On July 2, General von Kluck’s army, sweeping forward unopposed, reached the western and southwestern suburbs of Boston, passing through Newton and Brookline, and making a detour to avoid ruining the beautiful golf links where Ouimet won his famous victory over Ray and Vardon. This sportsmanlike consideration was due to the fact that several of the German officers and the Crown Prince himself were enthusiastic golfers. Meantime there was panic in the city. For days huge crowds had swarmed through Boston’s great railway stations, fleeing to Maine and Canada; and across the Charles River bridge there had passed an endless stream of automobiles bearing away rich families with their jewels and their silver. Among them were automobile trucks from the banks, laden with tons of gold. No boats left the harbour through fear of a grim German battleship that lay outside, plainly visible from the millionaire homes of Nahant and Manchester. Even now there was talk of resistance, and German Taubes looked down upon a mass meeting of ten thousand frantic citizens gathered in Mechanics Hall on Huntington Avenue; but prudent counsels prevailed. How could Boston resist without soldiers or ammunition or field artillery? Brooklyn had resisted, and now lay in ruins. New Haven had tried to resist, and what had come of it? At three o’clock on this day of sorrow, with banners flying and bands playing, the German forces--horse, foot, and artillery--entered the Massachusetts capital in two great columns, the one marching down Beacon Street, past the homes of Oliver Wendell Holmes and Julia Ward Howe, the other advancing along Commonwealth Avenue, past the white-columned Harvard Club, past the statues of Alexander Hamilton and William Lloyd Garrison, on under the shade of four rows of elms that give this noble thoroughfare a resemblance to the Avenue de la Grande Armée in Paris. It was a perfect summer’s day. The sun flashed from the golden dome of the State House on the hill over Boston Common, and from the great white Custom House tower that rose impressively in the distance above the green of the Public Gardens. Boston looked on, dumb with shame and stifled rage, as the invaders took possession of the city and ran up their flags, red, white, and black, above the Old South Meeting House on Washington Street, where Benjamin Franklin was baptised, and above the sacred, now dishonoured, shaft of the Bunker Hill Monument. Hostages were taken, as usual, these including Major Henry L. Higginson, President A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard University, Major James M. Curley, Edward A. Filene, Margaret Deland, William A. Paine, Ellery Sedgwick, Mrs. John L. Gardner, Charles W. Eliot, Louis D. Brandeis, Bishop William Lawrence, Amy Lowell, T. Jefferson Coolidge, Thomas W. Lawson, Guy Murchie, and Cardinal O’Connell.