The Spectator, 22 August 1914:
Inter arma silent Musae; but Bayreuth on the eve of the war showed very few signs of the coming cataclysm. It is true that on the presentation of the Austrian ultimatum to Servia a good many Austrian visitors departed, and the Fürsten-galerie was not so crowded towards the end of the first cycle as it was at the performance of Parsifal. The military were more and more in evidence in the streets: knots of officers were seen in animated conversation; groups of people circled round the newspaper offices and other places where bulletins were posted up, and, to judge from the nocturnal voces populi, a good many of the residents of Bayreuth seemed never to go to bed at all. It was interesting to listen to the regretful reminiscences of the old habitues who harked back to the early years of the Festival, when there was little or nothing to divert attention from Wagner’s music dramas.
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