The diary on which my work is based, and which is often reproduced literally, gives the truest possible account of the events and expressions which I have personally seen and heard in the presence and immediate vicinity of the Prince. The latter is everywhere the leading figure around which all the others are grouped. The task I set myself, as a close observer and chronicler who conscientiously sifted his facts, was to give a true account of what I had been commissioned to do as the Prince’s Secretary in connection with press matters, and to describe how he and his entourage conducted themselves during the campaign in France, how he lived and worked, the opinions he expressed at the dinner and tea table, and on other occasions, respecting persons and things of that time, what he related of his past experiences, and finally, after our return from the great war, what I ascertained respecting the progress of diplomatic negotiations from the despatches which were then exchanged and of which I was at liberty to make use either immediately or at a later period. I was assisted in the fulfilment of this task by my faculty of concentration, which my reverence for the Prince and the practice which I had in the course of my official duties rendered gradually more intense, and by a memory which although not naturally above the average was also developed by constant exercise to such a degree that in a short time it enabled me to retain all the main points of long explanations and stories, both serious and humorous, from the Chancellor’s lips almost literally, until such time as I could commit them to paper--that is to say, unless anything special intervened, a mishap which I was usually able to avert. The particulars here given were accordingly, almost without exception, written down within an hour after the conversations therein referred to occurred. For the most part they were jotted down immediately on small slips of paper, only the points and principal catchwords being noted, but which made it easy, however, to complete the whole entry later on.