The Kaiser read his War Speech, which he held in his right hand, while the left firmly gripped his sword-hilt. Beginning in a quiet tone, His Majesty’s voice appreciably rose in intensity and volume as he approached the kernel of his message which told how "with a heavy heart I have been compelled to mobilize my army against a neighbor with whom it has fought side by side on so many fields of battle." The Imperial Russian Government, William II went on to say, "yielding to the pressure of an insatiable nationalism, has taken sides with a State which by encouraging criminal attacks has brought on the evil of war." That France, also, the Kaiser continued, "placed herself on the side of our enemies could not surprise us. Too often have our efforts to arrive at friendlier relations with the French Republic come in collision with old hopes and ancient malice." And when the Kaiser had ended, with an invitation to "the leaders of the different parties of the Reichstag" (there were no Socialists present) "to come forward and lay their hands in mine as a pledge," the White Hall reverberated with applause which must have seemed almost indecorous in so august an apartment, but which, no doubt, rang true. It was then, I suppose, that Thomas felt like weeping, and so should I, perhaps, had I been there. The Kaiser, his handshaking-bee over, strode from the scene amid an awesome silence, and the statesmen, the generals and the admirals went their respective ways. All was now in readiness for the real Reichstag session, in which words of deathless significance were to fall from the Chancellor’s lips. We were accustomed to sardine-box conditions in the always overcrowded press gallery of the Reichstag on "great days," but to-day we were piled on top of one another in closer formation even than a Prussian infantry platoon in the charge. Familiar faces were missing. Comert, of _Le Temps_, Caro, of _Le Matin_, and Bonnefon, of _Le Figaro_, were not there. They had escaped, we were glad to hear, by one of the very last trains across the French frontier. Löwenton (a brother of Madame Nazimoff), Grossmann, Markoff and Melnikoff, our long-time Russian colleagues, were absent, too. Had they gained Wirballen in time, we wondered, or were they languishing in Spandau?