to the war, and certainly not for two years after it broke out.

In the winter of 1917, when I met the Emperor again in my capacity as
Minister for Foreign Affairs, I thought he had aged, but was still
full of his former vivacity. In spite of marked demonstrations of the
certainty of victory, I believe that William II. even then had begun
to doubt the result of the war and that his earnest wish was to bring
it to an honourable end. When in the course of one of our first
conversations I urged him to spare no sacrifice to bring it to an end,
he interrupted me, exclaiming: "What would you have me do? Nobody
longs for peace more intensely than I do. But every day we are told
that the others will not hear a word about peace until Germany has
been crushed." It was a true answer, for all statements made by
England culminated in the one sentence _Germanium esse delendam_. I
endeavoured, nevertheless, to induce the Emperor to consent to the
sacrifice of Alsace-Lorraine, persuaded that if France had obtained
all that she looked upon in the light of a national idea she would not
be inclined to continue the war. I think that, had the Emperor been
positively certain that it would have ended the war, and had he not
been afraid that so distressing an offer would have been considered
unbearable by Germany, he would personally have agreed to it. But he
was dominated by the fear that a peace involving such a loss, and
after the sacrifices already made, would have driven the German people
to despair. Whether he was justified in this fear or not cannot now be
confirmed. In 1917, and 1918 as well, the belief in a victorious end
was still so strong in Germany that it is at least doubtful whether
the German people would have consented to give up Alsace-Lorraine. All
the parties in the Reichstag were opposed to it, including the Social
Democrats.

A German official of high standing said to me in the spring of 1918:
"I had two sons; one of them fell on the field of battle, but I would
rather part with the other one too than give up Alsace-Lorraine," and
many were of the same opinion.

In the course of the year and a half when I had frequent opportunities
of meeting the Emperor, his frame of mind had naturally gone through
many different phases. Following on any great military success, and
after the collapse of Russia and Roumania, his generals were always
able to enrol him on their programme of victory, and it is quite a
mistake to imagine t