The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-TimeWile, Frederic William
History
The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time
Wile, Frederic William
World War, 1914-1918
While at work on my dispatches in my hotel room--it was now about nine
o’clock--I could hear _Unter den Linden_ below my windows roaring with
mob fury against Britain. "_Krämer-volk!_" (Peddler nation!)
"_Rassen-Verrat!_" (Race treachery!) "_Nieder mit England!_" (Down with
England!) "_Tod den Engländer!_" (Death to the English!) were the shouts
which burst forth in mad chorus. I have never hunted beasts in the
jungle. Never have my ears been smitten with the snarl and growl of
wild animals at bay. I never heard the horizon ring with the tumult of
howling dervishes plunging fanatically to the attack. But the populace
of Berlin seemed to me at that moment to be giving a vivid composite
imitation of them all. Certainly no civilized community on earth ever
surrendered so completely to all-obsessing brute fury as the war mob
which thirsted for British blood in "Athens-on-the-Spree" on the night
of August 4, 1914. It gave vent to all the animal passions and breathed
the murder instinct said to be inherent in the average human when
unreasoning rage temporarily supplants sanity. If it had caught sight
of or could have laid hands on Sir Edward Goschen, or any one else
identifiable as an Engländer, it would undoubtedly have torn him limb
from limb. The Germans may not be the modern personification of the
Huns, but the savagery to which their Imperial capital ruthlessly
resigned itself on the threshold of war with England justifies the
belief that they have inherited some of the characteristics of Attila’s
fiends. Next morning’s Berlin papers explained in all seriousness, on
police authority, that the mob "infuriated" because persons in the
English Embassy had thrown "beggars’ pennies" from the windows--a
ludicrous falsehood.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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