The report was persistently circulated by official quarters that I had let myself be deceived by Sir Edward Grey, because if he had not wanted war Russia would not have mobilized. Count Pourtalès, whose reports could be relied upon, was to be spared, if only because of his family connections. He was said to have behaved "splendidly," and he was enthusiastically praised, while I was all the more sharply blamed. "What has Russia got to do with Serbia?" this statesman said to me after eight years of official activity in Petersburg. It was made out that the whole business was a perfidious British trick which I had not understood. In the Foreign Office I was told that in 1916 it would in any case have come to war. But then Russia would have been "ready," and so it was better now. As appears from all official publications, without the facts being controverted by our own White Book, which, owing to its poverty and gaps, constitutes a grave self-accusation: 1. We encouraged Count Berchtold to attack Serbia, although no German interest was involved, and the danger of a world war must have been known to us--whether we knew the text of the ultimatum is a question of complete indifference. 2. In the days between July 23 and July 30, 1914, when M. Sazonoff emphatically declared that Russia could not tolerate an attack upon Serbia, we rejected the British proposals of mediation, although Serbia, under Russian and British pressure, had accepted almost the whole ultimatum, and although an agreement about the two points in question could easily have been reached, and Count Berchtold was even ready to satisfy himself with the Serbian reply. 3. On July 30, when Count Berchtold wanted to give way, we, without Austria having been attacked, replied to Russia's mere mobilization by sending an ultimatum to Petersburg, and on July 31 we declared war on the Russians, although the Czar had pledged his word that as long as negotiations continued not a man should march--so that we deliberately destroyed the possibility of a peaceful settlement. In view of these indisputable facts, it is not surprising that the whole civilized world outside Germany attributes to us the sole guilt for the world war. GERMANY'S WAR SPIRIT