hook my head and smiled deprecatingly, and replied that, were I in
his Majesty's place, I should in any case feel safe from attack with the
possession of this machine, and that for my own part I enjoyed being
behind it much more than if I had to be in front of it.

Next day, when at the Schloss, he talked to me fully and cordially. What
follows I extract from the record I made after the conversation in my
diaries, which were kept by desire of King Edward, and which were
printed by the Government on my return to London.

He spoke of the Anglo-French Entente. He said that it would be wrong to
infer that he had any critical thought about our entente with France. On
the contrary he believed that it might even facilitate good relations
between France and Germany. He wished for these good relations, and was
taking steps through gentlemen of high position in France to obtain
them. Not one inch more of French territory would he ever covet. Alsace
and Lorraine originally had been German, and now even the least German
of the two, Lorraine, because it preferred a monarchy to a republic, was
welcoming him enthusiastically whenever he went there. That he should
have gone to Tangier, where both English and French welcomed him, was
quite natural. He desired no quarrel, and the whole fault was
Delcasse's, who had wanted to pick a quarrel and bring England into it.

I told the Emperor that, if he would allow me to speak my mind freely, I
would do so. He assented, and I said to him that his attitude had caused
great uneasiness in England, and that this, and not any notion of
forming a tripartite alliance of France, Russia, and England against
him, was the reason of the feeling there had been. We were bound by no
military alliance. As for our entente, some time since we had
difficulties with France over Newfoundland and Egypt, and we had made a
good business arrangement (_gutes Geschaeft_) about these complicated
matters of detail, and had simply carried out our word to France.

He said that he had no criticism to make on this, except that if we had
told him so early there would have been no misunderstanding. Things were
better now, but we had not always been pleasant to him and ready to meet
him. His army was for defense, not for offense. As to Russia, he had no
Himalayas between him and Russia, more was the pity. Now what about our
Two-Power standard. All this was said with earnestness, but in a
friendly way, the Emperor laying his fi