first interview, which took place in the British Embassy, on Thursday, February 8, 1912, and lasted for more than an hour and a half, I began by giving him a message of good wishes for the Conversations and for the future of Anglo-German relations, with which the King had entrusted me at the audience I had before leaving London.  I proceeded to ask whether he wished to make the first observations himself, or desired that I should begin.  He wished me to begin, and I went on at once to speak to him in the sense arranged in the discussions I had with Sir Edward Grey before leaving London.

I told him that I felt there had been a great deal of drifting away between Germany and England, and that it was important to ask what was the cause.  To ascertain this, events of recent history had to be taken into account.  Germany had built up, and was building up, magnificent armaments, and, with the aid of the Triple Alliance, she had become the center of a tremendous group.  The natural consequence was that other Powers had tended to approximate.  I was not questioning for a moment Germany’s right to her policy, but this was the natural and inevitable consequence in the interests of security.  We used to have much the same situation with France, when she was very powerful on the seas, that we had with Germany now.  While the fact to which I had referred created a difficulty, the difficulty was not insuperable; for two groups of Powers might be on very friendly relations if there was only an increasing sense of mutual understanding and confidence.  The present seemed to me to be a favorable moment for a new departure.  The Morocco question was now out of the way, and we had no agreements with France or Russia except those that were in writing and published to the world.

The Chancellor here interrupted me, and asked me whether this was really so.  I said it was so, and that, in the situation which now existed, I saw no reason why it should not be possible for us to enter into a new and cordial friendship carrying the two old ones into it, perhaps to the profit of Russia and France, as well as of Germany herself.  He replied that he had no reason to differ from this view.

He and I both referred to the war scare of the autumn of 1911, and he observed that we had made military preparations.  I was aware that the German Military Attache in London had reported at that time to Berlin that we had so reorganized our army as to be in a position, if we desired to do so, to send six of our new infantry divisions and at least one cavalry division swiftly to France.  The Chancellor obviously had this in his mind, and I told him that the preparations made were only those required to bring the capacity of our small British Army, in point of mobilization for eventualities which must be clear to him, to something approaching the standard of that celerity in its operations which Moltke had long ago accomplished for Germany and which was with her now a matter of routine.  For this purpose we had studied our deficiencies and modes of operation.  This, however, concerned our own direct interests, and was a purely departmental matter concerning the War Office, and the Minister who had the most to do with it was the one who was now talking to him and who was not wanting in friendly feeling toward Germany.  We could not run the risk of being caught unprepared.