These disquieting suggestions were not made, of course, to the Belgian minister, but to the ambassador of another country. At the back of the diplomatic stage in a great capital, however, everything leaks out sooner or later; the personal views of the man who nominally directs foreign policy cannot be kept secret from interested parties. This was especially the case in Berlin, where, among the heads of legations, a certain number held more or less closely together, according as their countries were more or less exposed to the menace of the German colossus, whose growth and appetites they watched with a very natural vigilance. If we append these remarks of Herr von Jagow to those made at his final interview with Sir Edward Goschen, in which he lamented the bankruptcy of his plans for friendship with England and reconciliation with France, we can readily guess what terms he and Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg, those two pacifists, would have demanded for the formation of such an agreement. The two Western Powers would have been forced cheerfully to abandon to Germany the little States which obstruct her development along the North Sea coast and prevent her from breathing freely. They would have been compelled to allow Germany eventually to make these States, willing or unwilling, enter the Germanic federation, which would thus have become the great Empire, the heir of its remote mediæval prototype, ever present in the dreams of the German intellectuals. VIII. As you walk along the Wilhelmstrasse, coming from Unter den Linden, you see, to the right, a long building of only one story, in the obsolete style of the early nineteenth century. It looks very bare and unpretentious by the side of the eighteenth century mansions that flank it right and left and the palatial Government offices, of more recent construction, that lie opposite. This venerable edifice is no other than the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the _Auswärtiges Amt_, of the Empire. Here, fifty years ago, were planned the changes that the Hohenzollerns wrought with their swords in the map of Europe; here is the real starting-point of their Imperial power. As you enter and go up the marble staircase, you catch the musty smell that comes from masses of papers and documents in an old and ill-ventilated building. Follow the main corridor which cuts it in half, and a polite attendant will escort you to a room that is scarcely any larger than a monastic cell. You go in, and find yourself face to face with the Under-Secretary of State.