(see previous post in this series: August 10 — Charles Inman Barnard)
Tuesday, August 11, 1914. — Tenth day of mobilization. Warm, sunny weather, with light northerly breezes. Temperature at five P.M. 27 degrees centigrade.
Expectation of the great battle believed to be forthcoming to the north of Liège dominates the situation here.
I breakfasted to-day at the restaurant Paillard with M. Max-Lyon and M. Arthur Meyer, manager of the Gaulois. Mlle. Zinia Brozia, of the Opéra Comique, who remains in Paris, was also of our party. All sorts of war rumors were current, but as M. Messimy, the minister of war, has given to M. Arthur Meyer the assurance that while the news given out “might not be all the news, it would nevertheless be invariably true news,” confidence in the official communications to the press, which are the only authentic source of war news, is unshaken. The French Ministry of War, in its official communiqué of the military situation, issued at 11.30 this evening, states that the French troops are in contact with the enemy along almost the entire front. The only fighting that has taken place, however, has been engagements between the outposts, in which the French soldiers everywhere showed irresistible courage and ardor.
A Uhlan who was captured near Liège on Saturday was found to be the bearer of a map marked with the proposed marches of the German army. According to this map, the Germans were to be in Brussels on August 3 and at Lille on August 5.
~ ~ ~ Charles Inman Barnard, from his book Paris War Days: the Diary of an American (Boston: Little Brown & Co, 1914).
(see the next post in this series: August 12 — Charles Inman Barnard)
History & Lore of the Old World War 
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