There was at this more cheering, and yet more. The President retired, and a great deluge of rain which had been threatening to fall all day speedily cleared the streets. The latest and most important of the day’s events is yet hardly an hour old, but we seem now to be living in a city of the dumb. Everybody is hoarse with four hours’ almost continuous shouting, but the popular excitement is as great as ever.
The house of M. Ferry has been guarded by the military, and only the entente cordiale existing between the troops and the populace has saved it from attack. At the moment of writing the Boulevards are again crowded. The reply of Germany is, of course, a foregone conclusion, but it is awaited with intense eagerness.
DECLARATION OF WAR BY FRANCE.
DRAMATIC RECEPTION OF THE NEWS BY THE GERMAN EMPEROR.
(By Telegraph from our Special Correspondent, Mr. Charles Lowe.)
Thorn, May 1.
For this morning the Emperor had ordered a review of all the troops, amounting to about 60,000 men concentrated hereabouts—the scene of the parade being a long sweep of meadow-land, not unlike the Champ de Mars at Paris, on the right bank of the Vistula. His Majesty and his Staff took their stand on a convenient knoll commanding all the ground, and scarcely had the serried battalions of the 3d Corps, with their bristling bayonets glittering in the bright sun, begun to stride along in all their martial and magnificent array, when the march past was interrupted by a most dramatic and thrilling incident.
I was standing on the outside fringe of the brilliant circle of His Majesty’s suite, quietly chatting to Dr. von Leuthold, the Emperor’s body physician, when suddenly we saw an orderly officer dash up to his Majesty and deliver a message, which we could discern from the colour of the envelope to be a telegram. The Emperor tore it open, glanced through the contents, then looked up, and let his eye wander all round the circle of his suite, as if to note the impression produced upon their minds by the news which His Majesty felt had already been intuitively divined by those about him. ‘Ja, meine Herren,’ he at last said; ‘it is just as we all expected. This is a telegram from General von Caprivi; France has declared war against us’ (Frankreich hat Uns den Krieg erklärt.) There was a moment’s pause, each man looking at his neighbour to study the effect of this terrible announcement, and then all eyes were again turned on the Emperor, who looked a shade paler than before, but not a whit less calm and resolute.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said at last, ‘this is a serious moment for us all, but the news dismays just as little as it surprises us. Yet I must now leave you, for the danger to the Fatherland is much greater on its western than on its eastern frontier; and where the danger to the Fatherland is greatest, there also must Germany’s Kaiser be.
‘Meine Herren, my place as Commander-in-Chief of our armies here will now be taken by that tried and gallant soldier, my dear friend and brother, the King of Saxony, who will, I am sure, bring honour and victory to our arms. One foe at a time is quite enough, and the sooner we can help our allies to dispose of their invader, the sooner shall we be able to concentrate all our forces and inflict a crushing blow on our hereditary enemy (Erbfeind), who has again, in the most wanton manner, broken loose against us.