not to be put up with. The impression grew stronger and stronger that we
were bent on war. Otherwise our attitude toward a question in which we
were not directly concerned was incomprehensible. The insistent requests
and well-defined declarations of M. Sasanof, the Czar's positively
humble telegrams, Sir Edward's repeated proposals, the warnings of
Marquis San Guiliano and of Bollati, my own pressing admonitions were
all of no avail. Berlin remained inflexible--Serbia must be slaughtered.

Then, on the 29th, Sir Edward decided upon his well-known warning. I
told him I had always reported (to Berlin) that we should have to reckon
with English opposition if it came to a war with France. Time and again
the Minister said to me, "If war breaks out it will be the greatest
catastrophe the world has ever seen." And now events moved rapidly.
Count Berchtold at last decided to come around, having up to that point
played the role of "Strong man" under guidance of Berlin. Thereupon we
(in answer to Russia's mobilization) sent our ultimatum and declaration
of war--after Russia had spent a whole week in fruitless negotiation and
waiting.

Thus ended my mission in London. It had suffered shipwreck, not on the
wiles of the Briton but on the wiles of our own policy. Were not those
right who saw that the German people was pervaded with the spirit of
Treitschke and Bernhardi, which glorifies war as an end instead of
holding it in abhorrence as an evil thing? Properly speaking militarism
is a school for the people and an instrument to further political ends.
But in the patriarchal absolutism of a military monarchy, militarism
exploits politics to further its own ends, and can create a situation
which a democracy freed from junkerdom would not tolerate.

That is what our enemies think; that is what they are bound to think
when they see that in spite of capitalistic industrialism, and in spite
of socialistic organizations, the living, as Nietzsche said, are still
ruled by the dead. The democratization of Germany, the first war aim
proposed by our enemies, will become a reality.

This is the frank statement of a great German statesman made long before
Germany received its knock-out blow. It was written when Germany was
sweeping all before it on land, and when the U-boat was at the height of
its murderous powers on the high seas. No one in nor out of Germany has
controverted any of its statements and it will forever remain as one of
the