London – Paris – Berlin, August–September 1914
The streets erupted with flags, not fear.
Men kissed their wives, grinned at their mothers, and marched beneath garlands of roses.
Every capital believed the same lie:
"Home by Christmas."
In London, recruitment stations overflowed.
Boys barely seventeen lied about their age.
Veterans lied about their wounds.
One woman shouted at a hesitant man,
"Are you not ashamed to let the others go while you stay behind?"
In Paris, artists, bakers, students—whole classrooms—enlisted.
Poet Guillaume Apollinaire, wearing a borrowed uniform, scribbled:
"I have seen the red of Mars in my dreams. Let us taste the real thing."
In Berlin, trains packed with young men rolled east and west.
Some waved flowers. Others carried diaries.
The philosopher Max Weber wrote,
"This is a moment of moral clarity. The nation unites in purpose."
But glory is fragile.
By September, the rivers ran darker.
The Battle of the Marne—where the French turned back the German tide—left 500,000 dead or wounded.
In Belgium, cities were burned.
Leuven, with its ancient university, was reduced to ashes.
Civilians shot in reprisal. Priests executed.
The "Rape of Belgium" shocked neutral eyes.
Trenches began to form—ditches of despair stretching hundreds of miles.
What was supposed to be a march turned into a burial crawl.
A British soldier wrote in a letter home:
"They said we'd be back by Christmas.
They didn't say which year."