POLITICAL ACTIVITY. 249 



serious and dignified announcement was repeatedly 

 read at the request of the bystanders. Everyone, 

 workman and privileged citizen alike , felt the im- 

 mense gravity of the fact "It is war!", but nobody 

 appeared to be depressed by it , everywhere it was 

 received with self-conscious calm. It was brought 

 strongly home to me. what a power lies in the glorious 

 past of a people. In perilous times it enhances self- 

 confidence, allows no pusillanimity to spring up, and 

 awakens in everybody the resolve to contribute his 

 part to overcoming the danger, as his fathers had 

 done before him. As in front of this advertising-pillar 

 at the Potsdam Gate so did it look in all Berlin, nay 

 in the w r hole country, at any rate in the old territories 

 of Prussia. All political disputes were forgotten or 

 at least postponed. Every man had but one thought: 

 to do his duty. That this feeling dominated all 

 classes of the people was clearly manifested in a 

 meeting, which was called on the very day of the 

 declaration of war by some private persons, with 

 the object of forming a society for the care of the 

 wounded. When a politician began the proceedings 

 with complaints against the government, which had 

 brought on the war, a brief remark of mine sufficed 

 for reply that war was now a fact, and the only 

 rjuestion before us was, how to pave the way for 

 victory, and assuage as far as possible the sufferings 

 of the wounded. This was received with such un- 

 animous applause that all further discussion was cut 

 short, and the formation of the aid society for the 



