The Guns of August

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Up to the moment of invasion many still believed that self-interest would divert the German armies around Belgium’s borders. Why should they deliberately bring two more enemies into the field against them? As no one supposed the Germans to be stupid, the answer that suggested itself to the French mind was that the German ultimatum to Belgium was a trick. It was not intended to be followed by actual invasion but designed to “lead us into being the first to enter Belgium,” as Messimy said, in an order forbidding French troops to cross the line “even by so much as a patrol or a single horseman.”

  Whether for this reason or some other, Grey had not yet sent England’s ultimatum. King Albert had not yet appealed to the guarantor powers for military aid. He, too, feared that the ultimatum might be a “colossal feint.” If he called in the French and British too soon, their presence would drag Belgium into the war in spite of herself, and at the back of his mind was a worry that once established on Belgian soil his neighbors might be in no hurry to leave. Only after the tramp of German columns marching on Liège had put an end to all doubt and left him no choice, did the King, at noon on August 4, make his appeal for “concerted and common” military action by the guarantors.

  In Berlin, Moltke was still hoping that after the first shots fired for honor’s sake the Belgians might be persuaded “to come to an understanding.” For that reason Germany’s final note had simply said “by force of arms” and for once refrained from declaring war. When Baron Beyens, the Belgian ambassador, came to demand his passports on the morning of the invasion, Jagow hurried forward asking, “Well, what have you to say to me?” as if expecting a proposal. He reiterated Germany’s offer to respect Belgian independence and pay for all damages if Belgium would refrain from destroying railroads, bridges, and tunnels and let German troops pass through freely without defending Liège. When Beyens turned to go, Jagow followed him hopefully, saying, “Perhaps there will still be something for us to talk over.”

  In Brussels one hour after the invasion began, King Albert, in unadorned field uniform, rode to meet his Parliament. At a brisk trot the little procession came down the Rue Royale led by an open carriage in which were the Queen and her three children, followed by two more carriages and, bringing up the rear, the King alone on horseback. Houses along the way were decked with flags and flowers; an exalted people filled the streets. Strangers shook each other’s hands, laughing and crying, each man feeling, as one recalled, “united to his fellow by a common bond of love and hate.” Wave on wave of cheers reached out to the King as if the people in one universal emotion were trying to say he was the symbol of their country and of their will to uphold its independence. Even the Austrian Minister, who had somehow forgotten to absent himself and with other diplomats was watching the procession from the Parliament windows, was wiping tears from his eyes.

  Inside the hall, after members, visitors, and the Queen and court were seated, the King came in alone, tossed his cap and gloves onto the lectern in a businesslike gesture and began to speak in a voice only faintly unsteady. When, recalling the Congress of 1830 that created an independent Belgium, he asked, “Gentlemen, are you unalterably decided to maintain intact the sacred gift of our forefathers?” the deputies, unable to control themselves, stood up with shouts of “Oui! Oui! Oui!”

  The American Minister, describing the scene in his diary, tells how he watched the King’s twelve-year-old heir in his sailor suit, listening with an absorbed face and eyes fixed on his father, and how he wondered, “What are the thoughts in that boy’s mind?” Almost as if he had been granted a glimpse into the future, Mr. Whitlock asked himself, “Will this scene ever come back to him in after years? And how? When? Under what circumstances?” The boy in the sailor suit, as Leopold III, was to surrender in 1940 to another German invasion.

  In the streets, after the speech was over, enthusiasm became delirious. The army, hitherto condemned, were heroes. The people shouted, “Down with the Germans! Death to the assassins! Vive la Belgique indépendante!” After the King had gone, the crowds shouted for the War Minister, ordinarily, regardless of his identity, the most unpopular man in the government by virtue of his office. When M. de Broqueville appeared on the balcony, even that suave man of the world wept, overcome by the fervent emotion shared by everyone who was in Brussels on that day.

  On the same day in Paris, French soldiers in red trousers and big-skirted dark blue coats, buttoned back at the corners, chanted as they marched through the streets, ending with a triumphant yell on the last “Oh!” One-armed General Pau, whose lost limb gave him an extra popularity, rode by wearing the green and black ribbon of the veterans of 1870. Cavalry regiments of cuirassiers with glistening metal breastplates and long black horsehair tails hanging down from their helmets were conscious of no anachronism. Following them came huge crates housing airplanes and wheeled platforms bearing the long narrow gray-painted field guns, the soixante-quinzes that were France’s pride. All day the flow of men, horses, weapons and matériel poured through the huge arched portals of the Gare du Nord and the Gare de l’Est.

  C’est l’Alsace et la Lorraine

  C’est l’Alsace qu’il nous faut,

  Oh, Oh, Oh, OH!

  Down the boulevards, empty of vehicles, marched companies of volunteers with flags and banners proclaiming their purpose: “Luxembourg will never be German!” “Rumania rallies to the Mother of the Latin races,” “Italy whose freedom was bought with French blood,” “Spain the loving sister of France,” “British volunteers for France,” “Greeks who love France,” “Scandinavians of Paris,” “Slav peoples at the side of France,” “Latin American lives for the mother of Latin American culture.” Roars and cheers greeted the banner that proclaimed, “Alsatians going home.”

  At a joint session of the Senate and Chamber, Viviani, pale as death and looking as if he were suffering physically and mentally, surpassed his own capacity for fire and eloquence in a speech that was acclaimed, like everybody’s on that day, as the greatest of his career. He carried with him in his portfolio the text of France’s treaty with Russia but was not questioned about it. Ecstatic cheers greeted his announcement that Italy, “with the clarity of insight possessed by the Latin intellect,” had declared her neutrality. As expected, the third member of the Triple Alliance, when the test came, had side-stepped on the ground that Austria’s attack on Serbia was an act of aggression which released her from her treaty obligations. Relieving France of the need to guard her southern frontier, Italy’s neutrality was worth an extra four divisions, or 80,000 men.

  After Viviani had spoken, a speech by President Poincaré, who was precluded by office from attending Parliament in person, was read for him while the whole audience remained standing. France stood before the universe for Liberty, Justice, and Reason, he said, characteristically altering the traditional French trinity. Messages of sympathy and good will from every part of what he pointedly called the “civilized” world were pouring in on her. As the words were being read, General Joffre, “perfectly calm and wholly confident,” came to make his farewell to the President before leaving for the front.

  Rain was pouring on Berlin as the Reichstag deputies assembled to hear the Kaiser’s speech from the throne. Beneath the windows of the Reichstag, where they came for a preliminary meeting with the Chancellor, they could hear the ceaseless clippety-clop of horseshoes on pavement as squadron after squadron of cavalry trotted through the glistening streets. Party leaders met Bethmann in a room adorned by a huge picture which exhibited the gratifying spectacle of Kaiser Wilhelm I trampling gloriously on the French flag. He was shown, together with Bismarck and Field Marshal Moltke, prancing upon the battlefield of Sedan while a German soldier in the foreground stretched a French flag beneath the hoofs of the Emperor’s horse. Bethmann expressed concern for unity and exhorted the deputies to “be unanimous” in their decisions. “We shall be unanimous, Excellency,” a spokesman for the Liberals replied obediently. The all-knowing Erzberger who, as rapporteur of the Mi
litary Affairs Committee and a close associate of the Chancellor, was considered to have his ear to Olympus, bustled among his fellow deputies assuring them that the Serbs would be beaten “by this time next Monday” and that everything was going well.

  After services in the cathedral the deputies marched in a body to the palace where the entrances were guarded and roped off and credentials were examined at four different stages before the people’s representatives were finally seated in the Weisser Saal. Entering quietly, accompanied by several generals, the Kaiser sat down on the throne. Bethmann, in the uniform of the Dragoon Guards, took his speech from the royal portfolio and handed it to the Kaiser, who stood up, looking small beside the Chancellor, and read it, his helmet on his head and one hand resting on his sword hilt. Without mentioning Belgium he declared, “We draw the sword with a clear conscience and with clean hands.” The war had been provoked by Serbia with the support of Russia. Hoots and cries of “Shame!” were evoked by a discourse on Russian iniquities. After the prepared speech, the Kaiser raised his voice and proclaimed, “From this day on I recognize no parties but only Germans!” and called upon party leaders, if they agreed with these sentiments, to step forward and shake his hand. Amid “wild excitement” all did, while the rest of the assembly erupted in cheers and shouts of fervent rejoicing.

  At three o’clock members reconvened in the Reichstag to hear an address by the Chancellor and to perform the remainder of their duty which consisted first of voting war credits and then adjournment. The Social Democrats agreed to make the vote unanimous, and spent their last hours of parliamentary responsibility in anxious consultation whether to join in a “Hoch!” for the Kaiser which they satisfactorily resolved by making it a Hoch for “Kaiser, People, and Country.”

  Everyone, as Bethmann rose to speak, waited in painful expectancy for what he had to say about Belgium. A year ago Foreign Minister Jagow had assured a secret session of the Reichstag steering committee that Germany would never violate Belgium, and General von Heeringen, then War Minister, had promised that the Supreme Command in the event of war would respect Belgium’s neutrality as long as Germany’s enemies did. On August 4 deputies did not know that their armies had invaded Belgium that morning. They knew of the ultimatum but nothing of the Belgian reply because the German government, wishing to give the impression that Belgium had acquiesced and that her armed resistance was therefore illegal, never published it.

  “Our troops,” Bethmann informed the tense audience, “have occupied Luxembourg and perhaps”—the “perhaps” was posthumous by eight hours—“are already in Belgium.” (Great commotion.) True, France had given Belgium a pledge to respect her neutrality, but “We knew that France was standing ready to invade Belgium” and “we could not wait.” It was, he said inevitably, a case of military necessity, and “necessity knows no law.”

  So far he had his hearers, both the right which despised him and the left which mistrusted him, in thrall. His next sentence created a sensation. “Our invasion of Belgium is contrary to international law but the wrong—I speak openly—that we are committing we will make good as soon as our military goal has been reached.” Admiral Tirpitz considered this the greatest blunder ever spoken by a German statesman; Conrad Haussman, a leader of the Liberal party, considered it the finest part of the speech. The act having been confessed in a public mea culpa, he and his fellow deputies of the left felt purged of guilt and saluted the Chancellor with a loud “Sehr richtig!” In a final striking phrase—and before his day of memorable maxims was over he was to add one more that would make him immortal—Bethmann said that whoever was as badly threatened as were the Germans could think only of how to “hack his way through.”

  A war credit of five billion marks was voted unanimously, after which the Reichstag voted itself out of session for four months or for what was generally expected to be the duration. Bethmann closed the proceedings with an assurance that carried overtones of the gladiators’ salute: “Whatever our lot may be, August 4, 1914, will remain for all eternity one of Germany’s greatest days!”

  That evening at seven o’clock England’s answer, awaited so long in such anxiety by so many, was finally made definitive. That morning the British government had finally screwed its determination to the sticking point sufficiently to deliver an ultimatum. It arrived, however, in two parts. First, Grey asked for an assurance that German demands upon Belgium would not be “proceeded with” and for an “immediate reply,” but as he attached no time limit and mentioned no sanctions in case of non-reply, the message was not technically an ultimatum. He waited until after he knew the German Army had invaded Belgium before sending the second notice stating that Britain felt bound “to uphold the neutrality of Belgium and the observance of the treaty to which Germany is as much a party as ourselves.” A “satisfactory reply” was demanded by midnight, failing which the British ambassador was to ask for his passports.

  Why the ultimatum was not sent the night before, immediately after Parliament made plain its acceptance of Grey’s speech, can only be explained by the government’s irresolute state of mind. What sort of “satisfactory reply” it expected, short of the Germans meekly retreating across the frontier they had deliberately and irrevocably crossed that morning, and why England agreed to wait for so fanciful a phenomenon until midnight, can hardly be explained at all. In the Mediterranean that night the lost hours before midnight were to be crucial.

  In Berlin, the British ambassador, Sir Edward Goschen, presented the ultimatum in a historic interview with the Chancellor. He found Bethmann “very agitated.” According to Bethmann himself, “my blood boiled at this hypocritical harping on Belgium which was not the thing that had driven England into war.” Indignation launched Bethmann into a harangue. He said that England was doing an “unthinkable” thing in making war on a “kindred nation,” that “it was like striking a man from behind while he was fighting for his life against two assailants,” that as a result of “this last terrible step” England would be responsible for all the dreadful events that might follow, and “all for just a word—‘neutrality’—just for a scrap of paper .…”

  Hardly noticing the phrase that was to resound round the world, Goschen included it in his report of the interview. He had replied that, if for strategical reasons it was a matter of life or death for Germany to advance through Belgium, it was, so to speak, a matter of life or death for Britain to keep her solemn compact. “His Excellency was so excited, so evidently overcome by the news of our action, and so little disposed to hear reason,” that he refrained from further argument.

  As he was leaving, two men in a press car of the Berliner Tageblatt drove through the streets throwing out flyers which announced—somewhat prematurely, as the ultimatum did not expire until midnight—Britain’s declaration of war. Coming after Italy’s defection, this last act of “treason,” this latest desertion, this one further addition to their enemies infuriated the Germans, a large number of whom immediately became transformed into a howling mob which occupied itself for the next hour in stoning all the windows of the British Embassy. England became overnight the most hated enemy; “Rassen-verrat!” (race treason) the favorite hate slogan. The Kaiser, in one of the least profound of all comments on the war, lamented: “To think that George and Nicky should have played me false! If my grandmother had been alive she would never have allowed it.”

  Germans could not get over the perfidy of it. It was unbelievable that the English, having degenerated to the stage where suffragettes heckled the Prime Minister and defied the police, were going to fight. England, though wide-flung and still powerful, was getting old, and they felt for her, like the Visigoths for the later Romans, a contempt combined with the newcomer’s sense of inferiority. The English think they can “treat us like Portugal,” complained Admiral Tirpitz.

  England’s betrayal deepened their sense of friendlessness. They were conscious of being an unloved nation. How was it that Nice, annexed by France in 1860, could settle down co
mfortably and within a few years forget it had ever been Italian, whereas half a million Alsatians preferred to leave their homeland rather than live under German rule? “Our country is not much loved anywhere and indeed frequently hated,” the Crown Prince noted on his travels.

  While the crowds shrieked for vengeance in the Wilhelmstrasse, depressed deputies of the left gathered in cafés and groaned together. “The whole world is rising against us,” said one. “Germanism has three enemies in the world—Latins, Slavs and Anglo-Saxons—and now they are all united against us.”

  “Our diplomacy has left us no friend but Austria, and it was we who had to support her,” said another.

  “At least one good thing is that it can’t last long,” a third consoled them. “We shall have peace in four months. Economically and financially we can’t last longer than that.”

  “One hopes for the Turks and Japanese,” someone else suggested.

  A rumor had in fact swept the cafés the previous evening when diners heard distant hurrahs shouted in the streets. As a diarist of the time recorded it: “They came nearer. People listened, then jumped up. The hurrahs became louder; they resounded over Potsdamer Platz and reached the proportions of a storm. The guests left their food and ran out of the restaurant. I followed the stream. What has happened? ‘Japan has declared war on Russia!’ they roared. Hurrah! Hurrah! Uproarious rejoicing. People embraced one another. ‘Long live Japan! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ Endless jubilation. Then someone shouted, ‘To the Japanese Embassy!’ And the crowd rushed away carrying everybody with it and besieged the embassy. ‘Long live Japan! Long live Japan!’ people shouted impetuously until the Japanese Ambassador finally appeared and, perplexed, stammered his thanks for this unexpected and, it would seem, undeserved homage.” Although by next day it was known the rumor was false, just how undeserved was the homage would not be known for another two weeks.