I had noticed in
Berlin, I gathered that--as the evidence before the Examination
Committee proved--the Imperial Chancellor would have preferred
to give up the idea of the U-boat war, and to accept American
intervention in favor of peace, but that he was compelled to give
in, owing to the overwhelming advocacy of the U-boat campaign. It
was to be hoped, therefore, that with the expected speedy failure
of U-boat tactics, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg would snatch at the
next opportunity of making peace. As he remained in Office, in spite
of the U-boat war, his chief motive for so doing must certainly
have been that "after his departure the whole of the power, both
of external and internal politics, would have gone over without
resistance to the machinery of war-fever." I regarded any policy
as the right one, which arrived at a prompt conclusion of peace,
provided that we did not make any confession of weakness by ourselves
initiating fresh offers of peace. We had already erred once in this
way. But in Stockholm it seemed likely that opportunities might
occur of winning either the Russians or the foreign Socialists
over to a movement in favor of peace.

As I heard nothing, either about the Stockholm Mission, or about an
audience with the Kaiser, which I was led to expect in connection with
it, I went at the end of a few days to find out what had happened,
and I was told that the Kaiser had declined to sanction my mission
to Stockholm. Although I had a second interview with the Imperial
Chancellor, I was never able to ascertain definitely the reason of
the Kaiser's anger against me. Since, however, General Ludendorff,
simply on the grounds of my particular views, made his "impassioned"
attack on me before the Examination Committee of the National Assembly,
I have no longer been in any doubt whatsoever as to the nature of
the influence that was at work at General Headquarters. At the
time, I only suspected the prevalence of some such feelings in
that quarter, because I had heard it whispered that the Monarch
did not like my "democratic views." The reasons for the Kaiser's
anger, which were given me officially, were of too trivial a nature
to be even plausible.

I must next refer to the dispatch box of the Swedish Legation in
Washington. At New York Herr Ekengren had put on board the steamer
_Friedrich VIII._ a box containing Swedish telegrams, which was
to be forwarded to its destination.

This box, the very existence of wh