re concerned, with my own notes and
recollections. It is mainly as to the inferences they now draw from my
then attitude that I have any controversy with them, and, in the case of
Admiral von Tirpitz, to some slight inaccuracies which have arisen from
misconstruction.

The ex-Imperial Chancellor asked the question whether I was to talk to
him officially, the difficulty being that he could not divest himself of
his official position, and that it would be awkward to speak with me in
a purely private capacity. I said I had come officially, so far as the
approval of the King and the Cabinet was concerned, but merely to talk
over the ground, and not to commit either himself or my own Government
at this stage to definite propositions. At the first interview, which
took place in the British Embassy, on Thursday, February 8, 1912, and
lasted for more than an hour and a half, I began by giving him a message
of good wishes for the Conversations and for the future of Anglo-German
relations, with which the King had entrusted me at the audience I had
before leaving London. I proceeded to ask whether he wished to make the
first observations himself, or desired that I should begin. He wished me
to begin, and I went on at once to speak to him in the sense arranged in
the discussions I had with Sir Edward Grey before leaving London.

I told him that I felt there had been a great deal of drifting away
between Germany and England, and that it was important to ask what was
the cause. To ascertain this, events of recent history had to be taken
into account. Germany had built up, and was building up, magnificent
armaments, and, with the aid of the Triple Alliance, she had become the
center of a tremendous group. The natural consequence was that other
Powers had tended to approximate. I was not questioning for a moment
Germany's right to her policy, but this was the natural and inevitable
consequence in the interests of security. We used to have much the same
situation with France, when she was very powerful on the seas, that we
had with Germany now. While the fact to which I had referred created a
difficulty, the difficulty was not insuperable; for two groups of Powers
might be on very friendly relations if there was only an increasing
sense of mutual understanding and confidence. The present seemed to me
to be a favorable moment for a new departure. The Morocco question was
now out of the way, and we had no agreements with France or Russia