However, some military leaders and heads of state imagined a more ominous future. The war would be over in a matter of weeks, they believed.
All sides mobilized every young, able-bodied man for military service, with The New York Times estimating that seventeen million men stood at the ready to fight and possibly die in “the Colossal European War.”6 Soldiers of various nations, clad in crisp, clean uniforms of blue, red, khaki, and gray, buoyantly filled trains and prepared to travel to the front by foot and by horse. “Whatever our lot may be,” Imperial Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg avowed before the assembled members of the Reichstag, “the 4th of August, 1914, will remain through all eternity one of Germany’s greatest days.”5 As the sun rose on August 5, Great Britain had entered the mess, creating a Triple Entente with France and Russia against the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. Germany responded in kind and, between August 1 and August 4, declared war against Russia, France, and Belgium. Two days later, Russia came to the defense of its Serbian ally.
On July 28, Austria-Hungary, with Germany’s backing, declared war on Serbia. The assassination presented Germany and Kaiser Wilhelm II with an opportunity to push for the conflict they had long prepared for. On June 28, 1914, a nineteen-year-old Bosnian nationalist, Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed the Archduke of Austria and heir to the throne, Franz Ferdinand, along with his wife, Sophie, in the capital city of Sarajevo. The forces of nationalism, militarism, and imperialism swelled in the decades following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, gripping the continent with fear, envy, and mistrust.4 Colonial rivalries and a precarious alliance system exacerbated tensions. The European crisis had been long in the making. His thirteen-year-old daughter, Yolande, and his wife, Nina, were scheduled to leave for England at the end of the month.2 Yolande had received admission to the prestigious Bedales boarding school in Hampshire, where, as her father intended, she would be “trained to become a healthy woman, of broad outlook and spiritual resources, able to earn a living in some line of work which she likes and is fitted for.”3 Du Bois believed that Nina should dutifully relocate as well and settle in nearby London to provide motherly support whenever necessary.
It was August 1914, and war engulfed Europe. “The present war in Europe is one of the great disasters due to race and color prejudice and it but foreshadows greater disasters in the future.”1ĭU BOIS FEARED FOR his family’s safety.
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