7.  In the result, as was believed here, and as Admiral von Tirpitz himself seems to have anticipated, sea power and capacity for blockade would decide the issue of the war.  In this respect Germany seemed less well prepared than Great Britain.

8.  The last thing wished for was war, and if we had to enter upon it we should do so only in defense of our own vital interests, as well as those of the other Entente Powers.  Our entry, if it was to come, must be immediate and unhesitating.  For if we delayed Germany might succeed in occupying the northern coast of France, and in impairing our security by sea.

I will conclude this chapter by appending an estimate of the Emperor William II, which is worth comparing with that of his German Ministers already referred to.

[Illustration:  COUNT OTTOKAR CZERNIN

MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF AUSTRIA-HUNGARY FROM DEC. 1916 TO APRIL, 1918.]

In the chapter on William II in Count Czernin’s book on “The World War” there is a passage which may, I think, turn out to be pretty near the truth about the late Emperor’s mood:  “Altho the Emperor was always very powerful in speech and gesture, still, during the war he was much less independent in his actions than is usually assumed, and, in my opinion, this is one of the principal reasons that gave rise to a mistaken understanding of all the Emperor’s administrative activities.  Far more than the public imagine, he was a driven rather than a driving factor, and if the Entente to-day claims the right of being prosecutor and judge in one person in order to bring the Emperor to his trial, it is unjust and an error, as, both preceding and during the war, the Emperor William never played the part attributed to him by the Entente: 

“The unfortunate man has gone through much, and more is, perhaps, in store for him.

“He has been carried too high, and can not escape a terrible fall.  Fate seems to have chosen him to expiate a sin which, if it exists at all, is not so much his as that of his country and his times.  The Byzantine atmosphere in Germany was the ruin of Emperor William; it enveloped him and clung to him like a creeper to a tree; a vast crowd of flatterers and fortune-seekers who deserted him in the hour of trial.  The Emperor William was merely a particularly distinctive representative of his class.  All modern monarchs suffer from the disease; but it was more highly developed in the Emperor William, and therefore more obvious than in others.  Accustomed from his youth to the subtle poison of flattery, at the head of one of the greatest and mightiest States in the world, possessing almost unlimited power, he succumbed to the fatal lot that awaits men who feel the earth recede from under their feet, and who begin to believe in their Divine semblance.

“He is expiating a crime which was not of his making.  He can take with him in his solitude the consolation that his only desire was for the best.