These things we chatted and canvassed, irresponsibly, on _Utowana’s_ immaculate deck. All of us were persuaded of the imminency of a crisis in Austrian-Serbian relations in consequence of Princip’s crime. But I am quite sure not a soul of us held himself capable of imagining that, because of that remote felony, Great Britain and Germany would be at war five weeks later. Beyond us spread the peaceful panorama of British and German war-craft, anchored side by side, and the thought would have perished at birth. Returned to the terrace of the Seebade-Anstalt, one found the atmosphere heavily charged with suppressed excitement. Immaculately-groomed young diplomats, down from Berlin for the Sunday, were twirling their walking-sticks and yellow gloves which were not, after all, to accompany them to Grand-Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia’s garden-party. That, like everything else connected with Kiel Week, had suddenly been called off. A party of Americans flocked together at the entrance to the hotel to exchange low-spoken views on the all-pervading topic. There was big Lieutenant-Commander Walter R. Gherardi, our wide-awake Berlin Naval Attaché, resplendent in gala gold-braided uniform, and Mrs. Gherardi, who had motored me around the environs of Kiel that morning; Albert Billings Ruddock, Third Secretary of the Embassy, and his pretty and clever wife; and Lanier Winslow, Ambassador Gerard’s private secretary, his effervescent good nature repressed for the first time I ever remembered observing it in that unbecoming and unnatural condition. Secretary Ruddock’s father, Mr. Charles H. Ruddock, of New York, completed the group. I met Mr. Ruddock, Sr., six months later in New York. "Do you remember what you told me that afternoon at Kiel, when we were discussing Serajevo?" he asked. I pleaded a lapse of recollection. "You said," he reminded me, "’this means war.’" The aspect of Kiel became in the twinkling of an eye as funereal as Serajevo and Vienna themselves must have been in that blood-bespattered hour. Bands stopped playing, flags not lowered to half-mast were hauled down altogether, and beer-gardens emptied. "Hohenzollern weather," Teuton synonym for invincible sunshine, vanished in keeping with the drooping spirits of everybody and everything, and bleak thunder-showers intermingled with flashes of heat-lightning to complete the _mise en scène_. A week of gaiety unsurpassed evaporated into gloom and foreboding.