to me, personally, to recall the words he used in a conversation we had
one evening in February, 1912, words in which he sought to show me that
"a proper understanding between our two nations would guarantee the
peace of the world, and would lead the Powers by degrees from the
phantom of armed Imperialism to the opposite pole of peaceful work
together in the world." I remember his words, and with them I would
remind him that I wholly agreed. I had myself used similar language in
anticipation, and had begged him not to insist on our accepting an
obligation of absolute neutrality under all conditions which might prove
inconsistent with our duty of loyalty to France, now a friendly
neighbor, a duty which rested on no military obligation, but on kindly
feeling and regard. It was such friendship and mutual regard that I was
striving, with the assent of the British Cabinet, to bring about with
Germany also, and by the same means through which it had been
accomplished in the case of France. Not by any secret military
convention, for we had entered into no communications which bound us to
do more than study conceivable possibilities in a fashion which the
German General Staff would look on as mere matter of routine for a
country the shores of which lay so near to those of France, but by
removing all material causes of friction. And when Herr von Bethmann
Hollweg adds of my reply that "even he preferred the power of English
Dreadnoughts and the friendship of France," I must remind him of the
words sanctioned beforehand when submitted by me to Sir Edward Grey,
with which I began our conversation. I reproduce them from the record I
made immediately after the conversation to which I have already referred
in the preceding chapter, on which I again draw for further minor
details. And I wish to say, in passing, that both Herr von Bethmann
Hollweg and Admiral von Tirpitz have given in their books accounts of
what passed in my conversations with them which tally substantially, so
far as the words used are concerned, with my own notes and