The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time

by Frederic William Wile

"Resist?" he replied, half pitying the feeble-mindedness which prompted such a question. "We shall simply spill them into the ocean."

CHAPTER X

THE WAR REACHES ME

"We are not barbarians, my dear Wile!" exclaimed Günther Thomas, when we met in the Adlon after the Reichstag sitting, in reply to 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 acquaintance the best-informed German journalist I ever knew. His long residence in Park Row had grafted a "news nose" on him, which, coupled with a profound knowledge of the history and present-day undercurrents of his own country, made him an ideal and valuable 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 skepticism, for Thomas was both a Prussian patriot and representative of Mr. Ridder's New-Yorker Staatszeitung. But nine times out of ten his counsel and information were like Cæsar's wife. His assurance to me on the evening of August 4, 1914, that his countrymen "were not barbarians" was the most misleading 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. "What will the English do?" was the question they constantly flung at any one they thought likely to be able to answer it intelligently. It was the thing which gave themselves the most anxious heart-searching. The "war on two fronts," the purely Continental affair with the Dual Alliance, filled the average German with no concern. The Kaiser's military machine had been constructed to deal with France and Russia combined, and no German ever for a moment doubted its ability 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 would in all probability now be screaming in triumph over Paris and Petrograd. But with the British "in," dozens of Germans confessed, as my own ears can bear testimony, their case was "hopeless." Few of them were persuaded that Germany could, in Bismarck's picturesque 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 anguished 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 unthinkable because it would be nothing short of "civil war." Doctor Hecksher, a well-known National Liberal member of the Reichstag and Stimmungsmacher (henchman) of the Foreign Office, busily assured English newspaper correspondents of the "horror" with which the mere idea of conflict with England filled the German soul. I thought it queer 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 Germany 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. Certainly lachrymose expressions of hope that England would not feel called upon to "intervene" in Germany's "just quarrel" with her neighbors 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 Hohenzollern hegemony on 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 European power.

Uppermost in my mind just now was how to transmit at least the vital passages of the Chancellor'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 being accepted." That was about six 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 London Times (like my own paper, The Daily Mail, the property of Lord Northcliffe), 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 German, of course, as every one for three days past had been required to do, and we realized that practically every conversation, especially between highly suspicious characters like long-accredited Berlin 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 safety of the German Empire. Finally it was agreed that Mackenzie should come to my rooms in the Adlon and arrange with me there the text of a cablegram to New York which should 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 concealed 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 possible suggest your cabling Newyorks news."

Mackenzie, accompanied by his assistant, Jelf, now a volunteer-officer in Kitchener's army, 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 also serving his Kaiser and Empire in field-gray, was permitted to participate in 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 plot. 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 typewriting-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 already asked him to take charge of Great Britain's interests? What 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 Washington? Could it facilitate the transmission of our news-cablegrams to New York or Chicago? These were the things the journalistic brethren en 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 checks on the First National Bank of Roaring Branch, Pennsylvania, "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 of 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 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 overwhelming 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 anticipation at being permitted to live through the mighty days ahead of us in Berlin with herself and the Ambassador. They would be experiences worthy of transmission 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 homespun 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....