lessening the general danger of an explosion. In several questions we thus succeeded in arriving at a good understanding with Russia.

I only remind you of the Potsdam agreement. The relations between the two governments were not only correct, but based on mutual trust. Yet the general situation remained unremedied.

It was poisoned to the very roots, because the French ideas of revenge and the pan-Slavist plans of expansion in Russia were not only not calmed, but rather continually instigated and fed by the anti-German policy of the balance of power pursued by the cabinet of London. Thus the tension became acute to the breaking point.

Then came the summer of 1914. I told you of the various events on August 4. But as our opponents go on misrepresenting and attacking us I feel duty bound to deal here once more with some of the points in question. In England in particular the opinion has been expressed again and again of late that the whole war might have been averted if I had submitted to the proposals of Sir Edward Grey and taken part in a conference which was to settle the Austro-Russian dispute. What happened was this:

The English proposal of a conference was transmitted to us here through the ambassador on July 27. According to the British Blue Book, our foreign secretary in the interview with Sir Edward Goschen in which he declined the proposed measure as impractical, said he had news from Russia showing that there was an intention on the part of M. de Sazonof to exchange views with Count Berchtold.

He thought that this method of procedure might lead to a satisfactory result and that it would be best to await the outcome of this exchange of views. Sir Edward Goschen reported this to London and received the following telegraphic reply from Sir Edward Grey:

As long as there is a prospect of a direct exchange of views between Austria and Russia I would suspend every other suggestion, as I entirely agree that it is the most preferable method of all.

Thus Sir Edward Grey at that time adopted the German point of view and expressly withdrew his proposal of a conference. But, while he merely had the platonic desire that Vienna and Petersburg might communicate directly, I did everything I could to induce the Russian and Austro-Hungarian governments to try

to find a solution by an exchange of views between their respective cabinets.

I have said in this house before that in our efforts at mediation, especially in Vienna, "we went to the last limit of that which was compatible with our relations toward our ally." As England continues to throw doubt on my activity as a mediator in the interests of peace, let me prove by facts how baseless those doubts are.

In the evening of July 29 I received the following message from the imperial ambassador at Petersburg:

M. Sazonof, who just asked me to call on him, informed me that the Vienna cabinet had categorically refused his wish to enter into direct conversations. Nothing remained, therefore, but to revert to Sir Edward Grey's proposal of holding a conversation of four.

Since in the meantime the Vienna government had declared its readiness to negotiate direct with Petersburg it was perfectly patent that there was some misunderstanding. I wired to Vienna and availed myself of the opportunity of expressing again and definitely my view of the general situation.

I instructed Herr von Tschirschky as follows:

The report of Count Pourtales is not in harmony with the account which your excellency has given of the attitude of the Austro-Hungarian government. There seems to be a misunderstanding, which I ask you to clear up. We cannot expect Austria-Hungary to negotiate with Servia since she is in a state of war with that country. But it would be a grave mistake to refuse an exchange of opinions with Petersburg. We are prepared to fulfil our duty as allies, but we must decline to be drawn into a universal conflagration through a disregard of our advice on the part of Austria-Hungary. I ask your excellency at once to speak to Count Berchtold seriously and emphatically in this sense.

Thereupon Mr. von Tschirschky reported on July 30:

Count Berchtold remarked that there was indeed a misunderstanding. as your excellency assumes, and that the misunderstanding was on the part of Russia. Since Count Szapary, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador at Petersburg, had also informed him of the misunderstanding and since at the same time our urgent suggestion to enter in conversations with Russia had reached him he had at once given corresponding instructions to Count Szapary.

I made these events known in the English press shortly before the outbreak of hostilities, when excitement grew hot in England and serious doubts were being raised as to our endeavors for the preservation of peace. Now the English insinuate ex post facto that those events had not occurred at all and that the

instructions to Mr. von Tschirschky were feigned in order to mislead public opinion in England.

You will agree with me that this aspersion is not worthy of an answer. But at the same time I want to point to the AustroHungarian Red Book, which corroborates my statement and shows how after the misunderstanding was cleared up conversations between St. Petersburg and Vienna went on briskly until they were suddenly cut short by the mobilization of the Russian army.

I repeat that we most emphatically and successfully worked for a direct discussion between Vienna and St. Petersburg.

The assertion of our opponents that by declining the counter proposal of England we became guilty of causing this war is one of those slanders behind which our enemies want to hide their own guilt. Only the Russian mobilization made the war inevitable. That I want to state here again with all emphasis.

The longer this war lasts the more Europe will bleed from a thousand wounds. The new world arising from the ruins after the war will look different from that of which our enemies dream. Their endeavor is to restore the old Europe centering round an impotent Germany; a Germany where the foreigner's intrigues and desires shall find a happy hunting ground and where Europe's future battles can be fought; a Germany split up into feeble petty states at the beck and call of foreign powers; a Germany with shattered industries, with an insignificant trade confined to her home markets; a Germany without a navy to navigate the ocean by Britain's grace; a Germany that is a vassal of the Russian giant who rules the European southeast and east and unites all Slavs under the scepter of Moscow.

Such was the dream which at least in the beginning of the war was indulged in at London, Paris and Petersburg. No, this gigantic war which is rending the whole world asunder will not bring back the old conditions of the past.

A new order of things must come if Europe is ever to find rest. And that can only come about when Germany attains a firm and impregnable position. What preceded this war has taught us a hard lesson. For more than a decade it has been the only aim of all other powers to encircle and isolate Germany, to exclude her from cooperation in the affairs of this world. Such a policy was bound to lead to a bad end.

The English policy of the balance of power must disappear

forever, because it is, as the English poet Bernard Shaw recently remarked, the hotbed of wars. Very significant in this connection is a remark which Sir Edward Grey made when Prince Lichnowsky, our ambassador, took leave of him on August 4. Sir Edward, with some emphasis, observed that the war which had broken out between England and Germany would enable him to be of better service to Germany at the conclusion of peace than if England had remained neutral. Grey's vision, I presume, beheld a victorious Russia looming behind a defeated and enfeebled Germany, which would be good enough to serve as England's vassal and henchman.

Germany must build up and fortify her position so that the other powers can never again think of encircling her. For our own protection and for the welfare of all nations we must gain the freedom of the seas, not for the sake of being their sole ruler, as England wants to be, but so that the ocean may serve all nations equally. We want to be for all time protector of peace and of liberty for big nations as well as small.

ENGLISH REPLY TO BETHMANN-HOLLWEG1

There are some points in the speech of the German Chancellor, which may, I think, be suitably dealt with in a letter to the press, pending the fuller review of the situation which may be appropriate to some other method and time.

I. The Belgian record of conversation with the British Military Attaché was published by Germany last autumn to prove that Belgium had trafficked her neutrality with us and was, in effect, in a plot with us against Germany.

The conversation of which most use has been made was never reported to the Foreign Office, nor, as far as records show, to the War Office at the time, and we saw a record of it for the first time when Germany published the Belgian record. But it bears on the face of it that it referred only to the contingency of Belgium being attacked, that the entry of the British into Belgium would take place only after the violation of Belgian territory by Germany, and that it did not commit the British

1 Made by Sir Edward Grey, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, of Great Britain, in a letter to the London Daily Telegraph, dated August 25, 1915.

government. No convention or agreement existed between the British and Belgian governments. Why does the German Chancellor mention these informal conversations of 1906 and ignore entirely that in April, 1913, I told the Belgian Minister most emphatically that what we desired in the case of Belgium, as in that of other neutral countries, was that their neutrality should be respected and that as long as it was not violated by any other power we should centainly not send troops ourselves into their territory?

Let it be remembered that the first use made by Germany of the Belgian document was to charge Belgium with bad faith to Germany. What is the true story? On July 29, 1914, the German Chancellor tried to bribe us by a promise of future Belgian independence to become a party to the violation of Belgian neutrality by Germany.

The violation of Belgian neutrality was therefore deliberate, although Germany had actually guaranteed that neutrality, and surely there has been nothing more despicably mean than the attempt to justify it ex post facto by bringing against the innocent and inoffensive Belgian government and people the totally false charge of having plotted against Germany. The German Chancellor does not emphasize in his latest speech that charge, which has been spread broadcast against Belgium. Is it withdrawn? And, if so, will Germany make reparation for the cruel wrong done to Belgium?

2. The negotiations for an Anglo-German agreement in 1912, referred to by the German Chancellor, were brought to a point at which it was clear that they could have no success unless we in effect gave a promise of absolute neutrality while Germany remained free under her alliances to take part in European war. This can, and shall, be explained by publishing an account of the negotiations, taken from the records in the Foreign Office.

3. The Chancellor quotes an isolated sentence from my speech of August 3, 1914, to prove that we were ready for war. In the very next sentence, which he might have quoted but does not quote, I said: "We are going to suffer, I am afraid, terribly in this war, whether we are in it or whether we stand aside." I leave it to any one outside Germany in any neutral country to settle for himself whether those are the words of a man who had desired and planned European war, or of one who had labored to avert it.