he came to luncheon at my house
in Queen Anne's Gate there was a somewhat widely selected party of about
a dozen to meet him. For it included not only Lord Morley, Lord
Kitchener, and Lord Curzon, whom he was sure to meet elsewhere, but Mr.
Ramsay MacDonald, who was then leading the Labor Party, Admiral Sir
Arthur Wilson, our great naval commander, Lord Moulton, Mr. Edmund
Gosse, Mr. Sargent, Mr. Spender, the editor of the _Westminster
Gazette_, and others representing various types of British opinion. The
Emperor engaged in conversation with everyone, and all went with
smoothness.

He had a great reception in London. But enthusiasm about him was
somewhat damped when, in July, 1911, not long after his return to
Germany, he sent the afterwards famous warship _Panther_ to Agadir. The
French were naturally alarmed, and the situation which had become so
promising was overcast. Our naval arrangements and our new military
organization were ready, and our mobilization plans were fairly
complete, as the German General Staff knew from their military attache.
But the point was, how to avoid an outbreak, and to get rid of the
feeling and friction to which the Agadir crisis was giving rise. Our
growing good relations were temporarily clouded.

The sending of the _Panther_ to Agadir was not a prudent act. It
imported either too much or too little. It is said to have been the plan
of Herr von Kiderlen-Waechter, at that time the Foreign Secretary and
generally a sensible statesman, and to have been done in spite of
misgivings expressed by the Emperor about its danger. The circumstances
of the moment were such that one can not but feel a certain sympathy
with the German perturbation at the time. The march of the French Army
to Fez had come on them suddenly, and it at least suggested a
development of French claims going beyond what Germany had agreed to at
the Algeciras Conference nearly six years previously. Those who wish to
inform themselves about the commotion the expedition of the French
stirred up in Germany, and of the efforts the Emperor and Bethmann
Hollweg had to make to restrain it, will do well to read the latter's
account of what happened there in the second chapter of his recent book.
But to think that the sending of a German warship could make things
better was to repeat the error of judgment which had characterized "the
ally in shining armor" speech of the German Emperor to Austria when she
formally annexed Bosnia and