itnessed only 365 days of
it down to August 4, 1915, corresponding at the utmost to perhaps three
of its tragic acts, but what scenes, what emotions! Mr. Lowell used
to say that to read Carlyle's book on the French Revolution was to
see history as by flashes of lightning. It is only as by flashes of
lightning that we can yet hope to see the world-drama of 1914-15.
Figures, groups, incidents, episodes, without the connecting links
of plots, and just as they have been thrown off by Time, the
master-producer--what a spectacle they make, what a medley of motives,
what a confused jumble of sincerities and hypocrisies, heroisms and
brutalities, villainies and virtues!

As happens in every drama, a great deal of the tragic mischief had
occurred before the curtain rose. Always before the passage of war over
the world there comes the far-off murmur of its approaching wings. Each
of us in this case had heard it, distinctly or indistinctly, according
to the accidents of personal experience. I think I myself heard it for
the first time dearly when in the closing year of King Edward's reign I
came to know (it is unnecessary to say how) what our Sovereign's feeling
had been about his last visit to Berlin. It can do no harm now to
say that it had been a feeling of intense anxiety. The visit seemed
necessary, even imperative, there-fore the King would not shirk his
duty. But for his country, as well as for himself, he had feared for his
reception in Germany, and on his arrival in Berlin, and during his drive
from the railway station with the Kaiser, he had watched and listened
to the demonstrations in the streets with an emotion which very nearly
amounted to dread.

The result had brought a certain relief. With the best of all possible
intentions, the newspapers in both capitals had reported that King
Edward's reception had been enthusiastic. It hadn't been that--at least,
it hadn't seemed to be that to the persons chiefly concerned. But it had
been just cordial enough not to be chilling, just warm enough to carry
things off, to drown that far-off murmur of war which was like the
approach of a mighty wind. Then, during the next days, there had been
the usual banqueting, with the customary toasting to the amity of the
two great nations, whose interests were so closely united by bonds of
peace! And then the return drive to the railway station, the clatter of
horsemen in shining armour, the adieux, the throbbing of the engine,
the start