charged with the personnel of the navy, with determining what
officers are to be promoted and what officers are to take over
ships or commands.

While von Tirpitz was Secretary of the Navy, by the force of
his personality, he dominated the two other departments, but
since his fall the heads of these two other departments have
held positions as important, if not more important, than that
of Secretary of the Navy.

On May thirty-first, we took Colonel and Mrs. House to the aviation
field of Joachimsthal. Here the Dutch aviator Fokker was flying and
after being introduced to us he did some stunts for our benefit.
Fokker was employed by the German army and later became a naturalised
German. The machines designed by him, and named after him, for
a long time held the mastery of the air on the West front.

The advice of Colonel House, a most wise and prudent counsellor,
was at all times of the greatest value to me during my stay in
Berlin. We exchanged letters weekly, I sending him a weekly bulletin
of the situation in Berlin and much news and gossip too personal
or too indefinite to be placed in official reports.

War with Germany seemed a thing not even to be considered when
in this month of May, 1914, I called on the Foreign Office, by
direction, to thank the Imperial Government for the aid given
the Americans at Tampico by German ships of war.

Early in February, Mr. S. Bergmann, a German who had made a fortune
in America and who had returned to Germany to take up again his