There was a wide breach between the Imperial Chancellor Michaelis’s ideas and our own.  It was impossible to bridge it over.  Soon after he left office to make way for the statesmanlike Count Hertling.

About this time very far-reaching events were being enacted behind the scenes which had a very pronounced influence on the course of affairs.

Acts of great indiscretion and interference occurred on the part of persons who, without being in any important position, had access to diplomatic affairs.  There is no object here in mentioning names, especially as the responsible political leaders themselves only heard the details of what had happened much later, and then in a very unsatisfactory way—­at a time when the pacifist tendencies of the Entente were slackening.[10]

It was impossible then to see clearly in such a labyrinth of confused and contradictory facts.  The truth is that in the spring or early summer of 1917 leading statesmen in the countries of the Allies and of the Entente gathered the impression that the existence of the Quadruple Alliance was at an end.  At the very moment when it was of the utmost importance to maintain secrecy concerning the conditions of our Alliance the impression prevailed, and, naturally, the Entente welcomed the first signs of disruption in the Quadruple Alliance.

I do not know if the opportunity will ever occur of throwing a clear light on all the proceedings of those days.  To explain the further development it will suffice to confirm what follows here.  This is what happened.  In the spring of 1917 connecting links were established with Paris and London.  The first impressions received were that the Western Powers were ready to make use of us as a bridge to Germany and to a general peace.  At a somewhat later stage the wind veered and the Entente endeavoured to make a separate peace with us.

Several important details only came to my knowledge later, some at the time of my resignation in the spring of 1918, and some not until the collapse in the winter of 1918-19.  There was no lack of voices to blame me for a supposed double policy, which the public also suspected, and to accuse me of having made different statements to Berlin from those I made in Paris.  These charges were brought by personal enemies who deliberately slandered me, which tales were repeated by others who knew nothing about the affair.  The fact is that when I heard of the episode I immediately possessed myself of documents proving that not only did I know nothing whatever about the matter, but could not possibly have known.