ed to war, while Herr von Jagow, as an aristocrat, did
not love the Americans, and looked down on bourgeois Gerard. A
grosser misreading of the actual situation in Berlin can scarcely
be conceived, as the unrestricted submarine campaign was only made
possible by the resignation of Herr von Jagow, who was the chief
opponent in Berlin of the submarine campaign, and the pillar on
which the idea of American intervention rested. As long as Herr
von Jagow remained Secretary of State, a breach with the United
States was regarded as impossible. One of his last official acts
was to write a private letter to me on the 20th November, 1916,
concluding with the following sentence:

"As you have seen from your instructions, we are thoroughly in
sympathy with the peace tendencies of President Wilson. His activity
in this direction is to be strongly encouraged. Naturally his mediation
tendencies must not extend to concrete proposals (because these
would be unfavorable to us.)"

We now come to the moment in this account when the peace offer of
the Imperial Government got involved with Mr. Wilson's plans for
mediation. It is not my intention to go closely into the events
that occurred in Berlin or the considerations that took effect there,
as I only know them through their reaction on the instructions
sent to me. I will only mention briefly, that, according to the
statement of Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg before the Commission of
the National Assembly, the peace offer of the Imperial Government
was made with a view to influencing the pacifist minorities in
the Entente countries, and working, through the people, on the
Governments. Beyond this there was no intention of cutting out
Mr. Wilson's peace move, but the Imperial Government wanted to
have "two irons in the fire." Finally, all the utterances of the
Imperial Government, which do not seem to tally with these two
principles of their policy, are to be regarded as based on purely
tactical motives. Accordingly, the decisive turn in our policy
did not occur until the 9th January, 1917, when the decision to
resort to the unrestricted submarine war was taken. Until then
the policy followed was that of "two irons in the fire."

This is the way in which I read the situation in Washington at
the time. If I had been convinced that the resignation of Herr von
Jagow and the German peace offer meant a definite departure from
the policy which we had hitherto followed with regard to Mr. Wilson