say nothing of a dozen other shibboleths 
 
 299
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 dinned incessantly into their ears, but trade-unionists 
 had " rights " and " necessities," too. It had cost 
 them years of blood and tears, and strikes and lockouts 
 galore, to enforce them. Was Labour supinely to 
 permit them to be snatched away bodily under cover 
 of war, which Labour had always opposed ? Were 
 sainted rules about Sunday work and other " over- 
 time," about apprentices, about female labour, and a 
 dozen other trophies of triumphant trade-unionism to 
 be renounced ? Could Governments, from which 
 hard-won prerogatives had had to be extorted almost 
 by violence, be trusted voluntarily to restore them, 
 once Labour had been cowed into surrendering them, 
 and comfortable precedents established ? Was the 
 British proletariat, now only on the threshold of its 
 liberties, to be hurled back at one fell swoop into the 
 abyss of inglorious mid- Victorian " slavery " ? Let 
 the nation rant itself blue in the face over Labour's 
 *' disgraceful lack of patriotism." Let Germany find 
 comfort, if it could, in the spectacle of British working 
 men refusing to relinquish their holiest privileges on 
 the blood-smeared altar of Militarism. 
 
 With such recalcitrant and explosive conditions 
 prevailing, the public was not surprised, though 
 profoundly chagrined, to learn at the end of September 
 — I choose the case as typical, and by no means be- 
 cause it was an isolated instance — that a Lancashire 
 Munitions Tribunal had fined hundreds of workmen 
 employed by one of the most important firms of 
 armament manufacturers in the country. It was 
 testified that owing to shirking during the period of 
 the preceding twenty weeks, there had been a loss of 
 1,500,000 hours' time. The evidence is so character- 
 300
 
 THE "INTERNAL FOE'' 
 
 istic that I reproduce it textually from a report in 
 
 The Times: 
 
 " The average daily number of men employed was 
 10,349, ^^^ th^ average number of men out on each 
 day of the week was: Monday, first quarter, 2,135, 
 and the whole day, 1,156; Tuesday, 1,421 and 1,030; 
 Wednesday, 1,439 ^^^ i>23i; Thursday, 1,764 and 
 1,126; Friday, 1,492 and 984; and Saturday, 1,057 
 and 1,015. The average number out per day for the 
 whole period was 1,552 who lost a quarter, and 1,090 
 losing the whole day. In other words, fifteen per cent, 
 lost a quarter, and about ten and one-half per cent, 
 did not go into work at all on ever}- day of the whole 
 twenty weeks. The loss of working hours on ordinary 
 working days was a million and a half, and represented 
 a full week's work for nearly thirty thousand men; 
 or, alternatively, the time lost practically represented 
 a complete shutting down of the whole establishment 
 for three working weeks. Neither the men themselves 
 nor their societies could plead ignorance of what was 
 going on. Frequent appeals had been made to repre- 
 sentative deputations of the men in the works by the 
 managing director of the company, also to the local 
 representatives of the men's unions, pointing out this 
 most discreditable state of affairs. Seeing that the 
 men had proved deaf to all persuasion, and had shown 
 no improvement in response to appeals either from 
 Ministers of the Crown, their own trade-unions, or 
 their employers, the only course was to prosecute them 
 before that Tribunal." 
 
 The announcement of the sentences on the shirkers 
 caused an outburst of dissatisfaction, and the chair- 
 
 301
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 man of the Tribunal was interrupted several times by 
 the men as he was giving the judgments. Half a dozen 
 or more of the men all attempting to speak at once 
 caused great confusion. " There'll be a revolution in 
 this country," cried one, and such phrases as, " It's 
 time the Germans were here if we are to be treated like 
 this," '' What did South Wales do ? Defy them !" 
 " We are not here as slaves ! " was shouted from various 
 quarters. The disturbers were asked to leave the 
 Court. "Let's all go!" cried one of the men — and 
 they all went, giving " three cheers for the British 
 workman." 
 
 Labour pleads in extenuation of its seeming dis- 
 regard of national interests that it is not merely 
 reluctance to yield ground on fixed trade -union prin- 
 ciples which inspires a spirit of revolt in the " mu- 
 nition areas." It is only fair to record that the atti- 
 tude of Union leaders throughout has generally been 
 above reproach. Their counsel to the men to forget 
 " rules " and give the best that is in them has in many 
 cases fallen on deaf ears. What particularly gnawed 
 at the men's hearts was a conviction that they were not 
 getting even an approximately " square deal " under 
 the abnormal conditions of " war industry." They 
 insisted that while employers' profits had risen inordi- 
 nately in almost every branch the wages of the men 
 who were doing the actual producing lamentably failed 
 to keep step with the masters' swollen revenue. The 
 men asserted, indeed, that such advance in wages as 
 took place did not remotely correspond to the increased 
 cost of hving, which averaged forty per cent, up to the 
 end of the summer of 1915, with a further rise in almost 
 inevitable prospect. Labour, in other words, so the 
 302
 
 THE ''INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 working classes claimed, was being " sweated " in order 
 that the coffers of the " profiteers " might continue to 
 overflow. 
 
 But if revolt on the old-time issues of output, 
 overtime and Unionism was bitter and micnacing, 
 it was destined to be a mere whisper compared to 
 Labour's hostility to Conscription. The " controlled 
 establishment " system evoked more or less continuous 
 opposition. Almost every day batches of workmen, 
 ranging from twos and threes to troops of fifty or a 
 hundred, were dragged before Munition Tribunals, 
 and fined a week's pay for shirking. In one or two 
 cases they preferred the martyrdom of imprisonment 
 to money punishment. But on the whole, notwith- 
 standing the ceaseless howl of Labour and Socialist 
 against the " tyranny " and " slavery " of the Munitions 
 Act and the " unchecked piracy of the employer-pro- 
 fiteers," the ambitions of Lloyd-George to '' speed up '' 
 war industry were satisfactorily reahzed. He was able 
 to state that ' ' taking the figure one as representing the 
 output of shells in September, 19 14, the figure for July, 
 1915, was fifty times greater. It was a hundred times 
 greater in August, and thenceforward production would 
 continue to rise in a surprisingly rapid crescendo." 
 
 By midsummer of 1915 Britain was faced by an 
 emergency not a whit less urgent than shells. She 
 had effectively organized her facilities for turning 
 out a maximum of high-explosives. She had now to 
 confront and solve the insistent problem of manning 
 her decimated armies. Kitchener and the voluntary 
 system had worked wonders. The actual figures, for 
 some unaccountably censorious reason, were never 
 disclosed, except in the case of Ireland, which up to 
 
 303
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 October i had furnished 81,000 recruits; but the au- 
 thorities allowed to pass uncontradicted the statement 
 that the United Kingdom and the Colonies between 
 them had raised a volunteer army of approximately 
 3,000,000 men. Had it turned out to be anything ex- 
 cept a War of Miscalculations, this gigantic contribu- 
 tion of British military force might have sufficed, but 
 with 500,000 British casualties after fourteen months 
 of fighting — roundly, 400,000 in France and Flanders 
 and 100,000 in the Dardanelles — and with the Germans 
 not only not yet expelled from Belgium or France, but 
 in undisputed possession of Poland and about to pound 
 through Serbia on " the road to Constantinople, Egypt 
 and India," it was apparent that probably twice 
 3,000,000 British soldiers would be required. Two 
 spectacular attempts to " break through " the wall of 
 concrete and iron Germany had erected in the West had 
 been made. Both failed, however gloriously. Neuve 
 Chapelle and Artois inscribed fresh and imperishable 
 deeds of valour on the scroll of the British army, but 
 neither was of any particular strategic value. Results 
 attained were frightfully out of proportion to the price 
 they cost in blood and treasure. 
 
 Succeeding events of the war of stalemate in the 
 West and fiasco in the Dardanelles — dreary and weary 
 months of fighting accounted " victorious " if it won 
 three hundred yards of trenches, or a hill, or a ceme- 
 tery, or a sugar-factory, or a strip of beach, or if it ad- 
 vanced the British line a mile and a half over a front of 
 twelve miles — every " gain " entailing a terrible toll in 
 killed and maimed and fabulous expenditure of shells 
 — all demonstrated one outstanding, immutable fact: 
 that nothing but sheer preponderance of man-power 
 304
 
 THE "INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 weight would or could " cleave the way to victory." 
 If it cost 25,000 or 30,000 young British lives to win 
 Neuve Chapelle, probably twice that many to carry 
 out the trial push of the great offensive at the end of 
 September, and 100,000 casualties to fail in Galhpoh, 
 what rivers of blood would not have to be spilled along 
 the line of that once-vaunted " march to Berlin " ? 
 
 Britain's volunteers had done nobly. But they mani- 
 festly did not do enough. Mighty as was their re- 
 sponse, Britons must yet come, or be brought, forward 
 in their millions if the Empire was to be saved. The 
 spectre of Conscription became more of a tangible 
 reality from day to day. Voluntaryism had received 
 a fair and a long and patient trial. It accomplished 
 far more, probably, than its most sanguine supporters 
 hoped for. It outstripped any record approximated by 
 Lincoln in our Civil War, but now, like him, England 
 was plainly compelled to resort to more heroic mea- 
 sures if the overthrow of Germany was to be anything 
 more than a pious aspiration. " Mahanism " had given 
 Britannia control of the sea, but "Moltkeism" was 
 still unbeaten on the Continent. 
 
 Now Organized Labour gibbed afresh. It would 
 not hear of the " Prussianization " of England by Con- 
 scription. It had already " surrendered" its " indus- 
 trial liberty." It did not propose to part with what- 
 ever vestige of " personal freedom " remained. It pil- 
 loried Conscription as " Militarism " and, as brazenly 
 as they dared, certain leaders threatened any Govern- 
 ment which essayed to fasten it upon the " British 
 Democracy " with political ruin for itself and gory 
 revolution for the country. The Conscriptionists were 
 accused of wanting, instead of an army of volunteer 
 
 ^ 305
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 freemen, " a servile, cheap and sweated army." They 
 aspired to " something which would imperil the civic 
 basis of British liberty and degrade the nation." Con- 
 scription was " desired for the war and for after the war, 
 in order that its advocates might better be able to pro- 
 mote their Imperialistic schemes abroad and their class 
 vanity and political interests at home." In the midst 
 of a war to " crush militarism," it was now plotted to 
 impose that monster on Englishmen themselves. 
 Shrieked, for example, a paladin of the Socialist- 
 Labour phalanx: 
 
 " Compulsion, especially with regard to personal 
 service, to one's choice of occupation and way of life, 
 is of the essence of slavery and oppression. Nothing 
 but actual extremity of life and death ought to justify 
 us in resorting to it even temporarily. No such ex- 
 tremity has arisen, or is, happily, likely to arise. The 
 voluntary principle has not failed either in the Army 
 or any other profession. What has failed, what does 
 fail, is the political policy and administration of the 
 Government. 
 
 " Since the days of Feudal slavery in Great Britain 
 no man or woman, except he he a criminal, a Umatic, 
 or a pauper, has been compelled personally to serve any 
 master or Government, or engage in any occupation or 
 task by legal compulsion. 
 
 " Shall we allow the old-world tyranny to return ?" 
 
 This oracle, unwittingly, tapped the very root of the 
 problem, as far as his own particular cohorts, " down- 
 trodden labour," were concerned. The British masses, 
 in their preponderant majority, had not been brought to 
 comprehend what Germany's war is — that it involves 
 306
 
 THE "INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 for Britain " nothing hut actual extremity of life and 
 death." Although leaders of public opinion, from the 
 highest to the lowest, never ceased to emphasize the 
 true inwardness of the struggle. Organized Labour 
 was not convinced that Voluntary Service was unequal 
 to the emergency. At Bristol, in the first week of 
 September, 6io delegates to the Annual Trade Union 
 Congress, representing nearly 3,000,000 workers, 
 placed themselves on record fiat-footedly against Con- 
 scription. With British military impotence thus far 
 in the war crying to Heaven, the following " anti- 
 Compulsion ' resolutions were adopted: 
 
 " We, the delegates to this congress, representing 
 nearly three millions organized workers, record our 
 hearty appreciation of the magnificent response made 
 to the call for volunteers to fight against the tyranny of 
 militarism. We emphatically protest against the sin- 
 ister efforts of a section of the reactionary press in 
 formulating newspaper policies for party purposes and 
 attempting to foist on this country Conscription, which 
 always proves a burden to workers and will divide the 
 nation at a time when absolute unanimity is essential. 
 
 " No reliable evidence has been produced to show 
 that the voluntary system of enlistment is not adequate 
 to meet all the empire's requirements. We believe that 
 all the men necessary can and will be obtained through 
 a voluntary system properly organized, and we heartily 
 support and will give every aid to the Government in 
 its present efforts to secure the men necessary to pro- 
 secute the war to a successful issue." 
 
 When the cheers following the unanimous adoption 
 of these resolutions subsided, a famous miners' 
 
 307
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 leader and one of the most respected Labour chief- 
 tains in Britain, received the heartiest applause of 
 the whole debate when he rapped out: " Now that this 
 congress has declared, on behalf of organized labour, 
 that it is against Conscription, it will be the duty of 
 organized labour to prevent Conscription taking place." 
 
 It was not long after the Bristol Trade Union Con- 
 gress defied the Government to establish Conscription 
 that a Socialist miners' leader, declaimed that " a 
 golden opportunity for Labour " had arrived, asked 
 " whether trade-unions shall now not be successfully 
 recognized as the controlling authority in a new indus- 
 trial democracy," and set up " the irresistible claim of 
 Labour to control its own destinies and those of the 
 country." These various manifestoes were followed 
 by the most extraordinary outburst of all — the formal 
 intimation in the House of Commons by J. H. Thomas, 
 a Member of Parliament for Derby and Organizing 
 Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway 
 Servants, that if the Government attempted to en- 
 force Conscription, 3,000,000 employees of the na- 
 tional transportation lines of the country would not 
 shrink from precipitating " industrial revolution !" 
 
 Recruiting " rallies," recruiting advertisements, re- 
 proaches of the " slacker " and the " shirker " in the 
 press, on the platform, in the parks and from the 
 pulpit, signally failed to shame proletarian Britain 
 into doing its duty as the upper and middle classes 
 have so gloriously done. In consequence, the Volun- 
 tary system is on its last legs. Early in October Lord 
 Kitchener appointed Lord Derby " Director of Re- 
 cruiting." In assuming the thankless job, Derby said 
 he felt like taking over the receivership of a bankrupt 
 308
 
 THE "INTERNAL FOE" 
 
 concern. He proposed granting Voluntaryism a six 
 weeks' respite. He would give the stay-at-homes one 
 more chance. The Government (which enacted the 
 National Register for the purpose — hated Prussian 
 system which card-indexed every male and female in 
 the realm between fifteen and fifty-five !) knew exactly 
 who and where they were. " Push and Go," said one 
 of the last-ditch poster appeals, " But It's Better to 
 Go than Be Pushed." Lord Derby intimated that 
 "pushing" would set in on December i. It was 
 estimated that, by hook or crook, not less than thirty 
 thousand fresh men a week would be needed to keep 
 the British armies in Europe and Africa at effective 
 strength in 1916, and, if they did not come forward 
 voluntarily. Kitchener was determined to " fetch " 
 them. That means Conscription. Northcliffe calls it 
 National Ser\dce. Some of Labour's acknowledged 
 field-marshals call it National Servility. If Labour 
 really means what it says, "Compulsion" wiU not be 
 established until Trafalgar Square and Whitechapel, 
 Clydebank and South Wales, have run red with the 
 organized proletariat's " freeman" blood. 
 
 If I have emphasized British Labour's influence in 
 delaying National Service, I must, in all fairness, point 
 out that brows not accustomed to sweat and hands 
 never grimy from toil joined their fro\\Tis and their 
 strength with Trade-Unionism and Sociahsm against 
 Conscription. The professional pacifists, the " anti- 
 militarists," the statesmen and the newspapers which 
 for years prior to 1914, and even during the weeks 
 immediately preceding August of that year, ridiculed 
 the idea of " war with Germany," were all mobilized 
 against the revolutionary idea of converting able- 
 
 309
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 bodied Britons by law into defenders of the realm. 
 They were the men and the journals which had abused 
 Lord Roberts most roundly for the crime of wanting 
 to take time by the forelock. From these quarters the 
 men who have dared to advocate Conscription have 
 been besmirched with abuse no less torrential than 
 that which was heaped upon them at the Trade-Union 
 Congress in Bristol or from week to week in the 
 columns of Socialist -Labour organs. It will not be 
 only certain famous proletariat leaders who prevented 
 Britain from rising in the great war to her full military 
 stature — if prevented she be — but the party-hack 
 editors, molly-coddle authors and anything-for-ofhce 
 politicians who preferred the fetish of " our unenslaved 
 Democracy " and " Voluntaryism " to the system 
 under which every other single one of Britain's Allies 
 is fighting and under which, if the opinion of profes- 
 sional soldiers is to be trusted, victory alone can be 
 made to perch on the Union Jack. 
 
 lO
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 THOUGH the end of the carnage is not even ap- 
 proximately in sight, a synoptic view of Germany 
 in war-time is feasible to a more comprehensive 
 extent than is possible in Britain. Armageddon found 
 the Fatherland completely caparisoned for war, with 
 her people so steeped in discipline that it was the 
 merest formality to harness their peace-time habits 
 to Mars' Juggernaut and drive the entire nation to 
 battle as one would a well-trained team. " Team- 
 work," in fact, exactly describes Germany's war-time 
 performances. They are achievements in national 
 unison without parallel in history. Britain, on the 
 other hand, having been overtaken by war, except 
 for her Navy, in a state of naked unpreparedness, was 
 plunged forthwith into the melting-pot. Traditions, 
 customs, institutions, hobbies, prejudices, fetishes, 
 even cherished laws, had to be abandoned, upset or 
 reconstructed to fit a world of iron conditions unsuited 
 to a dreamland of comfortable theories. The remaking 
 of Britain, after sixteen months of war, is not yet ended. 
 It has, indeed, hardly commenced. The time to write 
 an accurate history of these isles during the Great 
 Test will come not when peace is signed, but perhaps 
 a decade later, when the New England will have 
 begun to assume, in misty outline at least, the physical, 
 
 311
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 moral and intellectual dimensions in which war, with 
 its scars and its cleansings, left her. 
 
 Organized for war, body and soul, as Germany has 
 been for generation upon generation, and never more 
 so, of course, than in the living generation, the coun- 
 try slid into the bloody groove as neatly as if it had 
 never had its being elsewhere. The prospect of " star- 
 vation," for instance, quite apart from the fact that it 
 was a German-invented bogey trotted out to deceive 
 the enemy and extort the commiseration of neutrals, 
 never seriously disturbed the Germans' equanimity, 
 for from the cradle up frugality has been instilled in 
 them as a virtue sister to patriotism. No people in 
 the world could overnight descend to a war standard 
 of living so rapidly as the Germans. Accustomed to 
 the affluence of sudden prosperity as the nation, as a 
 whole, was, it had only to return to familiar incul- 
 cated habits, when the Kaiser called. The grand Ger- 
 man bluff of the first year of the war was the intro- 
 duction of the bread-ticket ration system. How the 
 grain-shippers of Chicago and Duluth must have 
 chuckled over it, when they recalled the gigantic ad- 
 vance purchases of wheat made for German and 
 Austrian account in May, 1914 — three full months 
 before " the Russian mobihzation menace !" Germany 
 can never be starved, and she knows it. Von Tiipitz 
 knew it when he proclaimed submarine piracy as a 
 " reprisal " for British " attempts to starve us out." 
 The grip of the British Fleet around Germany^s neck 
 has inconvenienced the Germans, but it can never 
 cause them to famish. The " starvation " myth which 
 the German propagandists in the United States so 
 assiduously circulated was devised, purely and simply, 
 312
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 for the purpose of arousing the compassion of the 
 generous-hearted American people, in the hope that 
 our most sentimental of governments would interv^ene, 
 in humanity's name, to lift from Germany's throat a 
 yoke which she herself wasT powerless to remove. 
 That is the long and short of the " starvation " story. 
 As inborn and cultivated habits of frugality and 
 thrift enabled the introduction of the bread-ticket with- 
 out marked disturbance of normal Germ.an life, so the 
 nation resorted willingly and easily to all the other new 
 conditions which war imposed. A people goose- 
 stepped and policed from the nursery to the grave, 
 bred in docility, with wills of their own eternally 
 broken before they have left the Kinderstuhe, with 
 initiative and self-reHance knocked out of them with 
 the rod at home and in school, and with blind unyield- 
 ing subordination to discipline literally pounded into 
 their bones in barracks, provides no astonishing spec- 
 tacle in making war, when war comes, as one man 
 obeying one supreme \\\\\. War is the ultima ratio, 
 indeed, which this national system of self-suppression 
 has in mind. The surprising thing is not that the 
 world has witnessed so colossal an exhibition of team- 
 work in Germany. The unexpected would have been 
 if Germany had given any other account of herself. 
 When we speak, as we all do, and especially the Eng- 
 lish, of " Germany's years of preparation," we should 
 eliminate the notion that these preparations were 
 confined to shells, guns, fortifications, battleships and 
 legions. No single other " preparation " of the Ger- 
 man war gods measured up, in my judgment, to the 
 unseen and unnoticed, yet all-engulfing, decade-old, 
 national scheme of moulding the minds of men, women, 
 
 313
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 children and babes along the line of unresisting, com- 
 plete slavery to Superiority, uniformed as the State. 
 When you dilute this super-subjugation with the wine 
 of true patriotism which, despite their Socialism, their 
 police, their burdensome taxes, their goose-step, their 
 powerless parliaments and all the other concomitants 
 of an autocratic monarchy, flows red and joyously 
 through the soul of the Germans, you secure a spiritual 
 admixture which approaches invincibility. You dis- 
 cover the ingredients of what Lloyd-George christened 
 the " potato-bread spirit," which he truly described as 
 a greater danger to Germany's enemies than Hinden- 
 burg's strategy. The former will survive long after 
 the latter has broken down. 
 
 For a full year, interrupted only by six weeks in the 
 United States at the end of the winter of 1914-15, 1 
 have kept in as close touch with Germany in war-time 
 as if I were at my old lookout in the;Friedrichstrasse. 
 My professional task in London all that time has been 
 to study the German Press. Day in and day out I 
 have done so. I have read the Government-controlled 
 Lokal-Anzeiger, the radical Berliner Tagehlatt, the 
 venerable Vossische Zeitung, Count Reventlow's or- 
 gan of Frightfulness, the Deutsche Tageszeitung, the 
 Pan-German Tagliche Rundschau, the Thunderer of 
 Prussian conservatism, the Kreuz- Zeitung, and i\Iaxi- 
 milian Harden's vitriolic Zukunft. The voice of para- 
 lyzed Hamburg has come to me morning and night 
 through the malevolent Hamburger Nachrichten and 
 Fremdenblatt. Vorwdrts has kept me informed of 
 German Socialism's invertebrate vagaries. The cul- 
 tured Cologne Gazette, the property of the late Doctor 
 Neven-Dumont, whose widow is half-English and whose 
 314
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 son is proud of his Oxford degree, and which yet has 
 ahnost led the German Press in the violence of its Anglo- 
 phobism, has told me what semi-official Germany 
 wanted the world to believe was its views from hour 
 to hour. In the Frankfurter Zeitung I have been able 
 to glean the news and opinion of the great German 
 financial and commercial classes for which it speaks, 
 Catholic Bavaria, the land of Crown Prince " Rup- 
 precht, the Bloody," has been interpreted to me by the 
 Munich Neueste Nachrichten. The Dresdner Anzeiger 
 has mirrored Saxony day by day. x\nd, as the Stim- 
 mung of no countrs-^ in the world is so faithfully repro- 
 duced by its comic press as is opinion in Germany, my 
 readings have been amplified, as well as lightened, by 
 heartlessly ironic Simplicisshnus, artistic Jugend, Flie- 
 gende Blatter and Lustige Blatter. The German literary 
 diet, which was gradually ruining my eye-sight, has 
 been almost more opulent than in Berlin. It was finally 
 enriched from week to week by the insistent grist of 
 pamphlets and booklets which has poured from the 
 German mill even in more copious and overwhelming 
 measure than in peace-times. If the printed word is 
 the index of a nation's thought, little of moment in 
 Germany since August, 1914, has escaped me. I have 
 had the inestimable advantage of being able to absorb 
 it in the light of its relationship to the situation outside 
 of Germany — an opportunity of which the Germans 
 themselves, though I would not try to make them be- 
 lieve it, have been cruelly deprived. 
 
 Telescopic observation of Germany, as reflected by 
 its press, a little knowledge of what Doctor Munster- 
 berg would call the Fatherland's " psychology," and the 
 actual deeds of the German army, navy and Govern- 
 
 315
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 ment have provided me, I think I may venture 
 to say, with a fairly complete and accurate picture. 
 Germany, thus visualized, stands out to me in bold, 
 clear-cut relief. It is a strange and terrible composite 
 of forces generally considered incongruous and mutually 
 destructive — Efficiency, Malice, Ruthlessness and In- 
 tolerance. The world ought to have known that in 
 war Germany would reveal titanic powers of scien- 
 tific organization. It did not expect to find her an 
 Empire of Hate. It hardly imagined that the land of 
 Goethe and Wagner, Koch, Behring and Ehrlich, Sie- 
 mens, Rathenau and Ballin, Hauptmann, Strauss and 
 Reinhardt, Eucken, Haeckel and Harnack, could be 
 turned even by the devouring blasts of war into a com- 
 munity capable of elevating to the dignity of a national 
 anthem such a ferocious song as Lissauer's Hymn of 
 Hate Against England, whose soul is best breathed by 
 its closing stanza: 
 
 '* Take you the folk of the Earth in pay, 
 With bars of gold your ramparts lay, 
 Bedeck the ocean with bow on bow, 
 Ye reckon well, but not well enough now. 
 French and Russian, they matter not, 
 A blow for a blow, a shot for a shot, 
 We fight the battle with bronze and steel, 
 And the time that is coming Peace will seal. 
 You will we hate with a lasting hate, 
 We will never forego our hate, 
 Hate by water and hate by land. 
 Hate of the head and hate of the hand, 
 Hate of the hammer and hate of the crown, 
 Hate of seventy millions, choking down. 
 We love as one, we hate as one, 
 We have one foe, and one alone — 
 ENGLAND!" 
 316
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 Even Barbara Henderson's brilliant translation of 
 this epic of spleen, the first version of which to be pub- 
 lished in Great Britain it was my privilege to reprint 
 in The Daily Mail from the columns of the New York 
 Times, fails to do justice to the innate rancour and gall 
 of Lissauer's original verses. Americans who visited 
 Germany during the war were unanimously agreed 
 that no rendering of the Hymn of Hate in English 
 could possibly interpret its consuming spirit. You had 
 to hear it rasped with the ferocity of snarling, guttural 
 Germans, they said, to gain even an approximate 
 idea of its power. You had to watch a man or woman 
 recitationist or singer, for it was set to music, too, 
 bawl it out, in a crescendo of passionate fury as the 
 final word of each stanza, England ! was reached. You 
 had to sit in the midst of a theatre, cafe or music-hall 
 audience, or even in a drawing-room, and note all 
 around you the frenzied countenances, the clenched 
 fists, the whole enraged being, of men, women and 
 children, to know how Lissauer's ballad of gall had 
 burnt itself into a people's soul. There have been 
 more or less sincere efforts in Germany to banish the 
 Hymn of Hate, Lissauer having previously received 
 the Iron Cross for poetic gallantry, and from the pulpit 
 and the school rostrum the unrighteousness of hate has 
 been sanctimoniously proclaimed. But Lissauer only 
 put into verse the spirit which maddened Berlin on the 
 night of August 4, 1914, which grew in intensity as the 
 magnitude of British intervention in the war slowly 
 dawned, and which, surface manifestations to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding, lingers deep and ineffaceable in 
 the German breast, and will remain there, barring a 
 miracle, for generations after the war is over. 
 
 317
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 While the Hymn of Hate was at the zenith of its 
 glory, some genius whose name, unfortunately, will be 
 lost to posterity, invented Gott strafe England ! (God 
 punish England !) as the most patriotic form of greet- 
 ing which one German could exchange with another. 
 Friends meeting in the suburban trains or street-cars, 
 or in the streets, no longer lifted their hats as usual 
 and said Guten Morgen. They shook hands solemnly 
 and exclaimed Gott strafe England ! When they 
 parted at night, it was not Gtiten Abend, but Gott strafe 
 England ! Then they began stamping it — with a rub- 
 ber-stamp which was sold by the thousand for the pur- 
 pose — on their letters to correspondents at home and 
 abroad. It was even adopted, now and then, as an 
 epitaph for a fallen soldier, whose relatives would end 
 up the customary obituary in the advertising columns 
 of the newspapers with Gott strafe England! Now 
 postcards blossomed forth with the new national motto. 
 Scarf-pins made their appearance in the windows of 
 cheap- jewellery stores, inscribed Gott strafe England ! 
 The legend was reproduced in a score of different de- 
 signs on cuff-links, brooches, and even wedding-rings, 
 while hardly a schoolchild was without a badge or but- 
 ton emblazoned with the Fatherland's holiest war 
 prayer. Handkerchiefs were embroidered with it, 
 pocket-knives had it enamelled on their handles, and 
 many a Liebesgabe to a dear one in the trenches went 
 forth with a pair of black-white-red braces imprinted 
 Gott strafe England ! On a medal which doubtless 
 decorated thousands of German breasts — a sample 
 reached England — ^was engraved : 
 
 " Give us this day our daily bread ; England 
 would take it from us. God punish her !" 
 
 318
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 3^9
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, who was 
 beaten by Sir John French's "contemptible little army" 
 at Neuve Chapelle and Artois, placed Royal approval 
 on the Gott strafe England cult in his notorious battle- 
 order in the winter campaign to '' annihilate the Brit- 
 ish arch-foe in front of us at any and all cost." 
 
 Englishmen/and especially English soldiers, perhaps 
 measured the Gott strafe England sentiment at below 
 its real value as a German fighting asset when they 
 decided to treat it as a joke. That was the spirit, at 
 any rate, which animated a group of young Eton men 
 at the front, who sent a postcard to the Headmaster of 
 their historic school rival reading : Gott strafe Harrow ! 
 And on April Fool's day British Tommies across a 
 certain meadow of death in Flanders expelled from a 
 mine-thrower something which looked murderously 
 like a bomb. When it bounced in front of the German 
 lines, and bounced again, without exploding, a " Boche" 
 ventured out of the trenches and picked it up. He 
 found it was a football, and on it was inscribed : 
 
 April Fool ! 
 Gott strafe England I 
 
 Mr. Punch and his lesser confreres in British humour 
 have almost lived through the war on Gott strafe 
 England. The sentiment, far from striking terror into 
 John Bull's heart, has very materially added to his 
 war-time gaiety. 
 
 Next to the Hate epidemic, thejmystifying account 
 of themselves which the German Social Democrats 
 have given during the war stands out as the main 
 phenomenon, 1 have asked myself more than once 
 what might have been if Bebel, the brains, or Singer, 
 320
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 the fists, of the old-time Socialistic movement had 
 been alive in August, 1914. Certainly the utter 
 failure of the Socialists to hamper the operation of the 
 German war-machine will remain for ever one of the 
 amazing episodes of the war. It will rank, of course, 
 also, as one of the blazing miscalculations of the 
 Fatherland's enemies. It is true that Bebel, the long- 
 time autocrat of the German " Reds," proclaimed often 
 enough that when Germany was in peril, he and his 
 Genossen would shoulder the musket with a will. Yet 
 the suspicion always lurked that when the German 
 War Party's '' Day " came and it essayed to drag the 
 German people across the Rubicon, the Social Demo- 
 cracy, with 4,250,000 voters, iii members of parlia- 
 ment and German trades-unionism almost solidly 
 behind it, would be found standing like an insuperable 
 barrier against the powers of aggression. There had 
 been more than one hint that working-class Germany, 
 in that hour, would not shrink from utilizing the potent 
 weapon of the General Strike to stay the hand of the 
 war zealots. Opinion on that score amounted to 
 almost positive conviction in non-Socialistic Germany 
 and throughout Europe, in case the test were to be 
 forced by a German war of manifestly provocative 
 character. It therefore was of prime importance to 
 the clique which engineered the war that the Social 
 Democracy be made to believe, forthwith and implicitly, 
 that the impending conflict was a " defensive war," to 
 which Socialist leaders had always pledged the prole- 
 tariat's unswerving support. Categorical and lachry- 
 mose assurances to that effect were accordingly given 
 to the Social Democratic group of the Reichstag by the 
 Imperial Chancellor in the confidential conferences with
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the partieSj. which preceded the public session of the 
 House on August 4, 1914. The once-despised " Reds," 
 so often denounced by William H as " men without a 
 country," but whose votes in the national legislature 
 were now so essential to the show of Imperial unity 
 with which Germany desired to go to war, were supplied 
 with ample " evidence " that Germany's cause was 
 ** just." She had been " fallen upon " by ruthless, 
 envious enemies, the struggle about to begin would be 
 waged by the Fatherland in " defence " of its holiest 
 national interests, and the support of all classes was 
 essential to the waging of the fight with which nothing 
 short of " the Empire's existence " was bound up. 
 The Socialists listened, patriotically, to this siren song. 
 They believed its tale of woe. They bade the Chancellor 
 to be assured that they would not be found wanting 
 in Germany's moment of peril. And a few hours 
 later Herr Haase, the chairman of the party, was on 
 his feet in the Reichstag, uttering glittering platitudes 
 about Socialism's constitutional abhorrence of war 
 and all its works, but proclaiming that the party's 
 full strength and support were at the Government's 
 disposal for the purpose of repelling the invader I 
 Sic transit gloria mundi I August Bebel might well 
 have remarked, could his shade have hovered over this 
 abject surrender to Mars by his supine heirs of the 
 fundamental principles to which the old Socialist 
 field-marshal had consecrated a lifetime. 
 
 From that moment forth the Kaiser needed to give 
 himself no concern as to " the internal foe," the nick- 
 name of reproach long saddled on the Social Demo- 
 cracy by the Military Autocracy. The wing-clipped 
 " Reds " were even allowed a certain latitude of free 
 322
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 speech and thought about the war. They were per- 
 mitted to indulge in their favourite academic discussions 
 about the propriety of Socialist votes for war credits, 
 and even Haase himself, having gradually come to 
 realize that the Kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg had 
 cruelly hoaxed and victimized the Social Democracy, 
 was not locked up for sedition for issuing, together 
 with two fellow-leaders, Bernstein and Kautsky, a 
 courageous manifesto against support of limitless war 
 grants. Vorwarts, the Socialist organ, and other party 
 newspapers were from time to time suppressed by the 
 military censor for airing war opinions too freely, but 
 as successive war measures were presented for the 
 approval of the Reichstag, a safe majority of Socialist 
 votes was on each occasion cast in their favour. The 
 myth of a " war of defence " was never broken down. 
 The King of Bavaria and the National Liberal Party 
 gave the game away during the spring and summer of 
 1915, by blustering about the necessity for sweeping 
 " rectifications of our frontiers," or, in other words, 
 wholesale annexation of conquered territory, but 
 Germany's war was well into its second year finding 
 the Social Democracy, for the purposes and needs of the 
 Government at least, entirely harmless. Food shortage 
 and high prices churned working-class Germany into 
 growing discontent, as the war proceeded. Butter 
 and meat riots have occurred in Berlin, and there have 
 been ominous suggestions that the military authorities 
 are alive to the possibility of " revolutionary " mani- 
 festations. But the day of Germany's Commune is 
 not yet. 
 
 No better evidence of the completeness with which 
 the Socialist party was hypnotized from the outset 
 
 323
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 could have been supplied than by the action of Doctor 
 Ludwig Frank, one of its brilliant young leaders, in 
 volunteering for military service. Frank fell in the 
 earliest fighting in France, in August, 1914, and now 
 fills a hero's grave. A Jewish lawyer in Baden, he 
 was commonly looked upon as the future chieftain 
 of Social Democracy. The war interfered with a 
 cherished plan of his — to visit and lecture in the United 
 States — and I suppose the last interview he ever gave 
 was one I had with him, in which he spoke with 
 enthusiasm of the American impressions he hoped to 
 gather. He was keenly interested in the "trust" 
 problem, recognized that it contained evils with which 
 Germany before long would have to cope, and wanted 
 to equip himself with first-hand knowledge of its 
 ramifications in the home of its highest development. 
 Frank was not a fire-eating German Social Democrat. 
 He belonged to the moderate or " revisionist " wing 
 of the party. He was obsessed with no illusions as to 
 the future possibilities of Socialism in Germany and 
 acknowledged that sane democrats had long since 
 abandoned hope of accomplishing anything more than 
 the establishment of a truly constitutional monarchy 
 and Parliamentary government. It is a thousand 
 pities that Ludwig Frank has not been spared to play 
 his capable part in the political reconstruction of 
 Germany which, win or lose, is almost inevitably 
 certain to follow the war. Doctor Karl Liebknecht, 
 that stormy petrel of German Socialism, remained the 
 one man to utter anti-war sentiment day in and day 
 out. Even the Government's action in sticking him 
 into field-grey and dispatching him to the front for 
 intermittent service failed to check the flow of his 
 
 324
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 invective. Liebknecht represents the Imperial borough 
 of Potsdam, of all places in the world, in the German 
 Parhament, but, though he has talked incessantly and 
 voted rebelliously, the voice of the representative of 
 the Kaiser's congressional district was destined to 
 remain as one crying in the wilderness. 
 
 I have said that the triumphs of Germany behind 
 the firing-line — the fortitude with which she has borne 
 her hideous losses in life, the magnificently effective 
 demonstration of unity, economy, self-sacrifice, in- 
 dustrial and financial organization, and adaptability 
 to all the domestic conditions of war — were only things 
 which those of us who knew the Germans expected to 
 come to pass. They were as inevitable, in their 
 paternalized State, the Empire of System, as were the 
 early cannon-ball successes of the German army. We 
 who were aware, as eye-witnesses, of Germany's 
 prodigious preparations for '' The Day," never doubted 
 that, having chosen her owti moment for launching her 
 thunderbolts, they would accomplish precisely the 
 staggering blows and strangle-holds which August and 
 September, 19 14, brought forth. Although (including 
 myself) there was not one man in ten thousand in 
 Berlin who knew who Hindenburg was — I have merely 
 a faint recollection of having once read his name as 
 an army commander in Kaiser Maneuvres — a good 
 many of us had an abiding impression that the Russian 
 army was no match for the German war machine, 
 however easily the Czar might roll up the Austrian s. 
 The victories of the German armies in the war are no 
 surprise to the German people. They have been 
 raised in the belief that their military power was 
 invincible, even against a world of foes. Events in 
 
 32s
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 the first year and a half of the war, even though Paris 
 and Calais remained untaken, were certainly such as 
 to convince Germans that their traditional and child- 
 like confidence in their armed prowess was justified. 
 
 But in addition to Hate and Socialist impotence, 
 two things which astounded those who knew and 
 admired the German people, were their callousness 
 toward the deeds which have been committed by their 
 army and navy and their savage intolerance of any 
 other point of view except their own. I am not one 
 of those who believe that all Germans have cloven 
 hoofs. Bitterly as I oppose their cause in this war 
 and fully as 1 hold their War Party responsible for the 
 war, I am not prepared to believe that the Germans 
 are quite a decadent or a lost race. What I do believe 
 is that the war has, temporarily at least, obliterated 
 the moral qualities of the Germans and dragged them 
 from the high estate of ethical and discriminating 
 intelligence in which they lived in ante-bellum times. 
 The Germans of Louvain, of the Lusitania, asphyxi- 
 ating gas, liquid fire, submarine piracy, airship 
 assassination and General Frightfulness are not the 
 Germans among whom I spent thirteen happy, fruitful 
 years. They are not the Germans whose main con- 
 cern, as it is that of the average run of men and women 
 in other chmes, was to prosper, raise families, educate 
 children, live comfortably, acquire a competence and 
 enjoy life generally. These Germans no longer exist. 
 They have been succeeded by a race of war-maddened 
 Germans, who were told by their Imperial Chancellor 
 that " necessity knows no law," that treaties are 
 " scraps of paper," and who have been made to believe 
 that, in war, there is but one thing to do — " to hack 
 326
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 our way through " — and that, as Bismarck and the 
 German War Book said, the enemy must be left with 
 nothing except eyes to weep with. The Germans 
 have been steeped in all this by their over-lords, 
 living and dead, and, being children of discipline, they 
 have looked \vith unmoistened eye upon all and sundry 
 done in the holy name of these bedrock German 
 principles. 
 
 The Fatherland's heartlessness toward such events 
 as the rape of Belgium becomes less inexphcable 
 when one recalls the cult of brutality which pursues the 
 German from the nursery upward. As a child in 
 swaddling clothes, he is taught that he has no right to 
 a will of his own, and if he attempts to cultivate one, 
 it is promptly beaten out of him. I recall, with more 
 amusement than the episode inspired in me at the time, 
 the struggle we had with our beloved family physician 
 in Berlin, Doctor Keiler, to allow us to bring up our 
 three or four-year-old son as a boy and not as a 
 machine. "Das Kind darf keinen Willen haherirP^ I 
 remember dear old Keiler shrieking in Wilmersdorf 
 more than once, as he laboured in vain to convince 
 us that if Fright fulness was necessary to break the 
 youngster's inborn initiative and self-reliance, we must 
 not shrink from resorting to it. And when the German 
 escapes the Kinder stub e with its unfailing rod and 
 enters Gyninasium, he is once more under the cruel 
 lash of Efficiency, which drives scores- of lads to suicide 
 at each recurring Easter-time because they have failed 
 in examinations for the higher form, notwithstanding 
 a term's unceasing hounding by their drill-sergeant of 
 a teacher and class-room and home cramming which 
 have kept their bodies thin and their cheeks pallid. A 
 
 327
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 whole literature has come into existence in opposition 
 to the intellectual brutality to which German school- 
 boys between the ages of eight and sixteen are sub- 
 jected, but the consensus of opinion is that the system's 
 advantages outweigh its deficiencies, and that youthful 
 suicides are part of the price the Fatherland must pay 
 for what Professor Lasson of Berlin calls its " cultural 
 superiority " over the rest of mankind. 
 
 Thrashed in the nursery, tormented in school, the 
 German lad must then face a period of bullying in bar- 
 racks, for, if he has managed to survive his Gymnasia 
 years in health, he will enter the army. It is not neces- 
 sary in this narrative to dilate upon the cruelties com- 
 mitted in German barracks in the sacrosanct name of 
 Discipline and Thoroughness. There is a literature in 
 Germany on that subject, too, and the penal records of 
 the military and civil courts comprise the bulk of it. It 
 is only with the lesson of the system with which we 
 need to concern ourselves here; and that is, that the 
 German man who emerges from the army comes out 
 with notions about the efficacy and justifiability of 
 brute force and brutality which are certain, under the 
 red licence which war confers, to find expression in 
 terrible deeds. In other words, a German who has him- 
 self perhaps been assaulted by his regimental sergeant 
 on scores of occasions (such cases are plentiful), who 
 has seen the bloody sabre-duel elevated in his uni- 
 versity days to the level of the manliest art, who has 
 throughout his life been a supine victim of pohce vio- 
 lence, who holds womankind in semi-contempt, who 
 thinks it sportsmanlike to shoot birds alight, who re- 
 joices in his prowess as a slaughterer of wild game, 
 who beats his horses, who is as unfamiliar with the 
 320
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 ethics of sport and play as he is with the Hngo of a 
 Choctaw dialect — such a man, I say, is bound, when he 
 is sent forth with his Kaiser's mandate to " hack his 
 way through," to stagger humanity as the Germans 
 have never ceased to stagger it on land, on sea and 
 in the air since August, 19 14. Given a nation of 
 non-combatants who have been instructed to believe 
 that these things must be because otherwise their ex- 
 istence will be imperilled, and you have to do with 
 a community which, however delightful its qualities 
 as individuals, is no longer capable of measuring right 
 and wrong by normal standards, and which is ready 
 to tolerate any and every thing, as long as it is part 
 and parcel of the general scheme to " preserv'e the 
 Fatherland." If one considers all these things, which 
 I set down in no spirit of venom, but purely in an 
 attempt to diagnose German war callousness, one will 
 begin to be able to understand why German sensibili- 
 ties remain unshocked in the presence of things which 
 have horrified civilization. One's understanding will 
 be complete if it is remembered that not one in a mil- 
 lion Germans believes that these things have happened 
 at all ! 
 
 Philosophy, logic, metaphysics and psychology are 
 cultivated sciences in Germany. It is even sometimes 
 claimed — in Berlin and in certain regions of Harvard 
 — that they were " made in Germany." Yet as applied 
 sciences they have given a woefully sorry exhibition 
 of themselves in the Fatherland during the war. They 
 have, as a matter of fact, entirely disappeared. They 
 have been supplanted by a new doctrine, for which the 
 Germans themselves have an old and incomparable 
 word — Rechthaherei . I learned that precious term 
 
 329
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 from an American colleague in Berlin, a South Caro- 
 linian and profound student of German character 
 named William C. Dreher. Dreher, who is an able 
 journalist specializing in economics, has held forth to 
 me on countless occasions about " Prussian Recht- 
 haherei " — the unquenchable conviction of the average 
 Teuton that he not only is " right " about everything, 
 but that everybody else whom he permits to have a 
 thought or a word on the same subject is essentially, 
 inherently and incorrigibly " wrong." I can hardly 
 credit the report that Dreher himself has fallen a vic- 
 tim to the insidious influence of Rechthaberei . It is 
 something that presupposes omniscience and mental 
 aristocracy on the part of the propounder of a given 
 theory, and senility or utterly misguided stubbornness 
 on the part of the opponent. Germany has wallowed 
 in Rechthaberei since August i, 1914. The cult has 
 sucked into the mire of intolerance everybody who 
 has dared to cherish a contrary view. It has refused 
 the right of independence of thought to every living 
 soul, unless that thought is pro-German. It has made 
 Germans swallow whole anything the Kaiser's Govern- 
 ment and its muzzled press have said, and it has con- 
 demned as criminal falsehood anything published in 
 enemy countries. It allows British, French and Rus- 
 sian newspapers, in a lordly way, to circulate freely in 
 Germany, as of yore, thumping its chest and saying 
 " We are not afraid of the truth " — but only after 
 having drilled the country into believing that nothing 
 printed abroad about the war is or can be true ! So the 
 German who finds The Daily Mail or the New York 
 Times on its accustomed file at his favourite cafe, just 
 as he used to do in peace days, knows in advance that 
 330
 
 THE EMPIRE OF HATE 
 
 he is to read " lies," and he digests them, leaving his 
 patriotism unpolluted. 
 
 "Mass-suggestion" has thus worked wonders in 
 War Germany. It has driven me for example — I hope 
 not for ever — from the ranks of my oldest and best 
 friends in Germany^ — Americans as well as Germans. 
 It impelled my wife's dearest friend, the Philadelphia- 
 born wife of a German, to write a letter early in the 
 war, formally ''cancelling" the friendship, because 
 " your husband, instead of choosing to identify himself 
 with an honest cause, and make an honest name for 
 himself, has thrown in his lot with England, and, with 
 her, will share the downfall toward which that nation 
 is headed." That would be funny, if it were not so 
 tragically pathetic. I hear that a great many good 
 people in Berlin, wasting upon me breath and choleric 
 energy which deserves to be spent on a far worthier 
 object, fairly splutter when they hear or read my 
 name. I have been the target of absurd and filthy 
 personal abuse in the German press. I have won 
 undying execration, for I have dared, in a most un- 
 German way, to have a view of my own on the world- 
 crisis which is agitating men's minds and searching 
 their hearts as never was done before. 
 
 Yet all the millstones of hate and intolerance are not 
 preventing the Germans from conducting a fight which 
 challenges, in its sheer efficiency, barring its revoltingly 
 inhuman aspects, the wonder of foe and neutral the 
 world over. They are, indeed, a nation in arms. 
 Their Spartan qualities behind the front, their con- 
 tempt of death in the enemy's fire, will not easily be 
 subdued. Exhaustion, economic and human, must 
 tell against them in the long run, though the process 
 
 331
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 of attrition will be vastly slower, I fancy, than arm- 
 chair war critics in England think. The Germans 
 will fight to the last man and the last pfennig, as I 
 know them. Had the war they provoked been waged 
 without those systematic horrors which will eternally 
 besmirch the German name, their tattered banners 
 might have been folded with that honour and glory 
 which are the inalienable due even of the vanquished. 
 
 332
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 "D OME was not built in a day, but England has 
 -■-^ been made over in a year. Personal liberty is 
 gone. A free press no longer exists. Extravagance 
 is " bad form." Thrift has suddenly become not only 
 respectable, but almost fashionable. Dukes' sons and 
 cooks' sons are " pals." Drunkenness is disappear- 
 ing. Conscription looms on the horizon. The Irish 
 are loyal. Suffragettes are making shells and bandag- 
 ing wounds instead of smashing windows and going 
 to gaol. Pride is humbled, though not crushed. Still 
 ringed by Kipling's " leaden seas," Britain is no longer 
 an island, for Zeppelins have maimed and killed and 
 wrecked in the heart of London. Tolerance is a lost 
 art. British have learned to hate. The link-boy has 
 come back into his own; the streets at night, in order 
 that Admiral Sir Percy Scott, defender of London by 
 air, may blind the " sky-Huns," recall the gloom of 
 the Cimmerian Regency. Though Waterloo was won 
 a hundred years ago, a terror worse than the Napo- 
 leonic scourge has overtaken the descendants of Nelson 
 and Wellington. Britannia rules the waves, but the 
 blood of a half million of her best sons fertilizes the 
 soil of France, Belgium, Turkey, Serbia and Africa; 
 and the flow is far from checked. The " shopkeeper 
 of the world " has become a nation in khaki. Only 
 one phase of its multifarious life, immutable as the 
 
 333
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 sphinx, has survived the crucible of war in pristine 
 glory — British calm. Ships may sink, men may fall, 
 bombs may annihilate and treasure be sapped, but 
 British imperturbability, like Time itself, pursues the 
 even tenor of its way, Himalayan in its imperviousness. 
 
 Assuredly it has been for no lack of cause that 
 England has ridden the sea of Armageddon without 
 capsizing. Squalls, typhoons, storms and barometric 
 disturbances of every degree of violence have beset her 
 from the outset of the voyage. But though there has 
 been tempest, there is no shipwreck. Britain starts 
 upon another lap of a seemingly endless journey, 
 battered indeed, but keel down and full steam ahead. 
 It is still night. Neither stokers nor crew, nor even the 
 captains and commodores, are a completely united 
 band, but their differences concern only the methods 
 of cleaving through darkness to the port, to gain which, 
 at any cost, all are grimly determined. Failure to 
 reach the waters of their desire as soon as the un- 
 thinking majority hoped and believed would be possible 
 has sobered the vision and intensified the resolve of 
 commanders and crew alike. It has not reconciled 
 their antagonisms, but it is making surer than ever 
 that they will land their craft in the appointed harbour, 
 though the damnations of all the powers of destruction 
 are buffeted against her in the attempt. 
 
 My name for Armageddon is the War of Miscalcu- 
 lations, for it is a title which indicts every belligerent 
 without exception. The Germans expected their 
 army to be in Paris by the end of September, 1914. 
 The English and the French reckoned that Russian 
 Cossacks would be hacking souvenirs from the sepul- 
 chral statues in the Berlin Sieges- Alice about the same 
 334
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 time. The British thought that Jellicoe would starve 
 the Germans. Von Tirpitz imagined that U-boats 
 would paralyze Britain's life-line. The British pounded 
 vainly at the Dardanelles for nine months, and when 
 they could not get Calais the Germans started out to 
 crush Serbia. Sir Edward Grey thought Bulgaria and 
 Greece were only waiting like ripe fruit to drop into 
 the Allies' lap and cry for marching orders. He was 
 at least as near right as the German political professors 
 who always assured William H that India, Egypt, 
 Canada, South Africa and Australia were itching to 
 revolt the moment the Motherland was engrossed in 
 a vast European war. There has been a rude awaken- 
 ing for all concerned. In addition to killing its millions 
 of men and squandering its billions of money, the war 
 has annihilated theories, expectations, plans and 
 aspirations so cruelly that the " war expert " has 
 become a deathless laughing-stock. If " experts " 
 have learned anything from the war, they will hence- 
 forth prefer writing history to risking prophecy. 
 
 " Business as Usual " — life generally in the old rut, 
 in other words — was adopted by Britons as their war 
 motto. Truly did a politician of renown exclaim a 
 year later that no unhappier, because no more unfor- 
 funate, maxim was ever foisted upon or accepted by 
 a patriotic people. The nation made no inconsider- 
 able attempt to convert " Business as Usual " from 
 an aphorism into an actuality. Seven or eight months 
 of unrealized objectives had to pass over English 
 men and women's resolute heads before they began 
 even to doubt the efficacy of the complacent principle 
 they had laid down for themselves. But the mills 
 of Mars, like those of his colleagues, keep on grinding, 
 
 335
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 and England was to learn that, while invasion had not 
 seared her soil as it had scotched that of all her Euro- 
 pean allies, war yet had terrors capable of burning into 
 the soul, saddening the homes and despoiling the 
 pockets of even an unravished land. 
 
 I fix the date when Great Britain began to face the 
 iron logic of events with sterner realization and to 
 doubt the efficacy of " muddle " for purposes of war 
 as May, 19 15. In the two preceding months there had 
 been a series of episodes of more climacteric magnitude 
 than was apparent at the moment of their occurrence. 
 In March Sir John French's army made a vigorous 
 attempt to break through the German lines, and the 
 much-heralded " victory " of Neuve Chapelle resulted. 
 Thousands of British soldiers, and half a hundred 
 Americans fighting in the Canadian contingent, died 
 gallantly in an action which, when its terrible cost was 
 eventually counted, could not be catalogued as any- 
 thing but a glorious failure. In iVpril two affairs of 
 purely German origin were recorded, each predestined 
 to leave a deep impress on the British public mind: the 
 employment of poison gas by the enemy in sanguinary 
 engagements around Ypres, and the flinging of thirty- 
 nine British officers, captives in Germany, into felons' 
 cells by way of " reprisal " for the segregation in 
 England of captured German submarine crews. 
 
 Because the truth about Neuve Chapelle remained 
 unknown for many weeks, attention was bestowed to 
 an overshadowing degree on the gas and officer-im- 
 prisonment episodes. Hitherto the universal demand 
 in England was that, no matter how the Germans 
 waged war. Englishmen must continue to fight " like 
 gentlemen." Suggestions that the hour had long since 
 336
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 arrived for an eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth 
 warfare were rejected in almost every quarter as " un- 
 English " and, therefore, undebatable. The Kaiser's 
 soldateska might rape, pillage, loot and murder, but 
 British troops must battle " in the old-fashioned way " 
 — with clean hands. Tirpitz's bluejackets might prac- 
 tise the tactics of pirates, but Britannia's sailors would 
 continue to respect the high traditions of their calling. 
 Men went so far as to asseverate that it were better 
 that Britain should be beaten than win by " German 
 methods." Sir Edward Clarke, the leader of the bar 
 protesting against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's proposi- 
 tion that Zeppelin murders could only be checked by 
 British air reprisals against defenceless German com- 
 munities, wrote to The Times : "It may be our mis- 
 fortune to be defeated in this war, but it will be our 
 own fault if we are disgraced." Yet British " fighting 
 blood " seemed at length stirred to a boil by the em- 
 ployment of asphyxiating-gas and " Hate " measures 
 against British officer-captives. A wave of holy rage 
 swept over the country. Those who had advocated 
 the use of kid gloves against an enemy which fought 
 with brass knuckles and poison found their views 
 sensibly less popular. Britain was waking at last to 
 the realization which even the Belgian atrocities, 
 " Zeppelin murder " and the *' Scarborough baby- 
 killers " had not fully aroused — that her high-minded 
 " sporting ethics " were lamentably out of place in 
 war with a foe which believed in ruthless " Fright- 
 fulness." The Tommies who died horrible deaths from 
 the effects of German poison gas and the officers who 
 languished in burglars' cells became martyrs in a 
 worthy cause — their anguish convinced England al- 
 
 z 337
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 most against her will that the German was the most 
 ferocious, pitiless and conscienceless enemy who had 
 ever engaged in the noble calling of arms. 
 
 Wliile this healthy conviction was soaking into 
 Britain's sluggish perception, the crowning infamy 
 of the Lusitania massacre was committed. The cup of 
 indignation, already full to the brim, now overflowed. 
 Demand for vengeance, in the form of a campaign 
 against the Germans to be waged with resolution and 
 force more destructive than any previous effort, was 
 universal. There must be no more temporizing, no 
 more half measures, no more vacillation and procras- 
 tination. Recruiting enjoyed a fresh spurt, a response 
 to the lurid posters headed " Remember the Lusitania !*' 
 and reproducing the verdict of the Queenstown coro- 
 ner's jury — 
 
 " that this appalling crime was contrary to inter- 
 national law and the conventions of all civilized nations, 
 and we therefore charge the officers of the said sub- 
 marine, the Emperor and Government of Germany, 
 under whose orders they acted, with the crime of 
 wilful and wholesale murder before the tribunal of the 
 civilized world." 
 
 " It is your duty," the poster added, " to take up the 
 Sword of Justice to avenge this devil's work. EN- 
 LIST TO-DAY !" 
 
 The Lusitania horror unchained the mob spirit from 
 Land's End to John o' Groat's. Uninterned Germans, 
 who were still at large in their thousands, were the 
 victims of rioters' fury in London and the big pro- 
 vincial towns, and the Home Office was forced by 
 2Z^
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 irate public opinion to place barbed-wire around 
 thousands of " enemy aliens " not already in captivity. 
 Simultaneously the demand went forth that the pam- 
 pering of German prisoners of war in palatial manor- 
 houses like Donington Hall should give way to rigour 
 more suitable for men condemned henceforth to be 
 known as Huns. The Lusitania's aftermath was 
 accompanied by ample proof that the bulldog was no 
 longer curled up on the hearthrug as unconcernedly as 
 he had been throughout the winter and spring. He was 
 showing his teeth, and he was snarling. He meant 
 business now. There had been enough of Oueensbury 
 rules, Hurlingham ethics and Crystal Palace niceties 
 in dealing with the Germans. They had served notice 
 to Humanity that it had no laws which the German 
 army and navy felt bound to respect. Englishmen 
 said to themselves: " So be it." Then they rolled up 
 their sleeves. 
 
 Thus was Britain ringing with righteous wrath in 
 the middle of May, 1915, when what I venture to 
 dignify as the turning-point of the war arrived: the 
 exposure by Lord Northcliffe's newspapers of what was 
 henceforth to be known as " the shells tragedy." 
 Northcliffe himself had recently been the guest of Sir 
 John French at the front. Still more lately the mili- 
 tary critic of The Times, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles 
 Repington, had visited British Field Headquarters 
 under the same auspices. There they learned the truth 
 about Neuve Chapelle. It was a simple story. The 
 British army had essayed to smash through the Ger- 
 man lines, hopelessly short of the right kind of ammu- 
 nition — ^high explosive shells. Batteries of artillery, 
 often on the threshold of decisive victory, found them- 
 
 339
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 selves suddenly starved of the only sort of shell which 
 could possibly blast a way through the concrete and 
 barbed-wire of the enemy's entrenchments. What 
 happened at Neuve Chapelle — a terribly heavy loss of 
 British life with nothing like compensatory results — 
 would inevitably happen again when the British army 
 was called upon to attack. It would simply be sen- 
 tenced to death and defeat. Sir John French had 
 been provided with shrapnel which was good enough to 
 kill the Boers, but he was criminally ill-equipped 
 with the shells which alone were capable of demolish- 
 ing the elaborate German defensive arrangements and 
 enabling the British infantry to advance with a fighting 
 chance of success. If the army was not to be con- 
 demned to inglorious impotence or annihilation, it had 
 to be supplied forthwith with high-explosive ammuni- 
 tion on an immense and unceasing scale. It was 
 obvious that the British Commander-in-Chief could 
 not be expected to assume further responsibility for 
 the fate of the campaign in Flanders unless there was 
 sweeping and instant remedial action by the War Office. 
 On May 14 Lieutenant-Colonel Repington, in a 
 dispatch to The Times from " Northern France," 
 which, like other news from the field, passed the 
 Censor at Headquarters before transmission to England, 
 declared that " the want of an unlimited supply of 
 high explosive was a fatal bar to our success." De- 
 scribing an attack which collapsed for the same reason 
 that the offensive at Neuve Chapelle had failed, 
 Repington wrote: 
 
 " We found the enemy much more strongly posted 
 than we expected. We had not sufficient high ex- 
 340
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 plosive to level his parapets to the ground after the 
 French practice, and when our infantry gallantly 
 stormed the trenches, as they did in both attacks, they 
 found a garrison undismayed, many entanglements 
 still intact, and maxims on all sides ready to pour in 
 streams of bullets. We could not maintain ourselves 
 in the trenches won, and our reserves were not thrown 
 in because the conditions for success in an assault 
 were not present. 
 
 " The attacks were well planned and valiantly 
 conducted. The infantry did splendidly, but the 
 conditions were too hard. 
 
 " On our side we have easily defeated all attacks on 
 Ypres. The value of German troops in the attack has 
 greatly deteriorated, and we can deal easily with them 
 in the open. But until we are thoroughly equipped 
 for this trench warfare, we attack under grave dis- 
 advantages. The men are in high spirits, taking 
 their cue from the ever-confident and resolute attitude 
 of the Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 " If we can break through this hard outer crust of 
 the German defences, we believe that we can scatter 
 the German Armies, whose offensive causes us no 
 concern at all. But to break this hard crust we need 
 more high explosive, more heavy howitzers, and more 
 men. This special form of warfare has no precedent 
 in history. 
 
 " It is certain that we can smash the German crust 
 if we have the means. So the means we must have, 
 and as quickly as possible." 
 
 By way of illustrating what British guns could do, 
 if sufficiently numerous and adequately fed, Repington 
 
 341
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 told how the French " by dint of the expenditure of 
 276 rounds of high explosive per gun in one day, 
 levelled with the ground all the German defences, 
 except the villages." He left no doubt that until Sir 
 John French's artillery could attack under similar 
 conditions, British hopes of effective co-operation with 
 Joffre's army were futile. The Times critic's plain- 
 spoken observations, which bore the unmistakable 
 imprint of " inspiration " from British Headquarters, 
 startled the nation. They could hardly have been more 
 suggestive if the Commander-in-Chief himself had 
 gone to the country and proclaimed the facts. Indeed, 
 if others had not promptly done so, I have reason to 
 believe that Sir John French would not have shrunk 
 from that very task. No one had so direct and 
 personal a reason for taking the bull by the horns, 
 for if the British campaign were to degenerate from 
 futility into fiasco, the odium would necessarily fall 
 upon its field chieftain. History would hardly have 
 condemned him for resolving that the blame should 
 be placed where it belonged. 
 
 On May 21 Lord Northcliffe's Daily Mail — his 
 rivals are fond of calling Tlie Times the " penny 
 edition " of The Daily Mail — opened a ruthless fire 
 on Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, as 
 the man directly responsible for the high-explosive 
 famine which was paralyzing British military effort. 
 England was plastered w^ith flaming placards reading: 
 " Kitchener's Tragic Blunder." With the journalistic 
 instinct for a catch-phrase, Northcliffe christened the 
 situation " The Shells Tragedy." He hammered home 
 mercilessly the theory that England must hold to 
 accountability the man whom the country had en- 
 342
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 trusted with practically autocratic control of the War 
 Office. He insisted that Kitchener could not take 
 shelter behind a brilliant past. It was a bold throw 
 for the Bonaparte of British newspaperdom. He was 
 not only assailing the man whom he himself had 
 helped to elevate to the War Secretaryship; he was 
 attacking the national idol. To the overwhelming 
 majority of Englishmen, as I have already pointed out, 
 the name of Kitchener spelled confidence. Next to 
 the Fleet, he represented the country's greatest war 
 asset. Whenever Britons doubted whether the course 
 of events was leading to victory, they thought of the 
 Navy and of Kitchener, and were of stout heart. 
 Northcliffe knew and understood all this — none better. 
 But he said to himself that the relief of the shells 
 crisis w^as of vastly more moment than the prestige 
 of any national idol; that if the vital interests of the 
 country demanded the dragging of Kitchener from his 
 pedestal, there must be no hesitation in performing 
 even that unpleasant task. In a leading article which 
 stirred Great Britain to its uttermost foundations, 
 The Daily Mail went full tilt to the issue. It re- 
 minded Englishmen that Lord Kitchener loomed large 
 in the public eye primarily as an organizer of victory 
 against the Sudanese and as a man who had " helped " 
 Lord Roberts in South x\frica, though (it recalled) 
 there were men who knew Roberts' private opinions 
 of Kitchener's achievements in the Boer campaign. 
 Kitchener had also been Commander-in-Chief in India 
 and, until the outbreak of war, was engaged in the 
 comparatively easy task of running the Egyptian 
 machine, whose wheels had been so well oiled b}^ Lord 
 Cromer. Northcliffe was well aware that Kitchener, 
 
 343
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 owing to his long absence in the East, where he had 
 spent the greater part of his life, was not in touch with 
 the democracy at home, nor had Lord Kitchener ever 
 pretended to any such knowledge. The Daily Mail 
 admitted all these things and declared moreover that 
 it was fair to Kitchener to say that he had been thrust 
 at a moment's notice into a position of immense 
 difhculty. No longer in his first youth, and more 
 than twice the age of successful military commanders 
 of one hundred years ago. Kitchener had been put in 
 charge of the raising, drilling, clothing, equipping, 
 arming, feeding, and fighting of an army which had to 
 be manufactured at a speed unprecedented in the 
 history of the world. Kitchener, though not essenti- 
 ally a good organizer, was a man of enormous driving- 
 power. His talents in that respect had stood him in 
 good stead so far in the war. With the aid of a gigantic 
 advertising campaign, he had accomplished marvels 
 in the direction of raising a volunteer army; but " the 
 shells tragedy " was thunderous proof that the Secre- 
 tary for War had bitten off more than he could chew. 
 Unless things were to go from bad to worse, the 
 all-important question of providing munitions must 
 be taken from Kitchener's overburdened shoulders 
 and transferred to those of men better equipped in 
 respect of time, temperament and training to deal 
 with it. The Northcliffe revelations lost none of their 
 sensationalism in presence of Mr. Asquith's solemn 
 and amazing assurances at Newcastle, barely three 
 weeks previous, that Britain's munition supply, as 
 well as that of her Allies, was entirely adequate ! 
 
 If Northcliffe had suddenly proposed the abdication 
 of the Sovereign, or the demolition of St. Paul's 
 344
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 Cathedral, or the proclamation of a Republic, nothing 
 could have been more cyclonic in its effect than Tlie 
 Daily Mail's imperious demand for the curtailment 
 of Kitchener's supreme authority at the War Office 
 because he had " blundered " with the army's am- 
 munition. At the Stock Exchange and on the Baltic 
 copies of all the Northcliffe papers were ceremoniously 
 burnt. Town councils held indignation meetings, to 
 discuss the advisability of banning them from the 
 public reading rooms. Superpatriots and Hide-the- 
 Truth zealots rushed to their news-dealers and 
 cancelled their subscriptions to The Times, The Daily 
 Mail and other " Northcliffe organs." Rival publish- 
 ers went so far as to suggest that Northcliffe and his 
 editorial staff should be lined up in front of a firing- 
 squad, and shot for high treason. ^Mlerever one 
 went, one encountered the most violent abuse of the 
 journalist who had dared to sling mud at the soldier 
 who was the incarnation of the nation's hopes and 
 to write " Failure " next to his magic name. Punch 
 epitomized national sentiment in an acrid cartoon 
 showing John Bull patting Kitchener on the shoulder, 
 trampling a Daily Mail underfoot, and saying: 
 
 " If you need assurance. Sir, you may like to know 
 that you have the loyal support of all decent people 
 in this country." 
 
 But Northcliffe, who possesses those valuable twin 
 assets of the true journalist,'^an elephantine hide and 
 utter fearlessness, returned to the attack, day after 
 day. He never let up. The " shells tragedy," though 
 Liberal organs were reluctant to admit it, dealt the 
 
 345
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 Asquith Liberal Government a body blow. It was 
 reeling from the effects of still another revelation. 
 Lord Fisher, " Fighting Jack/' the First Lord of the 
 Admiralty, had tendered his resignation. He refused 
 longer to hold ofhce under the temperamental Mr. 
 Winston Churchill or even under a government to 
 which that incalculable young statesman belonged. The 
 public learned that Fisher had not acquiesced whole- 
 heartedly in Mr. Churchiirs schemes for limiting the 
 Dardanelles campaign to a purely naval operation. 
 
 England was now seething with unrest . The political 
 situation was utterly chaotic. iVcrimonious debate in 
 Parliament on the shells question was inevitable. For 
 weeks previous there had been demands from many 
 quarters that the conduct of the war should be trans- 
 ferred from a purely Party Government to the hands 
 of a " National Cabinet " of all political complexions. 
 Mr. Asquith yielded to the inevitable. Before The 
 Daily Mail's exposure of " Kitchener's Tragic Blunder" 
 was a week old, the reconstruction of the Cabinet into 
 a " Coalition " Administration was in full progress. 
 Northcliffe's papers were still being burnt in public 
 places, but he had won a victory for England for which, 
 as she lives, she will yet come to acclaim his name. The 
 completion of the Coalition Ministry was announced 
 on June ii. Lord Kitchener remained Secretary of 
 War, but a " Ministry of Munitions," which took shells 
 and other sinews of war out of Kitchener's hands, 
 was created, and the " hustler " of the Cabinet, Lloyd- 
 George, was entrusted with its organization and 
 administration. Northcliffe had carried his point. 
 
 The war has not been prolific in England of " big 
 men." Barring, perhaps, Joffre and Falkenhayn, it 
 346
 
 Photo] 
 
 {IV0l ffiir^ Sfudio 
 
 LORD NORTHCLIFFE. 
 
 [to taccP- 346.
 
 ■'^f f. ^
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 has produced none anywhere. But I venture that far 
 into the realm of prophecy to predict that the recorder 
 of the Hfe and times of Great Britain in the crucible 
 which was 1915 will pay no mean tribute to the news- 
 paper proprietor who risked prestige and power for 
 the sake of that most prodigious of all tasks — stuffing 
 unpalatable truth down British throats. Northcliffe's 
 actual methods in the performance of the deed are 
 debatable. His motives, I believe, were beyond 
 question, and they will, undoubtedly, appear in true 
 perspective in the impartial light of history. The Lord 
 of Carmelite Manor is not offended when people detect 
 Napoleonic flashes in his impetuous eccentricities, and 
 he would be the last man in the world to deny that his 
 brand of genius is entirely devoid of defects, as it 
 assuredly is not. Northcliffe has been held up to 
 public obloquy as hardly any man of his generation 
 ever was before him. He has been repeatedly charged 
 with being " pro-German." But he has lived to see 
 the ripening of the fniits of his sensational crusade: 
 the British munitions output has been quadrupled 
 since the Stock Exchange first burnt The Daily Mail. 
 Lloyd-George, at the Ministry of ^lunitions, has 
 gathered round him the strongest company of business 
 and scientific brains that was ever applied to any 
 Government department in England. One million 
 men and women, in more than two thousand " con- 
 trolled " establishments, are turning out days, nights, 
 and Sundays the shells with which the British army, 
 early or late, is going to cleave its way to victory. In 
 the great fighting around Loos at the end of September, 
 when the French and the British between them fired 
 65,000,000 shells in seventy-two hours, there was no 
 
 347
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 shortage of the wherewithal, the lack of which turned 
 Neuve Chapelle into a " victory " which Britain had 
 been better without. A prodigious amount of high 
 explosive was necessary to wreck the Germans' first 
 defensive lines in Artois, but still the supply was not 
 exhausted. Wlien the cease-fire was sounded, the 
 British commanders found that they had on hand a 
 great deal more ammunition than they expected, and 
 in certain departments there was actually a greater 
 quantity ready for the gunners at the end of the struggle 
 than at the beginning. Mr. Lloyd-George received 
 and was entitled to the chief glory for that splendid 
 assurance that there would be no more Neuve Chapelles. 
 But I am sure that the little Welshman who has 
 accomplished the miracle of " speeding up " Britain 
 would be the first to acknowledge that The Daily Mail, 
 though its circulation is 120,000 less than it was in 
 May, cannot be robbed of the honour that belongs to 
 it for having torn the scales from England's eyes. 
 
 Previous to the " shells tragedy," I do not think it 
 will be possible for even the friendliest chroniclers to 
 record that, with the single exception of the splendid 
 rush to arms of her uppej and middle classes. 
 Great Britain had given a particularly flattering 
 account of herself in the searching test of war. I do 
 not refer, of course, to the accomplishments of the 
 army and navy. British soldiers and sailors need no 
 encomium at my poor hands. The Trojan heroism of 
 the new army, despite its lack of sweeping victory, will 
 enrich military history for all time. The silent 
 effectiveness of the navy, with its complete vindication 
 of Admiral Mahan's theories, is the marvel of the war. 
 I am referring to the conduct of the British who have 
 348
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 not been in the war as combatants — to the moral and 
 ps\7chic aspect of life in this country during the year 
 of travail. That is why I call the Lusitajiia a blessing 
 in disguise, just as I sometimes felt that a landmg of 
 a German force on the British coasts, had it only taken 
 place soon enough, might have proved the most 
 practically beneficial tonic to the British war spirit 
 which could have been conceived. Something was 
 needed to bring the war home to Englishmen. The 
 Liisitania partially served the purpose. 
 
 The renaissance set in with the dawm of summer. 
 Events did not give recruiting quite that " boom " 
 which was expected, but the national sobering process 
 which ensued was more than a compensating factor. 
 Lloyd-George, inevitable and irrepressible, invented 
 the doctrine that " silver bullets " (money) and 
 Germany's " potato-bread spirit " (economy) were 
 now as urgently essential to victory as high- 
 explosives with which to kill Germans. Only a few 
 weeks before becoming " Shells Minister " and while 
 still Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd-George intro- 
 duced the second War Budget, which gave Britons a 
 staggering idea of what killing Germans meant in mere 
 lucre. It was costing £3,000,000 a day then — in May 
 — and the scale was crescendo, not diminuendo 
 Lloyd-George declared that the nation's bills could 
 not be met unless the country went over, horse, foot, 
 and dragoon, to the Simple Life. The Prime Minister 
 seconded his appeal for the radical regeneration of 
 British life — a conversion from recklessness to Spartan- 
 ism — with some eloquent figures. In a " keynote 
 speech " at Guildhall, Mr. Asquith declared that 
 " waste, on the part either of individuals or of classes, 
 
 349
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 which is always foolish and shortsighted, is in these 
 times nothing short of a national danger." The 
 United Kingdom's annual income, the Premier ex- 
 plained, was between £2, 250,000,000 and £2,400,000,000. 
 Annual expenditure aggregated about £2,000,000,000. 
 The country, therefore, saved under normal conditions 
 between £250,000,000 and £400,000,000. But the 
 necessities of " our seven wars " (in different parts of 
 the hemisphere) required Britons to save about two 
 and a half times what they customarily put away. 
 They needed to store up £1,000,000,000 instead of 
 £400,000,000 a year. In other words, they must 
 reorganize their scheme and standards of living — and 
 of spending — so that they saved £10 for every £4 saved 
 in the past. In no other conceivable way, said the 
 Prime Minister, could Great Britain shoulder the 
 burden of a struggle already costing her at the rate of 
 £1,095,000,000 a year. To ask the notoriously most 
 extravagant people in Europe to " economize " on the 
 Brobdingnagian lines which these figures conjured up 
 was a very tall order, indeed. 
 
 But the gassed Tommies back from the trenches 
 and the widows and the orphans manufactured by the 
 Lusitania and the impregnability of the German lines 
 were uppermost in England's mind, and she set her jaw 
 to the inevitable. The Simple Life did not find itself 
 among friends in the midst of a race which believes 
 in a maximum of servants on a minimum of income; 
 whose very homes and kitchens are the paradise of 
 wasters; which venerates leisure, week-ends, "good 
 addresses " and " parties "; which left the omnibuses 
 to the crowd and scorned anything beneath the rank 
 of a taxi for the truly well-born; which would gladly 
 350
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 go poor for a week for the sake of a Saturday lunch at 
 the Piccadilly grill and a supper at the Savoy, with 
 a theatre and a music-hall between, and Murray's 
 afterward till dawoi; which, while never ostentatious, 
 was addicted to luxury; which worshipped golf, foot- 
 ball, bridge, and horse-racing like liberty itself, and 
 which drank like sailors all. 
 
 But the axe of retrenchment was infinitely preferable 
 to the sword of Damocles. Lords and ladies, " gentry " 
 and common folk, prepared to make the best of it. 
 Prohibition, mainly to enforce sobriet}^ on the work- 
 ing classes, was considered by the Government, but 
 not for long, for there was a mighty howl from the 
 " trade " and from its bibulous votaries, who in England 
 include both ^exes, all classes and nearly every age. 
 Restriction, not prohibition, was adopted as a com- 
 promise. In the " munition areas " the public houses 
 were closed at the hours when, in former times, work- 
 ing men were most inclined to squander their wages 
 on debilitating ale and alcohol. A '' No-drinks-before 
 10 a.m.'' decree was promulgated, and, simultaneously, 
 it became a misdemeanour for a restaurant, saloon, 
 hotel, bar, or even a private club to dispense liquor 
 after ten o'clock at night. Clubland in Pall Mall, 
 St. James's and Piccadilty groaned, and there was 
 gnashing of teeth among the " nuts " and the ladies 
 of the chorus. But most people found they had more 
 money for bread and butter, potatoes, vegetables 
 and meat, which were costing semi-famine prices as it 
 was, and there were fewer besot wrecks of women in 
 the Strand, and almost no intoxicated men in khaki. 
 War manifestly had its blessings, too. One met 
 unfamiliar people in the plebeian motor-buses, who 
 
 ^351
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 at first wrapped their evening-coats exclusively and 
 close around them, for contact with the common clay 
 was still new and strange. It became positively 
 stylish to be a cheese-parer. You were no longer 
 considered " bad form " if you went straight home 
 from the theatre, and confessed why. If my lady of 
 May fair did not close up her house in South Audley 
 Street or Park Lane altogether, to live in " chambers " 
 or some cosy country cottage, which was also cheap, 
 she at least shut up the drawing-rooms, dispensed with 
 a maid or two, cut out the most expensive courses at 
 her dinners, when she gave any at all, and didn't 
 mind if her guests appeared in day clothes. 
 
 The plutocratic peer who ordinarily maintained a 
 ** place '' at the seashore, an estate in Hampshire or 
 Devon, and a town-house in Berkeley Square had 
 probably long ago handed over the " place " and 
 the estate for military hospital purposes — hardly a 
 mansion or manor-house in England to-day is devoted 
 to any other use — and now retrenchment became for 
 him the order of the day in London, too. His stable 
 of thoroughbreds almost vanished in the early days of 
 the war, for the needs of the cavalry and the artillery 
 were insatiable and undiscriminating, and now his 
 garage was down to a war basis — the lowest-powered car 
 he ever drove ; the others were in army service either in 
 England or " somewhere in France." Sackville Street 
 and Albemarle Street, Bond Street and Regent Street, 
 where smart clothes and other expensive trinkets for 
 men and women were formerly sold, became deserted. 
 Men's tailors displayed nothing but khaki in their 
 windows, and West End branches of Paris dressmaking 
 firms languished as if England were famine-blighted. 
 352
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 Society faded away as if pestilence had swept Upperten- 
 dom into oblivion. Women of Britain's first families 
 were almost ashamed to be seen in anything more chic 
 than the livery of mourning, and by midsummer of 
 1915 black was pitiably fashionable and omnipresent. 
 *' Entertaining " had been a lost art for months. 
 " Going in for it " now seemed and amounted to 
 sacrilege. Indulged at all, it was excusable only if it 
 had the extenuating excuse of having been arranged, 
 and then in most the modest of ways, for one's wounded 
 or recuperating officer friends, on leave from Hell or 
 on the eve of going there — " somew^here in France." 
 It was war-time in England at last. 
 
 If I have seemed to emphasize that the recon- 
 struction of British life, after bitterly hard knocks on 
 land and sea had pounded some realization of their task's 
 magnitude into Englishmen's heads, went on chiefly in 
 the upper and upper-middle classes, it is precisely the 
 impression I seek to convey. It is they alone, to date, 
 who have taken the full measure of Britain's terrible 
 emergency and acted accordingly. Even that state- 
 ment requires qualification, for the fools' paradise is 
 not even to-day inhabited exclusively by the benighted 
 lower stratum of the population. Neuve Chapelle, 
 asphyxiating gas and the Lusitania had passed into 
 history many weeks before, yet there lingers painfully in 
 my memory the recollection of a Middlesex country- 
 house week-end party broken up because Englishwomen 
 of "class" objected to hearing a fellow-guest venture 
 the opinion that dear old England would better " wake 
 up " to the fact that calm alone, mighty an asset 
 as it was, could not " march to Berlin " against an 
 enemy like the Germans. These women were interest- 
 
 ^A 353
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 ing as types. Their name was legion, and many of 
 them, as an Irishman might say, were men. Common 
 sense, prized of Anglo-Saxon virtues, and tolerance, 
 its twin sister, have lost their old-time hold on many 
 millions in these isles during the war. 
 
 The " Anti-German Union," which was founded by 
 well-meaning noblemen and noblewomen for the pur- 
 pose of organizing hate of the Teuton and all his works, 
 perhaps set itself an unethical goal, but the psychology 
 at the bottom of the movement was wholesome ; it was 
 all to the good, because it was sharpening the bulldog's 
 teeth. It committed uncouth excesses like sending 
 interrupters to the German Church service in Mont- 
 pelier Place, forgetting that my esteemed friend, the 
 Reverend Mr. Williams, the Anglican chaplain in 
 Berlin, was never prevented from assembling his 
 unintemed flock for worship at St. George's in Mont- 
 bijou-Platz. Far less excusable than the " Anti- 
 German Union's " superpatriotic eccentricities was 
 the smug intolerance of enormous numbers of British 
 toward elementary questions of the war. They would 
 hear nothing of the Germans unless it was abjectly 
 discreditable. I would write in my " Germany Day 
 by Day " column in The Daily Mail that there were 
 growing indications (let us sa}^) that the enemy was 
 still at fighting zenith — his stock of men, materials 
 and provisions still far from exhausted. The next 
 day's post would invariably bring me denunciatory 
 letters from anonymous members of the public. I was 
 " pro-German." I was " a German agent." I was 
 *' playing the enemy's game." Englishmen didn't 
 " care to read the twaddle of a man who was still so 
 enamoured of the Hun capital where he so long lived." 
 
 354
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 And when I attempted to justify American exaspera- 
 tion with British shipping practices in war, an English 
 patriot induced my editor to print a letter in retort, 
 " praying passionately for preservation from the 
 candid friend." Other correspondents did not confine 
 their observations to supplication. They were the 
 high privates, these human ostriches, of the Grand 
 Army of Truth-Hiders, who, commanded by great 
 editors in Fleet Street and ably abetted by the Censor- 
 ship, preferred palatable fiction to galling facts. It 
 is they who kept John Bull lulled in complacent 
 slumber for most of the first year of the war and are 
 doing their diabolical best to administer sleeping- 
 powder even now. 
 
 Yet, on the whole, that section of the British public 
 which does its thinking above its gaiter-tops was 
 effectually roused from its dreams as Armageddon's 
 initial twelvemonth approached its finish. It was the 
 substratum which could not be roused from the stupor 
 of indifference. The war had brought mourning and 
 desolation to the upper-class homes of England. The 
 havoc wrought in the ranks of the peerage and other 
 dignities is poignantly summarized in the new Debrett. 
 Ten per cent, of the British officers who have died 
 in the war were in the pages of DebreU's Peerage, 
 Baronetage, Knightage and Companionage, and in the 
 issue for 1916, just published, the War Roll of Honour 
 of the dead comprises eight hundred names. In it 
 appear one member of the Royal Family — Prince 
 Maurice of Battenberg; six peers, sixteen baronets, 
 six knights, and seven members of Parliament, one 
 hundred sixty-four knights companion, ninety-five 
 sons of peers, eighty-two sons of baronets, and eighty- 
 
 355
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 four sons of knights. Two successive heirs to the 
 earldom of Loudoun fell, and the death of Lord 
 Worsley affected the succession to three separate 
 peerages, the earldom of Yarborough and the baronies 
 of Fauconberg and Conyers. Succession has been 
 unduly precipitated, or the normal descent changed, in 
 over one hundred instances by the casualties of the 
 war. The peer, the professional man, the merchant, 
 had had an almost annihilating blow struck at his 
 fortune. Events during the past year had dealt these 
 classes a cruel thrust. But working-class and lower-class 
 Britain were actually profiting from the war. Wages 
 were inordinately high — despite trade-unionism's un- 
 ceasing clamour. Unemployment no longer existed. 
 There were no soup-kitchens along the Embankment. 
 Families of clerks and working men — many thousands 
 of whom were volunteers in Kitchener's armies — ^were, 
 thanks to generous separation allowances paid by the 
 War Office, almost better off than in the days w^hen the 
 bread-winner was at home. For the British proletariat 
 Mars seemed almost a saviour. He had brought it 
 unwonted prosperity. The temper in which a vast 
 portion of the " downtrodden " looked upon their 
 new-bom affluence was that self-preservation, being 
 the first law of nature, insistently demanded nothing 
 from them which would precipitately evict them from 
 Easy Street. The Grand Fleet protected lower-class 
 England from the only blow which could conceivably 
 have knocked sense into it — invasion. As that did not 
 and could not occur, the Submerged Tenth envisaged 
 war not as an unmixed evil, but as something better, 
 somehow, than peace had ever been. It is all woefully 
 at loggerheads with Norman Angell's theories of the 
 356
 
 THE NEW ENGLAND 
 
 " devastating economic influence of war." But the 
 immutable fact is that working-class Britain, despite 
 the havoc the war has played with trade, incomes, and 
 high finance generally, finds itself, even with the 
 higher cost of living, at least on as prosperous a level 
 as at any time in its contemporary history. It may be 
 a myopic view, but it explains, in my judgment, much 
 of the proletariat's amazing apathy toward the crucial 
 national emergency. 
 
 The building of the New England is still in progress. 
 The melting-pot is full. Years will elapse before the 
 finished product leaves the crucible. The process of 
 transition, however, has made enormous strides. 
 Adversity is a wonderful reorganizer . The physiognomy 
 of things long held unchangeable is altered almost 
 beyond recognition. It is a better England already, 
 as well as a new one. Above all, Democracy has not 
 failed in the supreme test. The spectacle of three 
 million men, uncoerced, responsive and responsible to 
 no law but their own conscience, marching out to 
 death and glory that England may live, is a sublime 
 picture, which will blot out and overshadow much of 
 the bungling and many of the disasters and excrescences 
 of the past. 
 
 If I have seemed to dwell with insistence and even 
 cynicism upon " British calm " amid the thunders, 
 let me here and now subscribe unqualifiedly to the 
 view that it remains, when all is said and done, a 
 magnificent achievement second only to the demon- 
 stration of Voluntaryism as a Democracy's first line 
 of defence. Britannia will continue to rule the waves 
 mainly because she was calm when they surged about 
 her most angrily. 
 
 357
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 QUO VADIS ? 
 
 OCTOBER, 1915. The eighty-third day of the 
 second year of war. A woman, writing in The 
 Times, suggests that England adopt as her national 
 prayer, " God help us win this war." King George V, 
 emerging at length from the reserve which the Throne 
 had maintained throughout the war, appeals, stirringly, 
 " to my people " to save the sinking bark of Voluntary 
 military service. It is the calm before the Conscrip- 
 tion storm. The Sovereign discourses upon " the 
 grave moment in the struggle " and calls for " men of 
 all classes to come forsvard and take their share in the 
 fight in order that another may not inherit the free 
 Empire which their ancestors and mine have built." 
 The King hints at " the darkest moment " which, from 
 time immemorial, " has ever produced in men of our 
 race the sternest resolve." 
 
 Britain's horizon is clouded, wherever one looks. 
 No forced optimism can blink iron facts. In the East, 
 Russia is paralyzed for months to come, even if not 
 *' crushed." Her fortresses, " deemed impregnable," 
 writes Lloyd-George in the preface of his compiled 
 war speeches, " are falling like sand castles before the 
 resistless tide of Teutonic invasion." The " steam- 
 roller " must go into winter-quarters. In the West, 
 the great Anglo-French offensive in Artois and the 
 Champagne punctures the German front and advances 
 358
 
 QUO VADIS ? 
 
 the Allied lines two or three miles. The German losses 
 are her severest of the war — 140,000, so the French 
 say, including vast heaps of dead, whole regiments of 
 maimed and at least 25,000 prisoners and 145 field- 
 guns. But the victory, substantial and promising as 
 it is, has been dearly bought. The Germans claim 
 that the preliminary seventy-two-hour bombardment 
 represented an expenditure of 65,000,000 shells — 
 mostly of American production, so allege the " in- 
 spired " war-correspondents at German headquarters, 
 wdth sneering references to " blood-smeared dollars." 
 The Allies' casualties are not tabulated. They are 
 only known to be cruelly heavy. Englishmen fear 
 there has been another Neuve Chapelle. Joffre and 
 French have demonstrated that the German front is 
 not quite impenetrable. But the enemy, on his part, 
 has shown that for the Allies to " break through " in 
 the West is a task fraught with peril and toll sickening 
 to contemplate. 
 
 General Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief at 
 the Dardanelles, has been brought home " to report." 
 Another British general, unnamed, is recalled for 
 having (one heard) led an army into a shambles at 
 Suvla Bay. The campaign in Gallipoli is a tacitly 
 acknowledged failure. General Sir Charles Monro is 
 hurried to Turkey to succeed Hamilton and retrieve 
 the fortunes of an expedition which has already cost 
 100,000 casualties, a trio of battleships, a transport 
 full of troops, and heartbreaking incalculable. There 
 are ugly rumours that the Allies, facing the inevitable, 
 are about to abandon the ill-starred Dardanelles 
 venture, and try their luck elsewhere. Against the 
 German-led Turks twelve miles of precarious " front " 
 
 359
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 with a back to the sea is all Anglo -Anzac-French 
 valour has been able to achieve. 
 
 But misfortune has dogged the AlUes in fields remote 
 from the actual theatres of war. While Germanic - 
 Turkish armies have been wrecking their military hopes 
 East, West and Near East, Allied diplomacy has been 
 disastrously foiled in the pivotal Balkans. Bulgaria, 
 deemed friendly, though venal, openly goes over to 
 the enemy. Sir Edward Grey, like his fellow-idol. 
 Kitchener, is under withering fire. He is charged 
 with permitting Berlin to score a victory which might 
 have been London's if British diplomacy had been 
 characterized by less tentativeness of policy and 
 greater impetuosity of deed. It seems the old story — 
 " too late." " Have we a Foreign Office ?" bitterly 
 asks Fleet Street. But the cup of disappointment is 
 not full even yet. Greece, too, is recreant. She 
 mobihzes, supposedly as a pro-Ally counterstroke to 
 the pro-German Bulgarian menace, for is not the King 
 of the Hellenes bound by solemn treaty to join Peter 
 of Serbia in the eventuality of attack by Ferdinand of 
 Sofia ? But Downing Street failed to reckon with 
 King " Tino " of Athens and his Hohenzollem consort, 
 the Kaiser's favourite sister, Sophia. Premier Venize- 
 los, the Allies' hope, is forced to resign. Greece 
 remains " neutral," between German Charybdis and 
 English Scylla, as King Constantine himself describes 
 his plight. She shuts her eyes to the nebulous Allied 
 expeditionary force landed at Salonica and " rushed " 
 precipitately at the eleventh hour to the relief of the 
 Serbs, who are even now threatened with annihilation 
 between the German-Austrians on the north and west, 
 and the back-stabbing Bulgars on the east. Belgrade 
 360
 
 QUO VADIS ? 
 
 falls. Uskub is captured. The Salonica line to Nish 
 is cut. Germany's " road to Constantinople " is open. 
 The Kaiser can get there now before the Allies. Diplo- 
 macy grasps at a last straw. Cyprus, annexed from 
 Turkey by Britain early in the war, is offered to Greece 
 if she will fling her army into the breach. In Athens, 
 it appears, dictates of self-preservation govern. By 
 active operations against the Germanic Powers and 
 Bulgaria, assisted by mere promises of more Allied 
 reinforcements via Salonica or the driblets already 
 sent, Greece fears to share Belgium and Serbia's fate. 
 If the Alhes will send 400,000 troops to the Balkans — 
 or about twice as many as have been pounding fruit- 
 lessly at the Dardanelles — Greece might change her 
 mind. The suggestion inspires little enthusiasm in 
 England. Kitchener and French can doubtless spare 
 the men. But the equipment of another huge British 
 army for operations in the Near East in time to turn 
 the tables is a larger order. Meantime Mackensen and 
 Gallwitz batter their way across the Serbian ranges. 
 In London there are anxious doubts whether there 
 will even be any Serbian army to '' relieve " by the 
 time the Allies place an effective rescuing expedition 
 in the decisive theatre. Serbia begins to look uncom- 
 fortably like another Belgium — Salonica like ill-starred 
 Antwerp. Blunder and procrastination were ever the 
 parents of disaster. 
 
 So much for the military and political situation, 
 which even the Truth-Hiders begin to see in its true 
 colours. But if things were " messed " abroad — in the 
 West and in the Near East — muddle and bungle are 
 even more rampant at home. Take the Zeppelins. 
 They first visited these complacent shores in January, 
 
 361
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 19 15. In October Press and Parliament commence for 
 the first time seriously to investigate the adequacy of 
 Britain's " aerial defences," with the result that 
 chaotic demoralization and systemless go-as-you- 
 please are found to prevail. Sir Percy Scott, the 
 country's greatest gunnery expert, has been in charge 
 of London's defences against the sky pirates, but it 
 appears that his guns are ineffective, his gunners 
 untrained for the highly specialized feat of hitting 
 mile-high targets flying in the dark, and things in 
 general unorganized and more or less futile. The 
 Press Bureau condescendingly parts with an abstract 
 story of the latest and most disastrous raid of all over 
 " the London area." People derive lively satisfaction 
 from its disclosure that the metropolis was " cool " 
 and unafraid under fire. Only a few courageous 
 " alarmists " read the signs of the times aright and 
 demand that some life and efficiency forthwith be 
 injected into the " anti-aircraft " department, lest, 
 when Count Zeppelin's range-finding practice cruises 
 across London are finished, an armada of German 
 airships sail across the Channel and reduce the heart 
 of the Empke, ever calm, to a smoking ash heap 
 before Sir Percy Scott's defence is perfected. There 
 is anxious talk of bringing over " expert gunners " 
 from France — in October, after nearly ten months and 
 after twenty-five Zeppelin raids over English territory ! 
 The while the elephant-hided Censorship, as if 
 Britannia's troubles are not all-sufficient, insists upon 
 making itself more of an international laughing-stock 
 and object of world contempt than ever. It censors 
 Kipling's Recessional in a battle-story from France. 
 It deletes a quotation from Browning in another nar- 
 362
 
 QUO VADIS ? 
 
 rative from the front. It cuts out a famous war 
 correspondent's tribute to the bravery of the enemy. 
 It eliminates a reference to Chatham, England's 
 greatest War Minister, because it confuses him with 
 the famous British naval base from which he took his 
 title. It refuses to let out a single notch in the muzzle 
 it has attached even to the benevolently neutral 
 American Press, as represented by its accredited and 
 notoriously Anglophile correspondents in England. It 
 revels in concealment, deception and grotesqueness, 
 though concealing nothing from the enemy and every- 
 thing from England, deceiving exclusively the British 
 public, and making nobody grotesque except its 
 egregious self. Calls for the light at home, ridicule 
 and criticism from abroad, alike leave the Censor 
 unmoved. The sparrows cry from the housetops in 
 ever more insistent accents that all is not well with 
 England, but the Censorship, magnificently blind even 
 to the Royal pronouncement that Britons unfailingly 
 respond when the hour is dark, maintains imperiously 
 that what it is well for the country to know is for it, 
 and it alone, to decide. If the British public were a 
 transgressor, its way could not be harder. 
 
 Comes Mr. Montagu, Financial Secretary of the 
 Treasury, the reputed " budget genius " of the Govern- 
 ment. Britons must be prepared, he tells them, 
 " during the year ahead, to disgorge to the State not 
 less than one-half of their entire income, either in the 
 form of taxes or loans." Lord Reading's borrowing 
 commission to America is still on the water, the ink on 
 its ;f 100,000,000 " credit loan " in New York not yet 
 dry. " I estimate our expenditure for the year," says 
 Mr. McKenna, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the House 
 
 363
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 of Commons, " at one billion, five hundred ninety 
 million pounds." " As our total estimated revenue, 
 inclusive of new taxes (he adds), is three hundred five 
 million pounds, the deficit for the year will be one billion 
 two hundred eighty-five million pounds. We have now 
 to contemplate a Navy costing for the current year 
 £190,000,000, an Army costing £715,000,000, and 
 external advances to our Allies (Russia, France, Italy, 
 Serbia and Belgium) amounting to £423,000,000." 
 
 Then the merciless watchdog of the Treasury 
 acquainted Parliament with his scheme for raising a 
 part of this Brobdingnagian revenue. Free Trade 
 must be partially shelved. There will be a revenue 
 tariff on " luxury " imports. Income-tax in 19 16 will 
 be forty per cent, higher and will amount altogether 
 to about two shillings in every pound earned. Even 
 the man with £130 a year will pay, while " plutocrats " 
 with incomes above that figure will be mulcted even 
 more relentlessly. War is Hell. No wonder a Parlia- 
 mentary wag, on the day Mr. McKenna introduced 
 " Conscription of Wealth," interrupted with a merry 
 " Why don't you take it all ?" 
 
 Up to December, 1915, the Government had asked 
 Parliamentary sanction for war credits aggregating 
 £1,300,000,000. But even this staggering total (the 
 war was now costing £5,000,000 a day) was planned 
 to carry the campaign only up to the middle of Novem- 
 ber. The £100,000,000 loan transaction in the United 
 States only produced funds to be spent there, and it 
 was but half of what was asked. It only indirectly 
 relieves the situation at home. Allowing for the 
 deficit carried over from last year, the latest budget 
 proposes taxes amounting to £305,000,000 and loans 
 364
 
 QUO VADIS? 
 
 aggregating £1,285,000,000 for the fiscal year 1915-16. 
 But even the most patriotic experts in Threadneedle 
 Street acknowledge the utter impossibility of raising 
 £1,285,000,000 of genuine money by public loan in 
 Britam per year. They reluctantly predict that the 
 Government will soon be driven to extend its use of 
 fictitious money and paper — on the excoriated German 
 model. The war has already eaten uncomfortably 
 close to the bottom of the stockings and the strong- 
 boxes of Britain where American securities are stored. 
 
 As the financier not only of her own colossal re- 
 quirements in the war, but as banker for her allies, 
 England's money necessities are thus seen to be no 
 less urgent than her need of men and munitions. They 
 comprise, these three M's, the trilogy on which the 
 existence of the Empire now depends. British per- 
 formances in respect to the cash sinews of war have 
 truly been on a monumental scale. History shows no 
 parallel for the achievement of raising at home in loans 
 and Treasury bills over £1,100,000,000 without aban- 
 donment of the gold standard and without resort to 
 inconvertible paper, and yet keeping British credit at 
 an altitude which gives hard-headed Uncle Sam no 
 pause in taking John Bull's I-O-U for another half 
 billion dollars. It is an imperishable tribute to the 
 stamma, prestige, wealth and commercial stamina of 
 the British Empire and to the enterprise and ingenuity 
 of the merchants, manufacturers, shippers, bankers 
 and traders who have made their islands the centre of 
 the world's exchanges and London the money-market 
 of the universe. 
 
 But magnificent as has been the past, the financial 
 future cannot be viewed except with anxiety. Indebted- 
 
 36S
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 ness has been piled up sky-high — out of every five 
 pounds spent since the war began, at least four have 
 been borrowed. That was possible because of the 
 superlative excellence of British credit. " Our credit 
 is now almost everything," explains The Economist. 
 " It comes next to the Navy, and the two cannot be 
 dissociated. For if either suffer, our food supplies 
 would be in danger. In one sense, credit is at the 
 mercy of the Government and of the Treasury, for a 
 great false step of policy or continuance in a false 
 course would bring disaster. The responsibility of the 
 Prime Minister and of the Chancellor of the Ex- 
 chequer and of the Cabinet, as a whole, is prodigious. 
 Whatever else we do, we must maintain our financial 
 equihbrium. With that and the command of the seas, 
 we cannot be defeated." 
 
 Manifestly Britain's economic problem is almost the 
 darkest spot on her overclouded war horizon — the 
 problem of meeting rising obligations out of falhng 
 revenue. The Empire suffers from no lack of men; its 
 physical resources are well-nigh inexhaustible. If 
 patriotism does not send them to the trenches of their 
 own free will in adequate numbers, they \vill be 
 " fetched." There is no longer any question of short- 
 age of munitions. England'b own vast industrial plant, 
 as well as that of France, is now occupied almost ex- 
 clusively in the production of man-killing merchandise 
 for the AUies, and is turning it out at high pressure. 
 To the manufacturing equipment of England and 
 France are harnessed, in addition, German bombs and 
 German-incited strikes to the contrary notwithstand- 
 ing, the limitless productive facilities of the United 
 States and Canada. Britain's one and only nightmare 
 366
 
 QUO VADIS? 
 
 is money, and its corollary aspects, exchange and 
 credit. 
 
 No estimate has so far appeared wliich fixes the 
 19 16 deficit which England will have to meet at less 
 than £1,400,000,000, based on a total war cost for the 
 calendar year of £1,800,000,000 . How to grapple 
 wdth the gigantic task conjured up by such a prospect 
 is not engaging popular attention to any marked 
 degree, though upon its solution depends, primarily, 
 Britain's ability to conquer in this war of exhaustion. 
 With the palpable impossibility of raising the \\dnd at 
 home b}^ successive new public loans; with the neces- 
 sity to invoke such heroic measures as borrowing 
 £100,000,000 in America to bolster up sterling ex- 
 change and keep British credit '* intact " ; with English- 
 men sacrificing their enormous holdings of American 
 securities for the same pious purpose ; with the British 
 industrial plant so preoccupied with munitions that it 
 can neither, in accordance with tradition, pay for 
 British imports with British exports nor increase 
 British revenue by the same token; with national ex- 
 penditure advancing by gigantic leaps and national in- 
 come restricted as it never was before ; with all these 
 immutable conditions staring at Englishmen, it is no 
 wonder that those of them who think, as distinguished 
 from those who merely muddle, contemplate what 
 looms ahead with anxious concern. 
 
 But admittedly grave as the future is, it is by no 
 means hopeless. Britain's plight is not " desperate," 
 as the Germans, seeking to hide their own, are so fond 
 of making believe. Even the misgivings of English- 
 men themselves regarding their economic situation 
 would be promptly and legitimately resolved into con- 
 
 367
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 fidence if the community as a whole could be induced 
 to pull itself together and look facts in the face. In 
 its incorrigible disinclination to do so alone lies danger. 
 The British Empire is not bankrupt. It can hardly 
 ever become so. A recent estimate assessed the 
 income of the Empire, including India, at something 
 over the fabulous sum of £4,000,000,000 ! Britain 
 may be embarrassed — it is unquestionably that already 
 — just as the richest of men frequently are, in the 
 midst of titanic transactions which have outrun their 
 calculations. But embarrassment seldom eventuates 
 in ruin, either for men or nations, if they come to grips 
 with it betimes. Thus, disaster can only follow tribu- 
 lation in the case of England, if her people, preferring 
 to wallow in happy-go-lucky nonchalance and drift, post- 
 pone until too late those sagacious, clean-sweep measures 
 of reorganization and retrenchment which alone, in 
 the opinion of competent judges, can save the situation. 
 In the preceding chapter I told of the introduction of 
 the Simple Life, of the dawn of the Economy Era in 
 war-time England; but it would be hyperbole to inti- 
 mate that it has been inaugurated on anything but a 
 superficial scale. Luxury and self-indulgence are still 
 rife. To vast numbers of people, in the classes as well 
 as the masses, the war, far from oppressing them, has 
 brought positive affluence, and with their new riches 
 they have gone in for spending instead of saving. 
 One saw more and costlier furs round fair English 
 throats and across fair English shoulders at the begin- 
 ning of the winter of 1915-16 than ever before, indicat- 
 ing that Spartanism in Britain remains a good deal 
 of a theory; it has not become a condition. While 
 Germany, shut off by land and sea, contrives to remain 
 368
 
 QUO VADIS? 
 
 at fighting zenith without her customary imports of 
 £500,000,000 a year (she calls JelHcoe's blockade a 
 blessing in disguise because it has compelled her to 
 spend at home what she used to pay out abroad), 
 England's imports of such articles as oranges, cocoa, 
 tea, coffee, tobacco, cheese, rice, meats, pepper and 
 onions have heavily exceeded her importations of the 
 same articles in corresponding peace periods.* The 
 Prime Minister tells the country that " victory seems 
 hkely to incline to the side which can arm itself the 
 best and stay the longest." Mr. Asquith declares that 
 " that is what we mean to do." But until, for instance, 
 Englishmen reahze that by abstaining from tobacco 
 for a year, £8,000,000 of money would be available 
 for the smoke of battle; that if every man, woman 
 and child .in the Kingdom puts away a shilling a week, 
 a new treasure of £120,000,000 could be piled up for 
 war; and that unless waste, extravagance and slothful 
 habits generally are banished, by duke and by docker, 
 as if they were leprous disease, Mr. Asquith's brave 
 words will remain a hollow aspiration. They alone 
 will not enable England to " stay the longest " in the 
 world's most destructive endurance competition. 
 
 It is not change of governments, but ruthless 
 change of system, which Englishmen acknowledge is 
 required. They have relegated a vast deal since the 
 cleansing process set in, in August a year ago, 
 but the scrap heap clamours for more. It cries 
 most insistently of all, in Britain's own estimation, 
 
 * There are ugly rumours that certain patriots who burnt T/ie 
 Daily Mail iox exposing the "shells tragedy" are importers 
 of these excessively large stores, and are selling them to "neutrals" 
 adjacent to Germany at exorbitant profits. 
 
 BB 2)^g
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 for obliteration of the fetish that politicians, lawyers 
 and other amateurs are fit to conduct a government 
 engaged in the most terrible combat of human history. 
 Napoleon once said that a nation of lions led by a stag 
 would be beaten by a nation of stags led by a lion. 
 Englishmen claim to be a nation of lions. They con- 
 template the first year of the war and ask if they are 
 to continue to be led along the path of disaster by 
 stags. The Truth-Hiders quote Lincoln and deprecate 
 " swopping horses while crossing a stream." Lord 
 Willoughby de Broke effectually disposes of this " plea 
 for incompetence in office " by telling the House of 
 Lords that " whether such a course should be adopted 
 depends on what sort of a horse a man has beneath 
 him." If " the horse is standing in the middle of the 
 stream and seems as if he were going to lie down, the 
 best thing is to get another." Englishmen admit that 
 war like this demands wholesale reconstruction of 
 national life, yet their government has substituted 
 spasmodic patchwork for reconstruction. Instead of 
 bold tearing down and rebuilding, there has been 
 nibbling and tinkering, and even then, as Lloyd- 
 George has declared, " always too late." The people 
 have waited for marching orders in countless di- 
 rections, but the Government band has too often 
 played nothing but a ''hesitation waltz." Take the 
 drink evil, Britain's most malignant ulcer. Russia 
 is not commonly looked to for economic or social 
 inspiration, yet even she has wrestled with drink 
 in a manner which puts England to shame. Wliile 
 the Czar was banishing vodka absolutely for the 
 pestilence that it was, England's governors, fearful 
 of Labour and ** the trade " alike, temporized 
 370
 
 QUO VADIS? 
 
 and enacted makeshifts which materially amelio- 
 rated the liquor menace without really throttling 
 its power for evil. They have made " treating " a 
 misdemeanour, closed the public houses at lo p.m., and 
 restricted the hours when drink may be sold lq London 
 and the industrial districts. But men and women can 
 get drunk to their heart's content as of yore. They 
 have onl\7 to rearrange their bibulous hours. 
 
 Take the air defence muddle. " I, for one," wrote 
 a Briton in October, protesting against the prevailing 
 theory that the call of the hour, in the midst of the 
 Zeppelin peril, was " coolness," " am tired of being 
 complimented on the calmness with which I behave 
 in the presence of danger. It is no comfort to me 
 that my death, if it occurs, will have no military im- 
 portance. I want to be congratulated not on the 
 stoicism with which I go to my funeral, but on my 
 share in a system of government which affords effective 
 protection to my country." 
 
 Nothing could better stigmatize the cult of Self- 
 Sufficiency which, in the writer's deliberate judgment, 
 is primarily responsible for British failures in the war 
 thus far. There has been too much congratulation and 
 self-congratulation on the sang froid with which John 
 Bull can take punishment. He is a mighty gladiator, 
 but cheery comfort from his tranquil seconds between 
 rounds has failed on many an occasion to prevent a 
 champion pugilist from being knocked out. It is not 
 that England is incapable of defeating Germany. It 
 is that she seems reluctant to do so by throwing into 
 the balance eveiy atom of strength for which that pro- 
 digious task calls. For at least a decade before 1914, 
 Britain's political ostriches, disarmament - mongers, 
 
 371
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 professional pacifists and pro-Germans declined to 
 recognize the German danger even when it was ap- 
 proaching with strides so brazen that almost the blind 
 could see. They preferred the '* valour of ignorance/' 
 thought Ballin and Harnack instead of Tirpitz and 
 Bemhardi typified Modern Germany, continued to 
 revel in the bliss of contemptuous self-confidence, and 
 attempted to parley with a tiger which was crouching 
 for the attack. I enter a modest claim to have done 
 my own little share for eight years in the futile work 
 of arousing Britons to the Teuton peril. I refer merely 
 to my routine work in Berlin, in reporting military 
 and naval developments — " Germany lays all her cards 
 on the table," as Admiral von Tirpitz once said to me. 
 When the crash came. Englishmen pinned their 
 faith to their history. They were no match for " forty 
 years of preparation," of course; but they always 
 *' started late " and " muddled through " their wars. 
 The Crimea began in terror and ended in triumph. 
 The South African affair was the same sort of thing. 
 War with Germany would be no different. The race 
 which had finished off Napoleon need have no qualms 
 in tackling his pinchbeck successor. Britons admit 
 that a year of war has dissipated nearly all these com- 
 fortable illusions, but signs are still wanting that there 
 is nation-wide, deep-seated realization of the immensity 
 of the ordeal and the dimensions of the sacrifices yet 
 to be faced. On December 8, 1915, when the war 
 was sixteen months old. Admiral Lord Charles Beres- 
 ford wrote this letter to The Times : 
 
 " We are at present in a complex tangle of muddle 
 and mismanagement. Our military campaigns are 
 372
 
 QUO VADIS ? 
 
 being conducted without any objective or plan. Policy 
 only has been considered. 
 
 " In war a policy has to be enforced by the Navy 
 and Army. The War Staffs have not been consulted 
 as to whether they had the means in men and material 
 for enforcing the different policies inaugurated by the 
 Cabinet. Individuals have been consulted; combined 
 opinion of War Staffs has not been sought. The 
 result is disaster in nearly every direction. 
 
 " We have not taken full advantage of our mastery 
 of the sea. In every department we observe doubt, 
 hesitation, and procrastination. War requires quick 
 decisions and prompt actions. The question of 
 supplying recruits for the Army has been postponed 
 once, and apparently ma}^ be postponed again. Unless 
 a decision is come to immediately we shall be a year 
 before the recruits joined under any new scheme can 
 possibly be ready to take the field. 
 
 " The public is sick of the policy conveyed in the 
 sentence ' Wait and see.' The danger to the Empire 
 becomes more apparent every day. The country is 
 waiting for a strong, clear lead. Our present methods 
 will prolong the war indefinitely. If we continue 
 hesitating without making up our minds on any single 
 question connected with the war, we shall plunge 
 straight into disaster." 
 
 I, too, shall be a pessimist about England's chances 
 to win the war only so long as she neglects to go to war. 
 Mere command of the sea, it has been amply demon- 
 strated, cannot crush Germany. It can sorely in- 
 convenience her and compel her to live on the ration 
 basis, but it cannot force what King George has called 
 
 373
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 " a highly organized enemy " prematurely to make 
 peace. When England has staked her all, I shall turn 
 blithe optimist, for I believe that nothing else in the 
 world can overthrow her savagely efficient antagonist. 
 Germany has staked her all. Until England does 
 likewise, they will not fight on even terms. When 
 England, like Germany, has relentlessly marshalled 
 every tithe of her national strength for war, subordin- 
 ated all else to that purpose, harnessed to the chariot 
 of Mars every conceivable resource at her command, 
 pulverized caste distinctions, banned politics and 
 politicians, and made the war and the winning of it 
 the only thing the nation eats for, works for, dreams 
 of, or wastes thought upon — then I shall feel con- 
 strained to feel assured that victory will perch, however 
 distant the hour, on Liberty's and not on Tyranny's 
 banners. The Anglo-German endurance test — into 
 which the war will eventually resolve itself — can have 
 but one issue. Germans know that. Their analytical 
 mind long ago taught them that the dormant resources 
 of the British Empire, once mobilized, would be 
 invincible. But what is happening is precisely what 
 the Germans counted upon: the irresolute British 
 habit of mind, the " too late " system, the century-old 
 cult of comfort and ease, the " Splendid Isolation " 
 school of thought, which, when the hour of trial came, 
 might be relied upon to cripple the effort to convert 
 latent potentialities into an inconquerable organism. 
 History will have names for all these things. It will 
 call them Belgium, Serbia, Dardanelles, and Salonica. 
 The British people will need to triumph over them- 
 selves before they can break the Germans. Their 
 inexhaustible moral and material assets must be 
 374
 
 QUO VADIS? 
 
 commandeered and husbanded, if they are to accom- 
 plish their manifest destiny, and not merely be bragged 
 about in the clubs of Pall Mall and the ostrich farms of 
 Fleet Street. If the world-wide realm on which the 
 sun never sets can produce armies calculable only in 
 millions, as it most assuredly is able to do, let them 
 come forth, or be brought forth. If the wealth of the 
 United Kingdom, India and the dominions oversea 
 represents riches unmatched, as it does, let it be lavished 
 exclusively on war, and not squandered in any other 
 single direction. If common sense is the proudest of 
 Anglo-Saxon virtues, let it prevail and sweep away 
 Governments of demonstrated inertia and abolish a 
 Censorship which treats Britons as if they were half- 
 witted. If there must be calm at all costs, let it be 
 the calm of high pressure effort, and not the coolness 
 of impotent resignation or casual performance. If 
 faith must be placed in the efhcacy of " attrition," let 
 the process of " bleeding Germany white " be hastened 
 by British achievements afield and afloat, lest the 
 security which numerical superiority once conferred 
 be whittled down till the advantage rests with a foe 
 which was not so reluctant to dare, and "attrition," 
 when the flags are furled, find the victor as emaciated 
 as the vanquished. 
 
 I forget neither Germany's wrecked military hopes 
 and economic disintegration, nor the magnitude of 
 Britain's gigantic accomplishment thus far. I regret 
 only, along with England's other well-wishers, that 
 her sacrifices have not resulted, as they so richly 
 deserved to, in advancing the British cause farther 
 toward the goal. I cannot help thinking that, in some 
 respects, it is wasted achievement, for the object which 
 
 375
 
 THE ASSAULT 
 
 England and her Allies have set themselves is not 
 merely the pinioning of Germany to fronts in Russia, 
 France, Belgium, and Serbia beyond which she cannot 
 thrust herself. I am not unmindful of the glorious 
 response of Britain's noblest sons, who sleep by their 
 gallant thousands in the blood-manured soil of France, 
 Belgium, Turkey, Africa and the Balkans and at the 
 bottom of many hallowed seas, nor of the Trojan spirit 
 in which the women of the Empire are giving their 
 best and bravest, and weeping not. I mourn only 
 because death and suffering leave triumph still so 
 remote. The remorselessness with which the Reaper has 
 stalked through the great families and homes of 
 England has produced saddening, yet inspiring, evi- 
 dence that the heart of Britain is sound. The immortal 
 deeds of the Grenfells and the O'Learys and of all the 
 one hundred fifty odd who have won Victoria Crosses 
 are only the outstanding tokens of undying British 
 heroism. But if sacrifice is not to continue to be 
 cruelly in vain, there must be relentless regeneration 
 of the purely material governance of British life, even 
 more destructive of tradition and institutions than 
 anything which has gone before. Of bulldog British 
 determination to fight to a finish and to win there is 
 no shadow of doubt. There is no Briton worthy of 
 the name not ready to be beggared to that end. 
 
 The subhmity of the cause for which England is 
 bleeding is a more ennobling incentive than ever, for 
 it has come to comprehend life or death for herself, as 
 well as the liberation of Belgium. Spirituality has 
 forfeited none of its pristine efficacy as an asset in 
 war and bulwark in stress, but in our machine-gun 
 era it must be backed by scientific efficiency and 
 3/6
 
 QUO VADIS? 
 
 patriotism of practical deed before there can be imposed 
 upon Germany that peace which is essential not only 
 to British security, but to the happiness of the 
 world. 
 
 That that consummation may be realized speedily 
 and decisively, in Britain's interest and for the sake 
 of all liberty-loving peoples, is the devout hope and 
 prayer of the writer of these reflections. 
 
 THE END 
 
 ILI.IXG AND SONS, LTD., IRr.NTEKS, GUILDFORC, S.NXIA VO
 
 IJCSB tIBRARY