He undoubtedly has an intense desire, almost a passion, for the prosperity and greatness of his country, but his conception of that prosperity and greatness is more spiritual and cultural than material and commercial.  More than once have I heard him say that he desired to see Germany a wealthy country, but only as the result of honest and properly requited toil, and that wealth acquired by force or fraud was more a curse than a blessing, and was destined to go as it had come.  His conception of the greatness of Germany is as a great intellectual and moral power rather than anything else.  Its physical power he values chiefly as the creator and maintainer of the conditions necessary to the production and influence of this higher power.  I have often heard him express this thought.

And in spite of this terrible war, the responsibility for which is by so many erroneously laid at his door, I firmly believe him to be a man of peace.  I am absolutely sure that he has entered upon this war only under the firm conviction that Great Britain, France, and Russia have conspired to destroy Germany as a world power, and that he is simply defending, as he said in his memorable speech to the Reichstag, the place which God had given the Germans to dwell on.  For seven years I myself have witnessed the growth of this conviction in his mind and that of the whole German Nation as the evidences of it have multiplied from year to year until at last the fatal hour at Serajevo struck.  I firmly believe that there is no soul in this wide world upon whom the burden and grief of this great catastrophe so heavily rest as upon the German Emperor.  I have heard him declare with the greatest earnestness and solemnity that he considered war a dire calamity; that Germany would never during his reign wage an offensive war, and that he hoped God would spare him from the necessity of ever having to conduct a defensive war.  For years he has been conscious that British diplomacy was seeking to isolate and crush Germany by an alliance of Latin, Slav, and Mongol under British direction, and he sought in every way to avert it.  He visited England himself frequently.  He sent his Ministers of State over to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of the British Ministers, but rarely would the British King go himself to Germany or send his Ministers to return these visits.  More than once have I heard him say that he was most earnestly desirous of close friendship between Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, and had done, was doing, and would continue to do, all in his power to promote it; but that while the Americans were cordially meeting Germany half way, the British were cold, suspicious, and repellent.

I know that the two things which are giving him the deepest pain in this world catastrophe, excepting only the sufferings of his own kindred and people, are the enmity of Great Britain and the misunderstanding of his character, feelings, and purposes in America.  To remedy the first we here can do nothing, but to dispel the second is our bounden duty; and I devoutly hope that other evidence may prove sufficient to do this to the satisfaction of the minds of my countrymen than was necessary to convince the British Nation that the great-hearted Abraham Lincoln was not a brute nor the urbane William H. Seward a demon of ferocity.