Germany the while was going about its business, which at mid-July consists principally in slowing down the strenuous life and extending mere nocturnal "bummeling" in home haunts to seashore, forests and mountains for protracted sojourns of weeks and months. The "cure" resorts were crowded. In the _al fresco_ restaurants in the cities, one could hear the Germans eating and drinking as of peaceful yore. The schools were closed and Stettiner Bahnhof, which leads to the Baltic, and Lehrter Bahnhof, the gateway to the North Sea, were choked from early morning till late at night with excited and perspiring Berliners off for their prized _Sommerfrische_. _Herr Bankdirektor_ Meyer and _Herr_ and _Frau Rechtsanwalt_ Salzmann were a good deal more interested in the food at the _Logierhaus_ they had selected for themselves and the _kinder_ at Heringsdorf or Westerland-Sylt than they were in Austria’s avenging diplomatic moves in Belgrade. Stock-brokers were only moderately nervous over the gyrations of the Bourse. Germans who had not yet made off for the seaside or the Tyrol felt surer than ever that war was a chimera when they read that Monsieur Humbert had just revealed to the French Senate the criminal unpreparedness of the Republic’s military establishment. Strain between Austria and Serbia was now increasing. Canadian Pacific, German stock-dabblers’ favorite "flyer," tumbled on the Vienna and Berlin Bourses to the lowest level reached since 1910. Real war rumors now cropped up. Austria was reported to have "partially mobilized" two army corps. Canadian Pacifics continued to be "unloaded" by nervous Germans in quantities unprecedented. Now Serbia was "reported" to be mobilizing. It was July 17. England, we gathered in Berlin, was thinking only of Ireland. Berlin correspondents of great London dailies who were trying to impress the British public with the gravity of the European situation had their dispatches edited down to back-page dimensions--if they were printed at all. One colleague, who represented a famous English Liberal newspaper, had arranged, weeks before, to start on his holidays at the end of July. He telegraphed his editor that he thought it advisable to abandon his preparations and to remain in Berlin. "See no occasion for any alteration of your arrangements," was wired back from Fleet Street.