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
Through the entrance to the leafy Tiergarten, down the pompous and
sepulchral Avenue of Victory, across the Königs-Platz with its
Gulliverian statue of the Iron Chancellor and the Column of Victory,
through the district whose street nomenclature breathes of Germany’s
martial glory--Roon-strasse, Bismarck-strasse and Moltke-strasse--the
parade, now swelled to many times its original proportions, halted in
front of the Austrian Embassy. Some self-appointed cheer-leader called
for _Hochs_ for the ally, for another stanza of the Austrian national
anthem, for more "Down with Serbia," and for more yells of defiance to
Russia. Opposite the embassy-palace towered the massive block-square
General Staff building. From it there emerged, while the demonstration
was at its zenith, three young subalterns. The mob seized them
joyously, shouldered them and acclaimed them--the brass-buttoned and
epauletted embodiment of the army on whom Germany’s hopes were presently
to be pinned. "_Krieg! Krieg!_" the war mongers chanted in ecstatic
shrieks. Then "_Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles_," twin of the
Austrian anthem as far as the melody is concerned, was sung with
tremendous fervor. The crowd yelled for Emperor Francis Joseph’s
ambassador, the Hungarian Count von Szögeny-Marich, but, if he was at
home, he preferred not to face the multitude. Presently a beardless
young embassy attaché appeared at an open window--the physical
personification of the allied Empire--and he almost reeled from the
shock of the tumultuous shout hurtled in his monocled countenance.
For nearly an hour delirium reigned unbridled. Then the demonstrators
betook themselves back to the Linden district, where they met up with
more processions. Throughout the night, far into Sunday morning, Berlin
reverberated with their tramp and clamor. My doubts as to the capital’s
temper toward war were resolved, my cherished confidence in the average
German’s fundamental love of peace shattered. Berlin is the tuning-fork
of the Empire. As she was shrieking "War! War!" so, I felt sure,
Hamburg and Munich, Dresden and Stuttgart, Cologne and Breslau,
Königsberg and Metz, would be shrieking before the world was many hours
older. And when the Sunday papers reported that "fervent patriotic
demonstrations" had broken out everywhere the night before, as soon as
"Serbia’s insolent action" was communicated to the public, something
within me said that only a miracle could now restrain war-mad Germany
from herself plunging into the fray.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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