The Mobilization Order tore through the capital with the velocity and the shock of a shell. Expected, it yet stunned. The throng before the Castle still sang Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles and cheered for the Kaiser, and desultory processions of young men and boys still marched hither and thither across the town. But an atmosphere of soberness and grim reality now descended upon Berlin. The street-corner pillars which serve as bill-boards in Germany were already splashed red with the official decree, gazetting August 2, 3 and 4 as the days when the Kaiser's subjects, liable for military service with the first line (Reserve), must report at long-appointed assembly depots, don long-ready uniforms, and march each to his long-designated place in the long-prepared war. Almost simultaneously the telegraph, now like the railway and postal services automatically passed into military control, brought every reservist in the realm definite information as to where and when he was expected to present himself. The magic system which Roon devised for hurling Germany's legions across the Rhine in '70 was once again in mechanical, yet noiseless, motion. Sheer jubilation, the grand-stand patriotism with which Berlin had reverberated for a week, died out. There were good-bys to be said now, long good-bys, and affairs to be wound up. The iron business of war was waiting to be attended to. The crowds in Unter den Linden and the Lustgarten melted homeward, silently, immersed in anxious reflection. Before they waked from their next sleep, the first shot might be fired. On what new paths had the Fatherland entered? Would they lead to death or glory? Never before, I imagine, was the modern German, in his inimitable idiom, given so furiously to think.
The war began early Sunday morning, August 2. Before nine o'clock "Extras" were in the streets with the following official news, the very first bulletin of the war:
"Up to 4 o'clock this morning the Great General Staff has received the following reports:
"1. During the night Russian patrols made an attack on the railway bridge over the Warthe near Eichenried (East Prussia). The attack was repulsed. On the German side, two slightly wounded. Russian losses unknown. An attempted attack by the Russians on the railway station at Miloslaw was frustrated.
"2. The station master at Johannisburg and the forestry authorities at Bialla report that during last night (1st to 2nd) Russian columns in considerable strength, with guns, crossed the frontier near Schwidden (southeast of Bialla) and that two squadrons of Cossacks are riding in the direction of Johannisburg. The telephone communication between Lyck and Bialla is broken down.
"According to the above, Russia has attacked German Imperial territory and begun the war."
The "Russian mobilization menace" was now an accomplished fact, and the Cossack bogy, too, converted into an officially hall-marked actuality!
Modern war, from the newspaperman's standpoint, consists principally of two things--censorship and rumors. Both had now set in with a vengeance. The first day in Berlin swarmed with irresponsible report. People believed anything. Official news was scarce and "far between." The second General Staff bulletin to be issued was a laconic announcement that troops of the VIII (Rhenish) army corps had occupied Luxemburg "for the protection of German railways in the Grand Duchy." Eydtkuhnen, the famous German frontier station opposite the Russian border town of Wirballen, was now reported occupied by Russian cavalry detachments. A Russian had been caught in the act of trying to blow up the Thorn railway bridge. Now France--like Russia, "without declaration of war"--had violated the sacredness of German territory. French aviators had flown into Bavaria and dropped bombs in the neighborhood of Nuremberg, evidently with the intent of destroying military railway lines. Canard succeeded canard. The famed "German war on two fronts" was no longer a figment of the imagination. It had become immutable fact. Monsieur Sverbieff, the Czar's ambassador, we heard, had already received his passports. He would leave Berlin in the evening in a special train to the Russian frontier. When would Monsieur Cambon, the French ambassador, the Republic's accomplished representative in Washington during our war with Spain, be given his walking-papers? So far rowdies had yelled Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles only in front of the Russian Embassy. Now that French airmen had shelled Bavaria, how long would it be before the chateau in Pariser Platz would be stormed?
The British Embassy was wrapped in Sabbath calm. Was not Berlin reading with intensest gratification the Wolff Agency's carefully selected London dispatches saying that "powerful influences are at work to prevent England becoming involved in the war"? Mr. Norman Angell had written in that sense to The Times--the Lokal-Anzeiger reported with undisguised satisfaction. A large number of British professors, it added, had launched a "protest" against war with Germany, "the leader in art and science and against whom a war for Russia and Serbia would be a crime against civilization." A "great and influential meeting of Liberals in the Reform Club" had adopted resolutions commending Sir Edward Grey's efforts on behalf of peace and "energetically demanding the strict preservation of English neutrality." The Germans took heart. Blandly ignorant of their Government's secret diplomatic schemings, now in frantic progress, to keep Great Britain out of the fray, they were lulled by their rulers and doctored press reports into thinking that the danger of interference from the other side of the North Sea was as good as non-existent. The German Imperial Government practised this deception on their own people till the last possible moment. German newspaper readers, in those fitful hours, were being led to believe that the voice of Britain was the pacifist, pro-German voice of Radicalism as represented by journals like The Daily News, Westminster Gazette and The Nation. No intimation was permitted to reach the German public that voices like The Times, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Morning Post and Daily Telegraph were calling for the only action by the Government consonant with British honor and British rights. The outburst of fanatical rage against the "perfidious sister nation" so soon to ensue was mainly due, I shall always remain convinced, to the diabolical swindle of which the German nation was the victim at the hands of its dark-lantern diplomatists. In that far-off day when the scales have fallen from Teutonic eyes, I predict that the Germans will call for vengeance on their deceivers. As they were duped about Russia, so were they deliberately misled about England.
Before the war was half a day old the spy mania, which was destined to be one of the most amazing symptoms of the war's early hours, was raging madly from one end of the country to the other. It was directly inspired and encouraged by the Government. The authorities caused it to be known that "according to reliable news" Russian officers and secret agents infested the Fatherland "in great numbers." "The security of the German Empire," the people were informed, "demands absolutely that in addition to the regular official organs, the entire population should give vent to its patriotic sentiments by co-operating in the apprehension of such dangerous persons." "By active and restless vigilance," continued this official incitement to lynch law, "everybody can in his own way contribute toward a successful result of the war." It was not to be expected that a nation so idolatrous of officialdom as the Germans could possibly resist this carte-blanche permit to every man to play the rôle of an avenging sleuth. The inevitable result was that Germany became in a flash the scene of a nation-wide "drive" for spies, real or imaginary. Anybody who was either known to be a Russian or remotely suspected of being one, or who even looked like a Russian, was in imminent danger of his life. Now the notorious story of "poisoning of wells in Alsace by French army surgeons" was circulated. "Hunt for French spies!" promptly read the newest invitation to mob violence. Weird "news" began to fill the Extrablätter. A "Russian spy" had been caught in Unter den Linden, masquerading as a German naval officer. After being beaten into insensibility, he was dragged to Spandau and shot. In another part of town a couple of Russian "secret agents," disguised as women, were caught with "basketfuls of bombs." They, too, we learned, were riddled with bullets an hour later at Spandau. Everywhere, in and out of Berlin, the spy-hunt was now in full cry. An automobile, in which women were traveling, was "reported" to be crossing the country, en route to Russia with "millions of francs of gold." The whole rural population of Prussia turned out to intercept it.