I was sent as a very young Lieutenant to a little fishing village called Heppens in Oldenburg. It is now Wilhelmshaven, chief Naval Port of Germany. Its river, the Jahde, was then a shallow stream. The occasion for my visit was the cession to King William of Prussia, as he was then, of this place, Heppens, by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg; and there I met King William, to whom I sat next but one at lunch, and Bismarck and von Moltke and von Roon were there. We had a very long-winded speech from the Burgomaster, and Bismarck, whom I was standing next to, said to me in the middle of it: “I didn’t know this was going to happen, or I would have cut him short.” The King asked me at lunch why I had been sent, and if there was no one else who knew about torpedoes. Well, I don’t think there was. It was an imposing and never-to-be-forgotten sight, that lunch. They all wore their helmets and great-coats at lunch--so mediæval--and telegrams kept coming to Bismarck, who would get up and draw the King aside, and then they would sit down again. Von Roon I thought very _débonnaire_, and Moltke was like an old image, taciturn and inscrutable, but he talked English as well as I did. Years after this, Prince Adalbert’s Naval Aide-de-camp, who was a great friend of mine, told me that on the day of mobilization in the war with France he was sent to von Moltke with a message from Prince Adalbert, who was King William’s brother and Head of the Navy, to ask him whether he could see Prince Adalbert for a few moments. To his astonishment, my friend found Moltke lying on a sofa reading “Lady Audley’s Secret,” by Miss Braddon, and he told him he could see the Prince for as long as he liked and whenever he liked. The word “Mobilize” had finished all his work for the present.