Prince von Buelow dealt with the letter in a speech on the second reading of the Budget on March 24, 1908.  After referring to the Union Internationale Interparlementaire, which was to meet in a few months in Berlin, and to the “very unsatisfactory situation in Morocco,” he said:—­

“From various remarks which have been dropped in the course of the debate I gather that this honourable House desires me to make a statement as to the letter which his Majesty the Kaiser last month wrote to Lord Tweedmouth.  On grounds of discretion, to the observance of which both the sender and receiver of a private letter are equally entitled, I am not in a position to lay the text of the letter before you, and I add that I regret exceedingly that I cannot do so.  The letter could be signed by any one of us, by any sincere friend of good relations between Germany and England (hear, hear).  The letter, gentlemen, was in form and substance a private one, and at the same time its contents were of a political nature.  The one fact does not exclude the other; and the letter of a sovereign, an imperial letter, does not, from the fact that it deals with political questions, become an act of State (’Very true,’ on the Right).

“This is not—­and deputy Count Kanitz yesterday gave appropriate instances in support—­the first political letter a sovereign has written, and our Kaiser is not the first sovereign who has addressed to foreign statesmen letters of a political character which are not subject to control.  The matter here concerns a right of action which all sovereigns claim and which, in the case of our Kaiser also, no one has a right to limit.  How his Majesty proposes to make use of this right we can confidently leave to the imperial sense of duty.  It is a gross, in no way justifiable misrepresentation, to assert that his Majesty’s letter to Lord Tweedmouth amounts to an attempt to influence the Minister responsible for the naval budget in the interests of Germany, or that it denotes a secret interference in the internal affairs of the British Empire.  Our Kaiser is the last person to believe that the patriotism of an English Minister would suffer him to accept advice from a foreign country as to the drawing up of the English naval budget (’Quite right,’ hear, hear).  What is true of English statesmen is true also of the leading statesmen of every country which lays claim to respect for its independence (’Very true’).  In questions of defence of one’s own country every people rejects foreign interference and is guided only by considerations bearing on its own security and its own needs (’Quite right’).  Of this right to self-judgment and self-defence Germany also makes use when she builds a fleet to secure the necessary protection for her coasts and her commerce (’Bravo!’).  This defensive, this purely defensive character of our naval programme cannot, in view of the incessant attempts to attribute to us aggressive views with