but we
should in that case lay down two keels for each one she laid down.

The Chancellor said that he did not take my observations at all in bad
part, but I must understand that his admirals and generals were pretty
difficult.

I replied that the difficulty would be felt at least as much with the
admirals and generals in my own country.

The Chancellor, in the course of our talk, proposed a formula of
neutrality to which I will refer later on.

I left the Chancellor with the sense that I had been talking with an
honest man struggling somewhat with adversity. However, next day I was
summoned to luncheon with the Emperor and Empress at the Schloss, and
afterward had a long interview, which lasted nearly three hours, with
the Emperor and Admiral von Tirpitz in the Emperor's cabinet room. The
conversation was mainly in German, and was confined to naval questions.
My reception by the Emperor was very agreeable; that by Tirpitz seemed
to me a little strained. The question was, whether Germany must not
continue her program for expanding her fleet. What that program really
amounted to we had not known in London, except that it included an
increase in battleships; but the Emperor handed me at this meeting a
confidential copy of the draft of the proposed new Fleet Law, with an
intimation that he had no objection to my communicating it privately to
my colleagues. I was careful to abstain even from looking at it then,
for I saw that, from its complexity and bulk, it would require careful
study. So I simply put it in my pocket. But I repeated what I had said
to the Chancellor, that the necessity for secure sea-communications
rendered it vital for us to be able to protect ourselves on the seas.
Germany was quite free to do as she pleased, but so were we, and we
should probably lay down two keels for every one which she added to her
program. The initiative in slackening competition was really not with
us, but with Germany. Any agreement for settling our differences and
introducing a new spirit into the relations of the two nations would be
bones without flesh if Germany began by fresh shipbuilding, and so
forced us to do twice as much. Indeed, the world would laugh at such an
agreement, and our people would think that we had been fooled. I did not
myself take that view, because I thought that the mere fact of an
agreement was valuable. But the Emperor would see that the public would
attach very little importance to his action un