to imperil our naval protection. She might build more ships, 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