at its height, the German Government was invited by France and Russia to join them in calling upon England to end the war.  The moment had come, they said, not only to save the Boer republics, but also to humiliate England to the dust.  What was my reply?  I said so far from Germany joining in any concerted European action to bring pressure against England and bring about her downfall Germany would always keep aloof from politics that could bring her into complications with a sea power like England.

“Posterity will one day read the exact terms of a telegram, now in the archives of Windsor Castle, in which I informed the sovereign of England of the answer I returned to the powers which then sought to compass her fall.  Englishmen who now insult me by doubting my word should know what my actions were in the hour of their adversity.

“Nor was that all.  During your black week in December, 1899, when disasters followed one another in rapid succession, I received a letter from Queen Victoria, my revered grandmother, written in sorrow and affliction and bearing manifest traces of the anxieties which were preying upon her mind and health.  I at once returned a sympathetic reply.  I did more.  I bade one of my officers to procure as exact an account as he could obtain of the number of combatants on both sides and the actual positions of the opposing forces.

“With the figures before me I worked out what I considered the best plan of campaign in the circumstances and submitted it to my General Staff for criticism.  Then I dispatched it to England.  That document likewise is among the State papers at Windsor awaiting the serenely impartial verdict of history.

“Let me add as a curious coincidence that the plan which I formulated ran very much on the same lines as that actually adopted by Gen. Roberts and carried by him into successful operation.  Was that the act of one who wished England ill?  Let Englishmen be just and say.”

The German Navy.

Touching then upon the English conviction that Germany is increasing her navy for the purpose of attacking Great Britain, the Kaiser reiterated the explanation that Chancellor von Buelow and other Ministers have made familiar, dwelling upon Germany’s worldwide commerce, her manifold interests in distant seas, and the necessity for being prepared to protect them.  He said: 

“Patriotic Germans refuse to assign any bounds to their legitimate commercial ambitions.  They expect their interests to go on growing.  They must be able to champion them manfully in any quarter of the globe.  Germany looks ahead.  Her horizons stretch far away.  She must be prepared for any eventualities in the Far East.  Who can foresee what may take place in the Pacific in the days to come, days not so distant as some believe, but days, at any rate, for which all European powers with Far Eastern interests ought to steadily prepare?