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

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 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 reading and reading the Extrablatt, over and over again. "Joe" Grew came hurrying up in his automobile. He, too, had the Tageblatt 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 coming to an end, one thought, was about all there was left. And that seemed nearer at hand than any of us ever felt it before.

Berlin Mob Attacking British Embassy on the night of Aug. 4, 1914. (Drawn for the Illustrated London News from a description by the author.)

I started now for the English 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 obviously bent on more serious business. I reached the Behrenstrasse, two hundred feet away from the English 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. 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 hitting their mark. The fusillade increased in violence. When there would be a particularly loud crash, it would be followed by a fiendish roar of glee. The street was crammed from curb to curb. Many women 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 Englishman, 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 Wilhelmstrasse, 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 manifestation 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 now flew thick and fast through every paneless window of the building.

Extra Edition of Berliner Tageblatt Announcing War With England

I hailed a passing horse-cab and told the driver to make for the Adlon by the circuitous route of the Voss-strasse, Königgrätzer-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 precautionary 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 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 previous 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 scheme 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," remarked 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 this "cooked" summary of the events which had precipitated the climacteric decision: