but never has it throbbed with such life as to-day. It is the incarnation of the inflamed war spirit of the land. The more defiant the Chancellor’s diction, the more fervid the applause it evokes. "_Sehr richtig! Sehr richtig!_" the House shrieks back at him in chorus as he details, step by step, how Germany has been "forced" to draw her terrible sword to beat back the "Russian mobilization menace," how she has tried and failed to bargain with England and Belgium, how she has kept the dogs of war chained to the last, and only released them now when destruction, imminent and certain, is upon her. All eyes in the Press Gallery are riveted on the broad left arc of the floor usurped by the one hundred and eleven Social Democratic deputies of the House of three hundred and ninety-seven members. For the first time in German history their cheers are mingling with those of other parties in support of a Government policy. That, after the Belgian revelation, is beyond all question the dominating feature of a scene tremendous with meaning in countless respects. There is nothing perfunctory about the "Reds’" enthusiasm; that is plain. It is real, spontaneous, universal. No man of them keeps his seat. All are on their feet, succumbing to the engulfing magnitude of the moment. That, it instantly occurs to us, means much to Germany at such an hour. It means that the hope which more than one of the Fatherland’s prospective foes in years gone by has fondly cherished, of Socialist revolt in the hour of Germany’s peril, was illusory hope. The Chancellor knows what it means. "Our army is in the field!" he declares, trembling with emotion. "Our fleet is ready for battle! The whole German nation stands behind them!" As one man, the entire Reichstag now rises, shouting its approval of these historic words in tones of frenzied exaltation. For two full minutes pandemonium reigns unchecked. Bethmann Hollweg is turning to the Social Democrats. His fist is clenched and he brandishes it in their direction--not in anger this time, but in triumph--and, as if he were proclaiming the proud sentiment for all the world to hear, he exclaims, at the top of his voice, "Yea, the whole nation!" Thus was Armageddon born. Germany, all present knew, would be at war before another sun had gone down, not only with Russia and France, but with England, and, of course, with Belgium, too. "Supposing the Belgians resist?" I asked Schmidt, of the _B. Z. am Mittag_, a German colleague whom I once christened Berlin’s "star" reporter, as we wandered, thinking hard, back to _Unter den Linden_. "Resist?" he replied, half pitying the feeble-mindedness which prompted such a question. "We shall simply spill them into the ocean." CHAPTER X THE WAR REACHES ME