On the day before the war session of the Reichstag, the Kaiser, more conscious than ever now of his partnership with Deity, ordained Wednesday, August 5, as a day of universal prayer for the success of German arms. Soon after its proclamation, William II, thunderously acclaimed, appeared in _Unter den Linden_ intermittently, en route to conference with high officers of state. He was clad, like every German soldier one now saw, in field-gray, and ready, one heard, to leave for the front at a moment’s notice, to take up his post, assigned him by Hohenzollern warrior traditions, on the battlefield in the midst of his loyal legions. Mobilization was now in full swing, and more and more troops were in evidence, crossing town to railway stations from which they were to be transported east or west, as the Staff’s emergencies required. A week before, all these soldiers were in Prussian blue. They were gray now, from head to foot, millions of them. Obviously the clothing department of the army had not been taken by "surprise" by the cruel war "forced" on pacific Germany. Three million uniforms can not be turned out in a whole summer--even in Germany. I thought of this, as gray streams, far into the evening, kept pouring through Berlin, and I thought what a marvelously happy selection that peculiar shade of drab-gray, of almost dust-like invisibility from afar, was for field purposes. To shoot at lines no more colorful than that, it seemed to me, would be like banging away at the horizon itself.... History, I suppose, will date Armageddon from August 1, when the German army and navy were mobilized, or perhaps from August 2, when Germany claims that Russia and France fired the first miscreant shots. But the red-letter day of the World Massacre’s opening week was beyond all question Tuesday, August 4, which began with the war sitting of the Reichstag and ended with England’s declaration of war on Germany. It was destined to be especially big with import for me--of vital import, as events hanging over my unsuspecting head were speedily to reveal.