On June fifth, at the annual hunt race, the big steeplechase of the year, the Emperor himself appeared at the Grünewald track, occupying his private box, a sort of little house beyond the finish.
Bookmakers are not allowed in Germany. The betting is in mutual pools. About seventeen per cent of the money paid is taken by the Jockey Club, the State and charities, so that the bettor, with this percentage running always against him, has little chance of ultimate success.
Many of the races are confined to horses bred in Denmark and the Central Empires.
All of us in the Embassy joined the Red White Tennis Club situated in the Grünewald about five miles from the centre of Berlin. The Crown Prince was a member and often played there. He is an excellent player, not quite up to championship form, but he can give a good account of himself in any company short of the top class. He has the advantage of always finding that the best players are only too glad to have an opportunity to play with him. At this Tennis Club during all the period of the feeling of hatred against America we were treated with, extreme courtesy by all our German fellow members.
We saw a great deal of the two exchange professors in the winter of 1913-14, Professor Paul Shorey of the University of Chicago and Professor Archibald Coolidge of Harvard. These exchange professors give courses and lectures in the universities and their first appearance is quite an event. On this first day in 1913, they each delivered a lecture in the University of Berlin, and on this lecture day Prince August Wilhelm, representing the Kaiser, attended. The Kaiser used invariably to attend, but of late years I am afraid has rather lost interest in this enterprise at first so much favoured by him.
The Cologne Gazette at one time after the commencement of the war, in an article, expressed great surprise that America should permit the export of munitions of war to the Allies and said, quite seriously, that Germany had done everything possible to win the favour of America, that Roosevelt had been offered a review of German troops, that the Emperor had invited Americans who came to Kiel on their yachts to dine with him, and that he had even sat through the lectures given by American exchange professors.
Before the war there was but one cable direct from Germany to America. This cable was owned by a German company and reached America via the Azore Islands. I endeavoured to obtain permission for the Western Union Company to land a cable in Germany, but the opposition of the German company, which did not desire to have its monopoly interfered with, caused the applications of the Western Union to be definitely pigeon-holed. In August, 1914, after the outbreak of the war, when I told this to Ballin of the Hamburg American Line and von Gwinner, head of the Deutsche Bank, and when they thought of how much they could have saved for themselves and Germany and their companies if there had been an American owned cable landing in Germany, their anger at the delay on the part of official Germany knew no bounds. Within a very short time I received an answer from the Foreign Office granting the application of the Western Union Company, providing the cable went direct to America. This concession, however, came too late and, naturally, the Western Union did not take up the matter during the war.
CHAPTER IV
MILITARISM IN GERMANY AND THE ZABERN AFFAIR
In 1913-1914 occurred a series of events known as the "Zabern Affair," which to my mind decided the "system"--the military autocracy--for a speedy war. In this affair the German people appeared at last to be opening their eyes, to recover in some degree from the panic fear of their neighbours which had made them submit to the arrogance and exactions of the military caste and to be almost ready to demilitarise themselves, a thing abhorrent to the upholders of caste, the system, the army and the Hohenzollerns.