Von amtlicher Seite wurde geflissentlich verbreitet,
ich hatte mich durch Sir Ed. Grey tauschen lassen,
denn wenn er den Krieg nicht gewollt, wiirde Russland
nicht mobilisiert haben. Graf Pourtales, auf dessen
Berichterstattung man sich verlassen konnte, sollte
geschont werden, schon wegen seiner Verwandtschaft.
In6]



339

We needed neither alliances nor wars; we needed
only treaties protecting us and others and affording
security to an economic progress that was without
precedent in history. If Russia had been freed from
pressure in the West, it could again have turned to
the East, and the Anglo-Russian rivalry would then
have reappeared automatically and without our help,
and not less certainly also the Russo-Japanese rivalry.
We could, also have considered the question of
the limitation of armaments, and we need no longer
have troubled ourselves about Austrian complications.
Austria would then have been the vassal of the German
Empire, and this without an alliance and, what is
most important, without the gratuitous services which
finally led us into war — a war for the liberation of
Poland and the annihilation of Serbia, although Ger-
man interests demanded the exact opposite.
I had to support in London a policy, the heresy
of which I recognized. For this I have been justly
punished, for it was a sin against the Holy Ghost.
My Arrival

As soon as I arrived in Berlin, I saw that I was to
be made the scapegoat for the catastrophe which our
government had brought upon itself against my coun-
sels and warnings.
