"THE ASSAULT."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume III, Issue 881, 6 December 1916, Page 6

"THE ASSAULT."

jDAWN OF "THE DAY." BERLIN IN AUGUST, 1914. THE "PLACE-IX-THE-SUN" MADNESS. On .Tune 25, 1011, steel blue Gerniiin and grey British dreadnoughts 'fraternised on the unruffled bosom of Kiel harbour, the occasion being Kiel "week," the Kaiser's imitation | of the Cowes function. J On June 21, when the Hollenau giant locks swung tree, the waleri way, (lie Kaiser Wilhelm canal, connecting Kiel with Wilhchnshaven, a channel wide and deep enough to carry the largest battleship, was completed alter 1(1 years laborious j toiling. I On June 2.X the Sera.jevo match | was applied to the European powder | magazine, and all She latent war fever smouldering in Germany was ; fanned into a blaze. I In his book of personal experiences of Germany from the inside, entitled "The Assault." F. W. Wile, an American journalist of the Frcd|crick Palmer class, and the pre-war Berlin correspondent of the "Daily Mail," tells a very fascinating story |of the German capital at the outbreak of hostilities, and generally I gives us an insight into the German political and military mind and its 'obsession of "The Day." Mr Wile (suffered rough treatment as a suspected spy when England broke with i Germany over Belgium and Fiance, but managed to get away with [Sir Edward Goschen and his party when the diplomatic rupture evcntu- ; ated. i Some Inside History. The author is enlightening on I many points of German psychology, land must be allowed to speak as an i authority. In his introduction he [cheerfully concedes that the volume I is "pro English," as he meant it to Ibe all that. His years in the Falherjland taught him, he adds, that a victorious Germany would be a menace to international liberty and I become automatically a threat to the I happiness and freedom of the United | States. Still, even with these j opinions and sentiments, he is never ! partisan, never guilty of "strafing" (he enemy. His story begins with ; the Anglo-German love-feast at Kiel, when Mr Churchill, then First Lord, i was not present, because the Viking- | bearded von Tirpitz did not want his ! magnetic presence there. To quote: iMr Churchill's visit might have resulted in some sort of an AngloGerman naval modus vivendi, or otherwise postponed ''The Day," for i which von Tirpitz and the War | Lords were steadily preparing. The author credits this apostle of "frightI fulness" with far-reaching'influence ;in those pregnant days. And. in Mr j Wile's judgment, with the opening lof the Kaiser Wilhelm canal the I "moment of Germany's up-to-the-minute preparedness for ArmaIgeddon was signalised." Germany's [army had long since been ready; ; now her fleet was ready too—an inland avenue of safe retreat, invulncrI ably fortified at either end, had been ! provided. That day the German war I machine tightened up the last bolt. )As the Kaiser in his yacht, the Hohenzollern, led the way down the canal for his mighty warships, a British bluejacket whispered to a mate: "Say Bill, don't be jest look like Gawd!" "Perhaps the Divinely Appointed, felt that way too," comments the writer. The Grand blood-bath." Kiel "week" with its pageantries and convivial frolickings, was the first act in the great drama. Then came the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. "To the Warmakers," says Mr Wile, "Serajevo had all the earmarks of providential timeliness." The Kaiser was racing in the Baltic. Suddenly a dispatch boat tore off Baltic-bound through j the lines of battleships, pleasure craft and racing yachts, to break the news. The dispatch boat arrived simultaneously with the fastest torpedo boat in port, and Hie Kaiser and his staff clambered into the latter and started for the harbour. As the Kaiser's craft raced passed the British flagship, King George V. i and transferred him to the Hohen-

| zollern, the mainmast of the Imperial ! yacht ilew the blue and yellow 1 pennant which signifies that "His i Majesty is aboard, but preoccupied."

And little wonder! Thus a week of gaiety unsurpassed evaporated into gloom and foreboding. On June 2:), the junketers returned to Berlin, the author himself to "live through five weeks of finishing touches for the grand blood-bath, - ' as he picturesquely phrases it. Is the Kaiser Guilty? Armageddon (he declares) was plotted, prepared for, and precipitated by (lie German War Party; it was not the work of the German people. He estimates that 1,500,000 Germans (constituting the War Parly) really wanted Avar. And in support of a studied opinion that the Kaiser was not immediately responsible for the crowning infamy, though he had acquiesced in, and to that extent, abetted the plot, Mr Wile gives the hitherto unrecorded piece of ante-bellum history which lie vouches for: On the afternoon of Saturday, August 1, 1914, the wife of Lieuten-ant-General Hehnuth von Moltke, then chief of the Great German General Stall', paid a visit to a certain home in Berlin which shall be nameless. The Fran Generalstabchef was in a stale of obvious mental excitement "Ach, what a day I've been through. Kinder!" she began. "My husband came home just before I left. Dog-tired, he threw himself

••'The Assault: (icrmituy Before the Out break and England in War Time." By 1". \V Will-. Publisher, William Heinemann. Re ccivvd through L. M. Isitt, Ltd., Christ church.

on the couch, a total wreck, ex-! plaining to me that he had finally ! "accomplished the three days' hard- j est work he had ever done in his j whol? life—lie had helped to induce the Kaiser to sign the mobI ilisation order!*' j Slage-managinjj "The Day."' So the historian (and a reputable one at that) explains the signing of | the mobilisation order. WilheJm, iwe are told, liked his dynastic job 'too well to run the risk a world war would bring him. We are told. too. thai he "rattled the sabre"' and "donned the shining armour" only as j concessions to the demand of the War Makers. . . . Let us pass along to the greater verity, the transformation of Germany's peace majority into a "multitudinous mob mad for war," misled (says Mr Wile' by the deadly dogma of the "place in the sun" and the splendidly engineered plot to throw all the blame for the i war's origin on the ferocious cupidity and envy of Germany's European rivals. Prince von Bulow,' fourth Imperial Chancellor, it was who was responsible for the now 'historic phrase, which Mr Wile describes as the spiritual mother of the war. To popularise this theory, two great German national organisations, the Pan-German League and the German Xavy League, went valiantly to work, and the "good" cause was Championed by one of the pillars iof the War Party, l)r Hammann, chief of the notorious Foreign Ollice Press Bureau, von Tirpilz, "the eternal," who ever saw n-<\ at the name of England, and that "swashbuckling young buffoon . . . the Grand .Mogul of the War Party," the Crown, | Prince. Slow Music. Mr Wile's account of the "slowl music"' leading up to the orchestral climax contains much that is new,' and is simply but vividly told. [Deaf to the rumblings, the great| European public was magnificently j immersed in its petty domestic preoccupations while- Germany kept [Austria's face towards war and per-] jfected her own plans. Then Serbia refused to concede the abject surrender demanded of her by Austria, and the climax was in sight. ] Berlin went war-crazy. Huge crowds gathered thundering, "War! War! Down with Serbia! Hurrah fori ■ Austria! . . . Down with Russia!"; j And, of course, "Hoch der Kaiser!" and "Deutschland, Deutschland über! ! Alles." Fatal War Council. i Events hastened. A council of war ' was held at Potsdam which lasted far into the night. According to this historian, von Falkenhayn and von Tirpitz were hot for the test because Germany was ready, her adversaries were not. The Kaiser, it is said,! headed the "peace party," and Hollweg and von .lagow sided with their i 1 Imperial master. Von Moltke, a Christian Scientist, and "otherwise paeilic of temperament," was noncommittal, "Prince Henry of Prussia I did not at least violently insist upon peace." Whether the Crown Prince was present is not known. The next' | day, July 30, the-journalist telegraphed his newspaper chiefs in London' 'and New York that the "fat was; (irrevocably in the fire."' On the! ! night of July 31, after an Imperial ;procession through the streets of the, j capital and a speech by the Kaiser concluding with the words: "Go to : 'church, kneel before God, and pray; to Him to help our gallant army," Berlin went to bed footsore, and: hoarse with "Hoching," to dream of I war. The morrow brought the uni-j jversal mobilisation order, the rush ■of neutrals for passports, and then,! : three days later (Tuesday, August 4),; ! the war sitting of the Reichstag and; j England's declaration of war on Ger-j | many. Mr Wile's picture of that! I memorable scene, and his account of; I Hollweg's admission and justifica-; ■lion of the violation of Belgium's! | neutrality, are purple patches of real' I history. I

British Embassy Stormed. The same night a Berlin mob stormed the British Embassy, roaring with insensate fury: "Kramer volk!" (Peddler nation!), "Basscn Verrat!" (Pace treachery!), "Xieder mit England!*' (Down with Engand "Tod den Englandern!" (Death to the English!). The curtain rang down on Sir Edward Goschen's hurried departure with his staff (and Wile, too, after many exciting experiences at the hands of German officials) in the dark of an early morning from the Wilhelmstrasse en route for the Dutch frontier and England—in contrast to the courteous treatment meted out to Prince Lichnowsky, the Kaiser's Ambassador, on leaving London. The author has many good words for Sir Edward Goschen and Mr Gerard, the American Ambassador, for their amazing sangfroid and strength in a time of extraordinary stress.

The second part of "The Assault" deals with Britain in war time. The book is without exaggeration a notable contribution to the multitudinous records of the world struggle. Mr Wile was uniquely privileged, and has made splendid use of his opportunities.