Downstairs before dinner, Buhl, a lean old gentleman with a grey beard, introduced himself to me. I now made the acquaintance also of Dr. Chrysander, a slight young man. The Chief appeared shortly afterwards with the Princess. He greeted me with the customary “Büschlein,” was pleased to see from my appearance that I was well again, and said I must sit next to him at table on his right, while President Buhl sat on his left between himself and his consort. The Prince looked very well, was most good-humoured and talkative during dinner, was surprised that I still had so much hair, told amusing stories and expatiated with knowledge on various fine wines and judges thereof. (...) Dinner was followed by some more serious conversation in the coffee-room. In reply to a question by Buhl the Prince disapproved of Caprivi’s East African policy: “Zanzibar ought not to have been left to the English. It would have been better to maintain the old arrangement. We could then have had it at some later time when England required our good offices against France or Russia. In the meantime our merchants, who are cleverer, and, like the Jews, are satisfied with smaller profits, would have kept the upper hand in business. To regard Heligoland as an equivalent shows more imagination than sound calculation. In the event of war it would be better for us that it should be in the hands of a neutral Power. It is difficult and most expensive to fortify”--a point which he then explained in detail. “That does not make one an ‘extender of the realm,’ not even to the extent that I was in the old days when I travelled back to Berlin with the cession of a strip of land on the Jahde in my pocket, thinking not a little of my achievement!” The Prince is also opposed to building any more large ships: “rather two small vessels than one big one; the North Sea and Baltic Canal doubles our naval strength.” (...)