The outcome of the precarious situation, says the ex-Chancellor, was that England, following her traditional policy of balancing the Powers of Europe, was taking a firm position on the side of France and Russia, while Germany was increasing her naval power and giving a very definite direction to her policy in the East.  The commercial rivalry between England and Germany was being rendered acute politically by the growth of the German fleet.  In this state of things Bethmann Hollweg formed the opinion that there was only one thing that could be done, to aim at withdrawing from the Dual Alliance the backing of England for its anti-German policy.  The Emperor entirely agreed with him, and it was resolved to attempt to attain this purpose by coming to an understanding with England.

Reading between the lines, it is pretty obvious that the ex-Chancellor was at times embarrassed by the public utterances of his imperial Master.  Him he defends throughout the book with conspicuous loyalty, and is emphatic about his desire to keep the peace, a desire founded in religious conviction.  But the Emperor’s way was to see only one thing at the moment.  I translate[5] a passage from his Chancellor’s book: 

“If from time to time he indulged in passionate expressions about the strong position in the world of Germany, his desire was that the nation, whose development beyond all expectation was filling him with conscious pride, should be spurred on to a fresh heightening of its energies.  He sought to give it a continuous impulse with the energy of his enthusiastic nature.  He wished his people to be strong and powerful in capacity to arm for their defense, but the German mission, which was for him a consuming faith, was yet to be a mission of work and of peace.  That this work and this peace should not be destroyed by the dangers that surrounded us, was his increasing anxiety.  Again and again has the Kaiser told me that his journey to Tangier in 1904, as to which he was quite unaware that it would lead to dangerous complications, was undertaken much against his own will, and only under pressure from his political advisers.  Moreover, his personal influence was strongly exerted for a settlement of the Morocco crisis of 1905.  And the same sense of the need of peace gave rise to his attitude during the Boer War and also during the Russo-Japanese War.  To a ruler who really wanted war, opportunities for military intervention in the affairs of the world were truly not lacking.

“Critics in Germany had in that period frequently pressed the point that a too frequent insistence in public on our readiness for peace was less likely to further it than, on the contrary, to strengthen the Entente in its policy of altering the status quo.  In a period of Imperialism in which the talk about material power was loud, and in which the preservation of the peace of the world was considered only accidentally, like the ten years