the Emperor; but he
was pulled at by his naval and military advisers, and by the powerful,
if then small, chauvinist party in Germany. In 1912, when the
conversations recorded took place, this party was less potent, I think a
good deal less, than it appears to have become a year and a half later,
when Germany had increased her army still further. But I formed the
opinion even then that the power of the Emperor in Germany was a good
deal misinterpreted and overestimated. My impression was that the really
decisive influence was that of the Minister who had managed to secure
the strongest following throughout Germany; and it was obvious to me
that Admiral von Tirpitz had a powerful and growing following from many
directions, due to the backing of the naval party.

Moreover, sensible as a large number of Germans were, there was a
certain tendency to swelled-headedness in the nation. It had had an
extraordinarily rapid development, based on principles of organization
in every sphere of activity--principles derived from the lesson of the
necessity of thinking before acting enjoined by the great teachers of
the beginning of the nineteenth century. The period down to about 1832
seems to me to correspond, in the intellectual prodigies it produced, to
our Elizabethan period. It came no doubt to an end in its old and
distinctive aspect. But its spirit assumed, later on, a new form, that
of organization for material ends based on careful reflection and
calculation. In industry, in commerce, in the army, and in the navy, the
work of mind was everywhere apparent. "_Aus einem Lernvolk wollen wir
ein Thatvolk werden_" was the new watchword.

No doubt there was much that was defective. When it came to actual war
in 1914, it turned out that Germany had not adequately thought out her
military problems. If she had done so, she would have used her fleet at
the very outset, and particularly her destroyers and submarines, to try
to hinder the transport of the British Expeditionary Force to France,
and, having secured the absence of this force, she would have sought to
seize the northern ports of France. Small as the Expeditionary Force
was, it was enough, when added to the French armies, to make them so
formidable as to render the success of von Kluck uncertain if the troops
could be concentrated to resist him swiftly enough. Again, Germany never
really grasped the implications of our command of the sea. Had she done
so, I do not think she