War Office, and the Minister who had the most to do with it was the one
who was now talking to him and who was not wanting in friendly feeling
toward Germany. We could not run the risk of being caught unprepared.

As both Herr von Bethmann Hollweg and Admiral von Tirpitz have devoted a
good deal of attention to these and other conversations in their books,
I have felt at liberty here and in the last chapter to state what, I am
bound to observe, had better not, as it seems to me personally, have
been held back for so long--the exact nature of that which actually
passed when I was sent to Berlin in February, 1912. Accordingly, it is
only necessary that I should add here a few words more about what indeed
appears in most of its detail from the versions given by the two German
Ministers concerned themselves.

I refused, not only because I had been instructed to do so, but because
in my own opinion it was vital that I should refuse, to negotiate
excepting on the basis of absolute loyalty to the Entente with France
and Russia. The German Government asked for a covenant of absolute
neutrality. This I could not look at. I had the same feeling about such
an agreement for unconditional neutrality as Caprivi had when he was
asked to renew the Reinsurance Treaty which Bismarck made with Russia at
Skiernevice in 1884, and under which, notwithstanding that Germany might
come to owe a duty to Austria to support her as her military Ally, he
bound Germany to observe neutrality in case Russia were attacked by
her. So far as appeared this Reinsurance Treaty probably had suggested
the wording of the analogous formula which the Chancellor was proposing
to myself. But altho we were not under the obligation to France which
Germany was under to Austria in 1884, I felt, to use the words of
Caprivi himself, when he succeeded Bismarck, and was asked to renew the
engagement with Russia, that the arrangement was "too complicated" for