myself the organization of the German War Office, which I wished to
study for purposes of reform at home; and this I did in some detail, in
company with an expert adviser from my personal staff, Colonel Ellison,
my military private secretary, who accompanied me on this journey.[1]
There the authorities explained to us the general nature of the
organization for rapid mobilization which had been developed under the
great von Moltke, and subsequently carried farther. The character of
this organization was, in its general features, no secret in Germany,
altho it was somewhat unfamiliar in Anglo-Saxon countries; and it
interested my adviser and myself intensely.

At that time there was an active militarist party in Germany, which, of
course, was not wholly pleased at the friendly reception with which we
met from the Emperor and from crowds in the streets of Berlin. We were
well aware of the activity of this party. But it stood then unmistakably
for a minority, and I formed the opinion that those who wanted Germany
to remain at peace, quite as much as to be strong, had at least an
excellent chance of keeping their feet. I realized, and had done so for
years past, that it was not merely because of the _beaux yeux_ of
foreign peoples that Germany desired to maintain good relations all
round. She had become fully conscious of a growing superiority in the
application to industry of scientific knowledge and in power to organize
her resources founded on it; and her rulers hoped, and not without good
ground, to succeed by these means in the peaceful penetration of the
world.

I had personally for some time been busy in pressing the then somewhat
coldly received claims for a better system of education, higher and
technical as well as elementary, among my own countrymen, and had met
with some success in asking for the establishment of teaching
universities and of technical colleges, such as the new Imperial
College of Science and Technology at South Kensington. Of these we had
very substantially increased the number during the eight years which
preceded my visit to Berlin; but I had learned from visits of inspection
to Germany that much more remained to be done before we could secure our
commercial and industrial position against the unhasting but unresting
efforts of our formidable competitor.

As to the German people outside official circles and the universities, I
thought of them then what I think of them now. They were very much