"Oh, perhaps in a few years. Perhaps it will not be so very long."
The next remark of at least half the persons with whom I discussed the question was, "Pooh, pooh, there'll never be a European war." Mr. Miller only said, "What will you do when it comes?"
Again the reply was pat to hand, but how vague it seems now, in the light of then fast approaching events! It was:
"There will be warning enough to make our plans for beating the censor, I am certain."
It is easy enough to look back now and declare that incidents such as Agadir, the Balkan war and Sarejebo should have been sufficient handwriting on the wall. All those affairs were exactly that, but we simply could not grasp the idea, that actual Armageddon could come without at least months of announcement—time enough for all of us to make our plans. In this I do not think we should be blamed, for we followed so exactly the fatuous beliefs of even foreign ministries. That the great moment should come in a week never entered our imaginations.
We filed back to the court room on that afternoon of the Caillaux trial and fought for the last time the twice daily battle for our seats. I sat beside the superior Englishman. We listened idly to famous politicians and famous doctors and famous lawyers garbling as best they could the dead question of the murder of Gaston Calmette, and the more burning though irrelevant one as to whether Joseph Caillaux was a traitor.
My companion and I discovered that our arrangements for a summer vacation included the same tiny Brittany hamlet by the sea. We passed a portion of the afternoon making mutual plans for the coming month, and at the adjournment drove away from the ancient building on the banks of the Seine in the same fiacre, both trying to align the chief features of the day's sitting, and planning the writing of our night's despatches.
After an hour at my desk that evening, I remember turning to Mr. Walter Duranty, my chief assistant, and saying, "It is about two thousand words to-night. With all the direct testimony that the Associated Press is sending, it ought to lead the paper to-morrow morning. Mark it 'rush.'"
"But about this panic on the Bourse story! Don't you think we should send a special on that?" Mr. Duranty asked.