“At last we are going to wipe off old scores against France,” Doctor Krummlaut spluttered through his soup today at Frau Berg’s with shining eyes,—­I should have thought it was France who had the old scores that need wiping—­“and Russia, the barbarian Colossus, will topple over and choke in its own blood.”

Then Frau Berg capped that with sentiments even more bloodthirsty.

Then the Swede, who never used to speak, actually raised her voice in terms of blood too, and expressed a wish to see a Cossack strung up by his heels to every electric-light standard along the Lindens.

Then Hilda Seeberg said if her Papa—­that Papa she told me once she hadn’t at all liked—­were only alive, it would be the proudest moment of his life when, at the head of his regiment, he would go forth to slay President Poincare.  “And if,” she said, her eyes flashing, “owing to his high years his regiment was no longer able to accept his heroic leadership, he would, I know, proceed secretly to France as an assassin, and bomb the infamous Poincare,—­bomb him in the name of our Kaiser, of our Fatherland, and of our God.”

“Amen,” said Frau Berg, very loud.

I flew to Bernd when he came.  It was as if a door had been flung open, and the freshness and sanity of early morning came into the room when he did.  I hung on his arm, and looked up into his dear shrewd eyes, so clear and kind, so full of wisdom.  The boarders were with one accord servile to him; even Doctor Krummlaut, a clever man with far better brains probably than Bernd.  Bernd, from habit, stiffened and became unapproachable the instant the middle class public in the shape of the congratulatory boarders appeared.  He doesn’t even know he’s like that, his training has made it second nature.  You should have seen his lofty, complete indifference.  It was dreadfully rude really, and oh how they loved him for it!  They simply adored him, and were ready to lick his boots.  It was so funny to see them sidling about him, all of them wagging their tails.  He was the master, come among the slaves.  But to think that even Doctor Krummlaut should sidle!

There’s a most terrific extra noise going on outside.  I can hardly hear myself write.  I don’t know whether to run and find out what it is, or retreat to the bathroom.  My ears won’t stand much more,—­I shall get deaf, and not be able to play.

  Later.

What has happened is that special editions of the papers have appeared announcing that the Kaiser has decreed a state of war for the whole of Germany.  Well.  They’ve done it now.  For I did extract from a very cheerful-looking caller I met coming upstairs to the drawingroom that a state of war is followed as inevitably by the real thing as a German betrothal is followed by marriage.  One is as committal as the other, he said.  It is the rarest thing, and produces an immense scandal, for an engagement to be broken off; and, explained the caller looking extremely pleased,—­he was a man-caller, and therefore more willing to stop and talk—­to proceed backwards from a state of war to the status quo ante might produce the unthinkable result of costing the Kaiser his throne.