Page:The drama of three hundred and sixty-five days.djvu/48

 night perhaps, after rivers of blood have been shed, "Did I do right after all?" The reply to the ultimatum has not even yet arrived, and the absence of a reply is equivalent to a declaration of war.

  THE THUNDERSTROKE OF FATE S one of the little company remembers something which everybody has hitherto forgotten—the difference of an hour between the time in London and the time in Berlin. Midnight by mid-European time would be eleven o'clock in London. Germany would naturally understand the demand for a reply by midnight to mean midnight in the country of dispatch. Therefore at eleven o'clock by London time the period for the reply will expire. It is now approaching eleven.

As the clock ticks out the remaining minutes the tension becomes terrible. Talk slackens. There are long pauses. The whole burden of the frightful issues involved for Great Britain, France, Belgium, Russia, Germany—for Europe, for the world, for civilization, for religion itself, seems to be gathered up in these last few moments. If war comes now it will be the most frightful tragedy the world has ever witnessed. Twenty millions of dead perhaps, and civil life crippled for a hundred years. Which is it to be, peace  44