The document, which is dated August tenth, 1914, supersedes the statement made by the German Chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg in his speech before the Reichstag on August fourth, 1914, in which he gave the then official account of the entrance into the war of the Central Empires. It will be noted that von Bethmann-Hollweg insisted that France began the war in the sentence reading: "There were bomb-throwing fliers, cavalry patrols, invading companies in the Reichsland (Alsace-Lorraine). Thereby France, although the condition of war had not yet been declared, had attacked our territory." But the Emperor makes no mention of this fact, of supreme importance if true, in his writing to President Wilson six days later.
Quite curiously, at this time there was a belief on the part of the Germans that Japan would declare war on the Allies and range herself on the side of the Central Powers. In fact on one night there was a friendly demonstration in front of the Japanese Embassy, but these hopes were soon dispelled by the ultimatum of Japan sent on the sixteenth of August, and, finally, by the declaration of war on August twenty-third.
During the first days of the war the warring powers indulged in mutual recriminations as to the use of dumdum bullets and I was given several packages of cartridges containing bullets bored out at the top which the Germans said had been found in the French fortress of Longwy, with a request that I send an account of them to President Wilson and ask for his intervention in the matter. Very wisely President Wilson refused to do anything of the kind, as otherwise he would have been deluged with constant complaints from both sides as to the violations of the rules of war.
The cartridges given to me were in packages marked on the outside "Cartouches de Stand" and from this I took it that possibly these cartridges had been used on some shooting range near the fort and the bullets bored out in order that they might not go too far, if carelessly fired over the targets.
On August fifth, with our Naval Attaché, Commander Walter Gherardi, I called upon von Tirpitz, to learn from him which ports he considered safest for the ships to be sent from America with gold for stranded Americans. He recommended Rotterdam.
I also had a conversation on this day with Geheimrat Letze of the Foreign Office with reference to the proposition that English and German ships respectively should have a delay of until the fourteenth of August in which to leave the English or German ports in which they chanced to be.
The second week in August, my wife's sister and her husband, Count Sigray, arrived in Berlin. Count Sigray is a reserve officer of the Hungarian Hussars and was in Montana when the first rumours of war came. He and his wife immediately started for New York and sailed on the fourth of August. They landed in England, and as England had not yet declared war on Austria, they were able to proceed on their journey. With them were Count George Festetics and Count Cziraki, the former from the Austrian Embassy in London and the latter from that in Washington. They were all naturally very much excited about war and the events of their trip. The Hungarians as a people are quite like Americans. They have agreeable manners and are able to laugh in a natural way, something which seems to be a lost art in Prussia. Nearly all the members of Hungarian noble families speak English perfectly and model their clothes, sports and country life, as far as possible, after the English.
The thirteenth saw the departure of our first special train containing Americans bound for Holland. I saw the Americans off at the Charlottenburg station. They all departed in great spirits and very glad of an opportunity to leave Germany.
I had some negotiations about the purchase by America or Americans of the ships of the North German Lloyd, but nothing came of these negotiations. Trainloads of Americans continued to leave, but there seemed to be no end to the Americans coming into Berlin from all directions.
On August twenty-ninth, Count Szoegyeny, the Austrian Ambassador, left Berlin. He had been Ambassador there for twenty-two years and I suppose because of his advancing years the Austrian Government thought that he had outlived his usefulness. Quite a crowd of Germans and diplomats were at the station to witness the rather sad farewell. His successor was Prince Hohenlohe, married to a daughter of Archduke Frederick. She expressly waived her right to precedence as a royal highness, and agreed to take only the precedence given to her as the wife of the Ambassador, in order not to cause feeling in Berlin. Prince Hohenlohe, a rather easy-going man, who had been most popular in Russia and Austria, immediately made a favourable impression in Berlin and successfully occupied the difficult position of mediator between the governments of Berlin and Vienna.