I replied that I also was not there to make a bargain, but only to explore the ground, and that I much appreciated the tone of his conversation with me, and the good feeling he had shown.  I should go back to London and without delay report to my colleagues all that had passed.

I entertain no doubt that the German Chancellor was sincerely in earnest in what he said to me on these occasions, and in his desire to improve relations with us and keep the peace.  So I think was the Emperor; but he was pulled at by his naval and military advisers, and by the powerful, if then small, chauvinist party in Germany.  In 1912, when the conversations recorded took place, this party was less potent, I think a good deal less, than it appears to have become a year and a half later, when Germany had increased her army still further.  But I formed the opinion even then that the power of the Emperor in Germany was a good deal misinterpreted and overestimated.  My impression was that the really decisive influence was that of the Minister who had managed to secure the strongest following throughout Germany; and it was obvious to me that Admiral von Tirpitz had a powerful and growing following from many directions, due to the backing of the naval party.

Moreover, sensible as a large number of Germans were, there was a certain tendency to swelled-headedness in the nation.  It had had an extraordinarily rapid development, based on principles of organization in every sphere of activity—­principles derived from the lesson of the necessity of thinking before acting enjoined by the great teachers of the beginning of the nineteenth century.  The period down to about 1832 seems to me to correspond, in the intellectual prodigies it produced, to our Elizabethan period.  It came no doubt to an end in its old and distinctive aspect.  But its spirit assumed, later on, a new form, that of organization for material ends based on careful reflection and calculation.  In industry, in commerce, in the army, and in the navy, the work of mind was everywhere apparent. “Aus einem Lernvolk wollen wir ein Thatvolk werden” was the new watchword.

No doubt there was much that was defective.  When it came to actual war in 1914, it turned out that Germany had not adequately thought out her military problems.  If she had done so, she would have used her fleet at the very outset, and particularly her destroyers and submarines, to try to hinder the transport of the British Expeditionary Force to France, and, having secured the absence of this force, she would have sought to seize the northern ports of France.  Small as the Expeditionary Force was, it was enough, when added to the French armies, to make them so formidable as to render the success of von Kluck uncertain if the troops could be concentrated to resist him swiftly enough.  Again, Germany never really grasped the implications of our command of the sea.  Had she done so, I do not think she would have adventured war.  She may have counted on England not coming in, owing to entanglements in Irish difficulties.  If so, this was just another instance of her bad judgment about the internal affairs of other nations.