As to the conduct of Germany during our war with Spain, while the press, with two or three exceptions, was anything but friendly, and while a large majority of the people were hostile to us on account of the natural sympathy with a small power battling against a larger one, the course of the Imperial Government, especially of the Foreign Office under Count von Bulow and Baron von Richthofen, was all that could be desired. Indeed, they went so far on one occasion as almost to alarm us. The American consul at Hamburg having notified me by telephone that a Spanish vessel, supposed to be loaded with arms for use against us in Cuba, was about to leave that port, I hastened to the Foreign Office and urged that vigorous steps be taken, with the result that the vessel, which in the meantime had left Hamburg, was overhauled and searched at the mouth of the Elbe. The German Government might easily have pleaded, in answer to my request, that the American Government had generally shown itself opposed to any such interference with the shipments of small arms to belligerents, and had contended that it was not obliged to search vessels to find such contraband of war, but that this duty was incumbent upon the belligerent nation concerned. This evidence of the fairness of Germany I took pains to make known, and in my address at the American celebration in Leipsic on the Fourth of July declared my belief that the hostility of the German people and press at large was only temporary, and that the old good relations would be restored. Knowing that my speech would be widely quoted in the German press, I took even more pains to show the reasons why we could bide our time and trust to the magnanimity of the German people. Of one thing I then and always reminded my hearers--namely, that during our Civil War, when our national existence was trembling in the balance and our foreign friends were few, the German press and people were steadily on our side.