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
Modern war, from the newspaperman’s standpoint, consists principally of
two things--censorship and rumors. Both had now set in with a
vengeance. The first day in Berlin swarmed with irresponsible report.
People believed anything. Official news was scarce and "far between."
The second General Staff bulletin to be issued was a laconic
announcement that troops of the VIII (Rhenish) army corps had occupied
Luxemburg "for the protection of German railways in the Grand Duchy."
Eydtkuhnen, the famous German frontier station opposite the Russian
border town of Wirballen, was now reported occupied by Russian cavalry
detachments. A Russian had been caught in the act of trying to blow up
the Thorn railway bridge. Now France--like Russia, "without declaration
of war"--had violated the sacredness of German territory. French
aviators had flown into Bavaria and dropped bombs in the neighborhood of
Nuremberg, evidently with the intent of destroying military railway
lines. Canard succeeded canard. The famed "German war on two fronts"
was no longer a figment of the imagination. It had become immutable
fact. Monsieur Sverbieff, the Czar’s ambassador, we heard, had already
received his passports. He would leave Berlin in the evening in a
special train to the Russian frontier. When would Monsieur Cambon, the
French ambassador, the Republic’s accomplished representative in
Washington during our war with Spain, be given _his_ walking-papers? So
far rowdies had yelled _Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles_ only in
front of the Russian Embassy. Now that French airmen had shelled
Bavaria, how long would it be before the chateau in Pariser Platz would
be stormed?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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