greatness of his country, but his conception of that
prosperity and greatness is more spiritual and cultural than material
and commercial. More than once have I heard him say that he desired to
see Germany a wealthy country, but only as the result of honest and
properly requited toil, and that wealth acquired by force or fraud was
more a curse than a blessing, and was destined to go as it had come. His
conception of the greatness of Germany is as a great intellectual and
moral power rather than anything else. Its physical power he values
chiefly as the creator and maintainer of the conditions necessary to the
production and influence of this higher power. I have often heard him
express this thought.

And in spite of this terrible war, the responsibility for which is by so
many erroneously laid at his door, I firmly believe him to be a man of
peace. I am absolutely sure that he has entered upon this war only under
the firm conviction that Great Britain, France, and Russia have
conspired to destroy Germany as a world power, and that he is simply
defending, as he said in his memorable speech to the Reichstag, the
place which God had given the Germans to dwell on. For seven years I
myself have witnessed the growth of this conviction in his mind and that
of the whole German Nation as the evidences of it have multiplied from
year to year until at last the fatal hour at Serajevo struck. I firmly
believe that there is no soul in this wide world upon whom the burden
and grief of this great catastrophe so heavily rest as upon the German
Emperor. I have heard him declare with the greatest earnestness and
solemnity that he considered war a dire calamity; that Germany would
never during his reign wage an offensive war, and that he hoped God
would spare him from the necessity of ever having to conduct a defensive
war. For years he has been conscious that British diplomacy was seeking
to isolate and crush Germany by an alliance of Latin, Slav, and Mongol
under British direction, and he sought in every way to avert it. He
visited England himself frequently. He sent his Ministers of State over
to cultivate the acquaintance and friendship of the British Ministers,
but rarely would the British King go himself to Germany or send his
Ministers to return these visits. More than once have I heard him say
that he was most earnestly desirous of close friendship between Germany,
Great Britain, and the United States, and had done, was doing, and