s as regards the public services (means of
communication, post, telegraphs, and telephones).

This momentous decision was revealed to us on the 31st by a special
edition of the _Berliner Lokalanzeiger_, distributed at every street
corner. The announcement ran as follows:

RUSSIA WANTS WAR!

"From official sources we have just received
(at 2 P.M.) the following report, pregnant with
consequences:

"'The German Ambassador at St. Petersburg sends
us word to-day that a general mobilization of
the Russian Army and Navy had previously been
ordered. That is why His Majesty the Emperor
William has decreed an Imminence-of-War. His
Majesty will take up his residence in Berlin
to-day.'

"Imminence-of-War is the immediate prelude to a
general mobilization, in answer to the menace
that already hangs over Germany to-day, owing
to the step taken by the Tsar."

[Sidenote: The Kaiser's ultimatum to Russia.]

As a drowning man catches at a straw, those who in Berlin saw
themselves, with horror, faced by an impending catastrophe, clutched at
a final hope. The German general mobilization had not yet been ordered.
Who knew whether, at the last moment, some happy inspiration from the
British Cabinet, that most stalwart champion of peace, might cause the
weapons to drop from the hands that were about to wield them? Once more,
however, the Emperor, by his swift moves, shattered this fond illusion.
On the 31st, at seven o'clock in the evening, he dispatched to the
Russian Government a summons to demobilize both on its Austrian and on
its German frontiers. An interval of twelve hours was given for a reply.

It was obvious that Russia, who had refused two days before to cease
from her military preparations, would not accept the German ultimatum,
worded as it was in so dictatorial a form and rendered still more
insulting by the briefness of the interval granted. As, however, no
answer had come from St. Petersburg by the afternoon of August 1st,
Herren von Jagow and Zimmermann (so the latter informed me) rushed to
the Chancellor and the Emperor, in order to request that the decree for
a general mobilization might at least be held over until the following
day. They supported their plea by urging that the telegraphic
communication with St. Petersburg had presumably been cut, and that this
would explain the silence of the