WAR
"The Russian mobilization menace!" That was the great myth now irrevocably fastened on the German mind. "The Cossacks at our gate!" Thus was the Fatherland gulled by its war zealots into the belief that the tide of blood sweeping down from the East could no longer be stemmed. German war history was repeating itself. As 1870 was born in deceit, so was 1914. Bismarck doctored the Ems telegram forty-four years previous to extenuate the assault on France, and now the "Russian mobilization menace," the Cossack bogy, was invented as justification for precipitating and popularizing the conflict on which the Prussian War Party's heart was set. A "state of war" had been decreed by the Kaiser in accordance with the paragraph of the Imperial Constitution which authorizes him to declare martial law whenever the domains of the Empire or any part of them are in jeopardy. The Czar's hordes were gathered on the Eastern frontier, preparing to launch a murderous, burglarious attack on innocent, defenseless, peace-loving Germany. They had done more than that--and here was another Hohenzollern 1870 analogy; the Emperor of all the Russias had "insulted" the Kaiser by feloniously massing his legions on the German border while William II, at Nicholas' own request, was "working for peace." It was a pretty story, and German public opinion, shrewdly prepared, swallowed it whole. Germans, their Emperor's "honor" and their own safety now at stake, approved fervidly the ultimatum which they were told had been presented at St. Petersburg, demanding abandonment of the Czar's "provocative" military measures.
I have too much respect for the perfected might of the Teutonic war-machine to believe that any German soldier worthy of the name ever considered Russian military movements along the Prussian and Austrian frontiers at the end of July, 1914, a "menace." It was only a fortnight previous that the German Military Gazette, the official army organ, had laughed the whole Russian army out of court as an organization hardly worthy of Prussian steel. Now the transfer of half a dozen Russian corps had become so vast a peril as to necessitate plunging the whole German Empire into a "state of war!" Everybody who had eyes to see and ears to hear in Germany, native and foreigner alike, always knew that actual mobilization in that country was the merest formality. The Germans were always ready for war. It was their commonest boast. A high officer of the General Staff, twenty-four hours after Serbia's rejection of the Austrian ultimatum, when asked how ready Germany was for eventualities, said, sententiously, "All ready." My Junker friend, Von G., of Kiel, himself a Prussian officer, would have snorted with scornful glee if I had ever suggested to him that any Russian military measures could really "menace" Germany. He knew what I knew, and what anybody with sense in Germany always understood, that, compared to what the Fatherland with its comprehensive system of military-controlled state railways could achieve in the way of final "mobilization," Russia would require weeks where Germany would need only days, or even hours. Germany would be like Texas, criss-crossed in every direction with faultless means of communication and crammed with troops and munitions, mobilizing against the rest of the United States, with the latter having to concentrate armies on the Rio Grande from Florida, Maine, Oregon and Lower California, and a shoe-string railway system with which to do it. The "Russian mobilization menace" was Germany's supreme bluff.
St. Petersburg had been given until twelve o'clock noon of Saturday, August 1, to "demobilize." Failing to do so, Germany would be "compelled to resort to a counter-mobilization." France had been called upon to indicate what her attitude would be in case of a Russo-German conflict, but the ultimatum to Paris, we understood, had no time limit attached. All knew that the great decision rested essentially in Russia's hands; that war with the Czar meant war with the French, too. Twelve o'clock Berlin time came and went without word of any kind from Count Pourtales, the Kaiser's ambassador in St. Petersburg. The Emperor and his civil, military and naval advisers were closeted in a Crown council at the Castle. Pourtales' message, if there was one, the Foreign Office told us, would doubtless reach the Kaiser in the midst of the council, which was a continuous one. Berlin waited in excruciating impatience. The Bourse writhed in panic. Bankers met to consider closing it altogether, but decided that the worst might be avoided by limiting transactions to spot-cash deals. The air was electric with rumor. Russia had asked for a further period of grace, one heard. Hope, report said, while slender, was not yet utterly vanished.
The afternoon passed in almost insufferable anxiety. Unter den Linden and the Lustgarten, the sprawling area around the Castle, were choked with people tense with expectancy. Dread, rather than war fervor, inspired them. About five-twenty o'clock, after one of the daily heart-to-heart war talks I had been privileged to hold over the teacups with Mrs. Gerard, I drove through the Wilhelmstrasse toward the Linden, accompanied by my English colleague, Charles Tower, Berlin representative of the New York World and London Daily News. I do not suppose the historic little spectacle was specially arranged in our honor, but as a matter of fact we happened to pass the Foreign Office at the very instant that Doctor von Bethmann Hollweg, grave with inconcealable worry, was entering a plebeian taxicab. He was evidently starting out on a transcendent mission, for he held in his hand a document of such absorbing interest that he hardly raised his eyes from it as he clambered into the cab. Accompanying him were Foreign Secretary von Jagow and a military aide-de-camp. I blush to confess that Tower and I were filled with such overweening curiosity to find out what that ominous parchment contained, and where the Chancellor was taking it, that we ordered our chauffeur to follow at not too respectful a distance. I never saw a Berlin taxi tear through the heart of the down-town district so madly as Bethmann Hollweg scorched down the Behren-strasse, past the banks which line Germany's Wall Street and the back of the Opera, into Französische-strasse, over the little bridge which spans the canal, and into the southern esplanade of the castle. Only small crowds were gathered at this point, and the Chancellor's cab swung past the sentries and through the big Neptune Gate of the Schloss almost unnoticed. Now instinctively certain of the nature of Bethmann Hollweg's errand, Tower and I made our way to the Lustgarten, since early morning an endless vista of faces stretching nearly all the way from the Dom to the Brandenburg Gate end of Unter den Linden, a mile to the west. We felt sure that the universally awaited Order of Mobilization might be momentarily expected. As events developed, that was the document which we had seen the Chancellor taking to the Kaiser. It was six o'clock. The doleful chimes of the Cathedral across from the Castle were summoning the people to the service of intercession ordained by the Emperor earlier in the day. Solemnity hung over the multitude like a pall. Men and women knew now that Russia's answer, or lack of answer, whichever it might be, meant war, not peace. They had not long to wait for confirmatory news. As soon as word was telephoned to the Wolff Agency, the official news bureau, that the Imperial signature had at length been officially given--that the sword was now, literally and beyond recall, "forced" into William II's hands--the newspapers, which had had sufficient advance information for their purposes, drenched the capital with Extrablätter containing the fateful tidings:
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| "UNIVERSAL MOBILIZATION OF THE |
| GERMAN ARMY AND NAVY!" |
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Another two lines explained, breathlessly, that an order to that effect had just been promulgated by the Supreme War Lord. The twelve-hour period which Germany had granted to Russia for "the making of a loyal declaration" had been ignored. To-morrow, added the chief announcement in the most portentous Extrablatt a German newspaper ever issued, would be the first mobilization day. All Sunday, Monday and Tuesday the Furor Teutonicus would be busy donning shining armor. The deed was done. "Gentlemen," the Kaiser is said to have remarked to Moltke, Falkenhayn and the rest of the military clique, after affixing his signature to the document which meant not only mobilization, but war, "you will live to regret this."
In the midst of our exclusively German environment in those immortal hours--we could now neither telegraph nor telephone in anything except German, nor even read in anything except that language, for foreign newspapers were no longer arriving--I must confess I was filled with no little prepossession in Germany's favor. The Kaiser's case seemed not only good. On the biased evidence available--we had, of course, no other--it even seemed strong. Such fragmentary dispatches from abroad as the Military Censor, already enthroned, permitted to be printed were naturally only those which resolutely bolstered up the fiction of "our just cause." Of the stealthy plot to violate Belgium we had no glimmer of an inkling. We knew only of the "Russian mobilization menace," of the Kaiser's wrecked efforts in the direction of "peace," and of the reluctance with which impeccable Germany was stripping for the fray in defense of her honor, rights and imperiled territorial integrity. Convinced as I had long been of the War Party's lust for "the Day," a setting appeared to have been contrived which put Germany in a plausible, if not altogether blameless, light. It was mass-suggestion, as a Berlin psychologist would describe it, all-hypnotizing in its effects. It was not until five days afterward, when I had crossed the German frontier, reached Dutch territory and come up with the truth that the curtain was lifted and I could look out upon what seemed, after ten days of "inspired" information in Berlin, like country which my eyes had never seen before....
In front of the Royal Castle, Berlin, waiting for announcement of mobilization, August 1st, 1914.