Berlin, Wednesday, July 29th
My own little mother,
It is six o'clock in the morning, and I'm in my dressing-gown writing to you, because if I don't do it now I shall be swamped with people and things, as I was all yesterday and the day before, and not get a moment's quiet. You see, there is going to be war, almost to a dead certainty, and the Germans have gone mad. The effect even on this house is feverish, so that getting up very early will be my only chance of writing to you.
You never saw anything like the streets yesterday. They seemed full of drunken people, shouting up and down with red faces all swollen with excitement. It is of course intensely interesting and new to me, who have never been closer to such a thing as war than history lessons at school, but what do they all think they're going to get, what do they all think it's really for, these poor creatures bellowing and strutting, and waving their hats and handkerchiefs, and even their babies, high over their heads whenever a konigliche Hoheit dashes past in a motor, which happens every five minutes because there are such a lot of them. Our drive from Koseritz to Stettin on Monday, which now seems so remote that it is as if it was another life, was the last beautiful ordinary thing that happened. Since then it has been one great noise and ugliness. I can't forget the look of the country as we passed through it on Monday, so lovely in its summer peacefulness, the first rye being cut in the fields, the hedges full of Traveler's Joy. I didn't notice how beautiful it was at the time, I only wanted to get on, to get away, to get the news; but now I'm here I remember it as something curiously innocent, and I'm so glad we had a puncture that made us stop for ten minutes in a bit of the road where there were great cornfields as far as one could see, and a great stretch of sky with peaceful little white clouds that hardly moved, and only the sound of poplars by the roadside rustling their leaves with that lovely liquid sound they make, and larks singing. It comforts me to call this up again, to hide in it for a minute away from the shouting of Deutschland uber Alles, and the hochs and yellings. Then we got to Stettin; and since then I have lived in ugliness.
The Kaiser came back on Monday. He had arrived in Berlin by the time we got here, and the Grafin's triumphant calm visibly increased when the footman who met us at the station eagerly told her the news. For this, as the papers said that evening, hardly able to conceal their joy beneath their pious hopes that the horrors of war may even yet be spared the world, reveals the full seriousness of the situation. I like the "even yet," don't you? Bernd was at the station, and drove with us to the Sommerstrasse. We went along the Dorotheenstrasse, at the back of Unter den Linden, as the Lindens were choked with people. It was impossible to get through them. They were a living wedge of people, with frantic mounted policemen trying to get them to go somewhere else.
Bernd was so dear, and oh it was such a blessing to be near him again! But he was solemn, and didn't smile at all except when he looked at me. Then that dear smile that is so full of goodness changed his whole face. "Oh Bernd, I do love you so much," I couldn't help whispering, leaning forward to do it regardless of Helena who sat next to him; and seeing by Helena's stare that she had heard, and feeling recklessly cheerful at having got back to him, I turned on her and said, "Well, he shouldn't smile at me in that darling way."
The Grafin laughed gently, so I knew she thought my manners bad. I've learned that when she laughs gently she disapproves, just as I've learned that when she says with a placid sigh that war is terrible and must be avoided, all her hopes are bound up in its not being avoided. Her only son is in the Cuirassiers, and is, Kloster says, a naturally unsuccessful person. War is his chance of promotion, of making a career. It is also his chance of death or maiming, as I said to Helena on Sunday at Koseritz when she was talking about her brother and his chances if there is war to the pastor, who was calling hat in hand and very full of bows.
She stared at me, and so did the pastor. I'm afraid I plumped into the conversation impetuously.
"I had sooner," said Helena, "that Werner were dead or maimed for life than that he should not make a career. One's brother must not, cannot be a failure."
And the pastor bowed and exclaimed, "That is well and finely said. That is full of pride, of the true German patrician pride."
Helena, you see, forgot, as Germans sometimes do, not to be natural. She said straight but it was a career she wanted for her brother. She forgot the usual talk of patriotism and the glory of being mangled on behalf of Hohenzollerns.
Yesterday the menservants disappeared, and women waited on us. There was no jolt in the machinery. It went on as smoothly as though the change had been weeks ago. Even the butler, who certainly is too old to fight, vanished.
Bernd comes in whenever he can. Luckily we're quite close to the General Staff Headquarters here, and he has his meals with us. He persists that the war will be kept rigidly to Austria and Servia, and therefore will be over in a week or two. He says Sir Edward Grey has soothed bellicose governments before now, and will be able to do so again. He talks of the madness of war, and of how no Government nowadays would commit such a sheer stupidity as starting it. I listen to him, and am convinced and comforted; then I go back to the others, and my comfort slips away again. For the others are so sure. There's no question for them, no doubt. They don't say so, any of them, neither the Graf, nor the Grafin, nor the son Werner who was here yesterday nor Bernd's Colonel who dined here last night, nor any of the other people. Government officials who come to see the Graf, and women friends who come to see the Grafin. They don't say war is certain, but each one of them has the look of satisfaction and relief people have when they get something they've wanted very much for a very long time and sigh out "At last!" Some of them let out their satisfaction more than others,—Bernd's Colonel, for instance, who seems particularly hilarious. He was very hilarious last night, though not ostensibly about war. If the possibility of war is mentioned, as of course it constantly is, they at once all shake their heads as if to order, and look serious, and say God grant it may even now be avoided, or something like that; just as the newspapers do. And last night at dinner somebody added a hope, expressed with a very grave face, that the people of Germany wouldn't get out of hand and force war upon the Government against its judgment.
I thought that rather funny. Especially after two hours in the morning with Kloster, who explained that the Government is arranging everything that is happening, managing public opinion, creating the exact amount of enthusiasm and aggressiveness it wishes to have behind it, just as it did in 1870 when it wanted to bring about the war with France. I know it isn't proper for a junges Madchen to talk at dinner unless she is asked a question, and I know she mustn't have an opinion about anything except bonbons and flowers, and I also know that a junges Madchen who is betrothed is expected to show on all occasions such extreme modesty, such a continuous downcast eye, that it almost amounts to being ashamed of herself; yet I couldn't resist leaning across the table to the man who said that, a high official in the Ministerium des Innern, and saying "But your public is so disciplined and your Government so almighty—" and was going on to ask him what grounds he had for his fears that a public in that condition would force the Government's hand, for I was interested and wanted dreadfully to hear what he would say, when the Grafin slipped in, smiling gently.
"My dear new niece," she said, looking round the table at everybody, "promises to become a most excellent little German. See how she already recognizes and admires our restraint on the one hand, and on the other, our power."
The Colonel, who was sitting on one side of me, laughed, raised his glass, and begged me to permit him to drink my health and the health of that luckiest of young men, Lieutenant von Inster. "Old England forever!" he exclaimed, bowing over his glass to me, "The England that raises such fair flowers and allows Germany to pluck them. Long may she continue these altruistic activities. Long may the homes of Germany be decorated with England's fairest products."
By this time he was on his feet, and they were toasting England and me. They were all quite enthusiastic, and I felt so proud and pleased, with Bernd sitting beside me looking so proud and pleased. "England!" they called out, lifting their glasses, "England and the new alliance!" And they bowed and smiled to me, and came round one by one and clinked their glasses against mine.
Then Bernd had to make a little speech and thank the Colonel, and you can't think how beautifully he speaks, and not a bit shy, and saying exactly the right things. Then the Graf actually got up and said something—I expect etiquette forced him to or he never would have—but once he was in for it he did it with the same unfaltering fluency and appropriateness that Bernd had surprised me with. He said they—the Koseritzes and Insters—welcomed the proposed marriage between Bernd and myself, not alone for the many graces, virtues, and, above all gifts—(picture the abstracted Graf reeling off these compliments! You should have seen my open mouth)—that so happily adorned the young lady, great and numerous though they were, but also because such a marriage would still further cement the already close union existing between two great countries of the same faith, the same blood, and the same ideals. "Long may these two countries," he said, "who carry in their hands the blazing torches of humanity and civilization, march abreast down the pages of history, writing it in glorious letters as they march." Then he sat down, and instantly relapsed into silence and abstraction. It was as if a candle had been blown out.
They're all certainly very kind to me, the people I've met here, and say the nicest things about England. They're in love with her, as I used to tell Frau Berg's boarders, but openly and enthusiastically, not angrily and reluctantly as the boarders were. I've not heard so many nice things about England ever as I did yesterday. I loved hearing them, and felt all lit up.
We went out on the balcony overlooking the Thiergarten after dinner. The Graf's chief had sent for him, and Bernd and some of the men had gone away too, but more people kept dropping in and joining us on the balcony watching the crowds. The Brandenburger Thor is close on our left, and the Reichstag is a stone's throw across the road on our right. When the crowd saw the officers in our group, they yelled for joy and flung their hats in the air. The Colonel, in his staff officer's uniform, was the chief attraction. He seemed unaware that there was a crowd, and talked to me in much the same hilarious and flowery strain he had talked at the Oberforsterei, saying a great number of things about hair and eyes and such. I know I've got hair and eyes; I've had them all my life, so what's the use of wasting time telling me about them? I tried all I knew to get him to talk about what he really thought of the chances of war, but quite in vain.
Do you know what time it is? Nearly eight, and the Deutschland uber Alles business has already started in the streets. There are little crowds of people, looking so tiny and black, not a bit as if they were real, and had blood in them and could be hurt, already on the steps of the Reichstag eagerly reading the morning papers. I must get dressed and go down and hear if anything fresh has happened. Good-bye my own loved mother,—I'll write whenever I get a moment. And don't forget, mother darling, that if you're worried about my being here I'll start straight off for Switzerland. But if you're not worried I wouldn't like to interrupt my lessons. They really are very important things for our future.
Your Chris.
