Can we wonder, if the narrative of this capable man is accurate, that Bethmann struggled for his rival policy of conciliation in the face of almost insuperable difficulties?  Tirpitz had a strong party at his back, both in Prussia and elsewhere.  What made it strong was largely that its members shared his view of England and of the situation.  “They looked to us,” he says, “it was the last chance of international freedom.”  I thought in 1912 that Bethmann might in the end win, for in the main at that time the Emperor was with him, and so were Ballin and many others of great influence.  The Social Democrats, too, were gaining influence rapidly.  But the presence of a powerful school of thought at the back of Tirpitz, a school which, had it succeeded, would have secured the place it desired by reducing to a precarious state the life of my own country, made me feel that, while we must do all we could to extend our friendships so as to convert and bring in Germany, the chances of success did not preponderate sufficiently to justify relaxation of either vigilance in preparation or resolution in policy.  My feeling remained what I had tried to express in the address delivered at Oxford in August of 1911.  “I wish,” I said then, “all our politicians who concern themselves with Anglo-German relations, those who are pro-German as well as those who are not, could go to Berlin and learn something, not only of the language and intellectual history of Prussia, but of the standpoint of her people—­and of the disadvantages as well as the advantages of an excessive lucidity of conception.  Nowhere else in Germany that I know of is this to be studied so advantageously and so easily as in Berlin, the seat of Government, the headquarters of Real-politik, and it seems to me most apparent among the highly educated classes there.”

Bismarck does not appear to have known much while in office about Tirpitz, and when the latter desired later on to enlist his outside support he did not find it at first easy.  But, having with some difficulty got the assent of the Emperor to a new ship being named after Bismarck, he in the end got from the latter permission to visit him at Friedrichsruh in 1897.  There Tirpitz arrived at noon.  The family were at luncheon.  He tells us how the Prince sat at the head of the table, and how he rose, cool but polite, and remained standing till Tirpitz was seated.  The Prince assumed the air of one suffering from sharp neuralgic pain, and he kept pressing the side of his head with a small indiarubber hot-water bottle.  It was only with an appearance of difficulty that he uttered, and his food was minced meat.  However, when he had drunk a bottle and a half of German champagne (Sect) he became animated.  After the dishes were removed, Countess Wilhelm Bismarck lit his great pipe for him, and with the other ladies quitted the room.  The atmosphere was one of gloomy silence.  But the great man suddenly broke it by raising his formidable eyebrows, and directing a grim