The Assault

The Assault: Germany Before the Outbreak and England in War-Time is a personal narrative by Frederic William Wile. The introduction says the book is not a war book, and that its writer has not had the privilege at any stage of the Great Blood-Letting to come into close contact with the spectacular clash and din of the fray. The text says Hindenburg and Ludendorff know nothing about America, but men like Ballin, Gwinner, Rathenau and Dernburg know that the United States is, in a famous German idiom, the land of unlimited possibilities.

The text says that in the Berliner Tageblatt, a Radical-Liberal journal which has not entirely surrendered its old-time independence, the president's speech was printed almost verbatim. The text describes the chalking of troop-trains with exuberant inscriptions such as Special to St. Petersburg and Excursion to Paris. Mr. Asquith is quoted as declaring that waste, on the part either of individuals or of classes, which is always foolish and shortsighted, is in these times nothing short of a national danger.