Germany was now in everything except a formally proclaimed state of war. Mobilization was not actually "ordered," but all the multitudinous preliminaries for it were well under way. As later developed, German reservists from far-off Southwest Africa were at that very moment en route to Europe on suddenly granted "leaves of absence." The terrible button at whose signal the German war machine would move was all but pressed. To prove it the super-patriotic, Government-controlled _Lokal-Anzeiger_ let a woefully tell-tale cat out of the bag. It issued a lurid "Extra" at two-thirty P.M., categorically announcing that "the entire German army and navy had been ordered to mobilize." After the news had spread through Berlin like wildfire and sent prices on the Bourse tobogganing toward the bottom at the dizziest pace of all the week, the _Lokal-Anzeiger_ twenty minutes later blandly issued another "Extra," explaining that through "a gross misdemeanor in its circulating department" the public had been furnished with "inaccurate news" about mobilization! The good "_Lokal’s_" news was not "inaccurate." It was only premature, for twenty-four hours later, on Friday, July 31, it was permitted, along with other papers, to flood the metropolis with another "Extra," officially proclaiming that Emperor William had declared Germany to be in a "state of war." The "Extras" added that the Kaiser would himself shortly arrive in Berlin from Potsdam. No one doubted now that the Fatherland was on the brink of grim and portentous events. War might only be a matter of hours, perhaps minutes. Instantaneously all roads led to _Unter den Linden_. Through it, now _Oberster Kriegsherr_ indeed--Supreme War Lord is not an ironical sobriquet foisted upon the German Emperor by detractors, as many people think, but an actual, formal title--the Kaiser would soon be passing. History was to be made to repeat itself. Old King William I, returning to Berlin from Ems on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War made a spectacular entrance into Berlin under identical circumstances. The welcome to his grandson must be no less imposing and immortal.