For in spite of his remarkable grasp of the facts of Empire, the deeper human realities have passed him by. For years he has had a private clipping bureau for his own information; but he does not know that he has never seen any but the clippings that the Junkers—those who stood to gain by the success of his present course—have wished him to see. He does not know that he has been shut out from many chapters of the world’s real history; or that this insidious censorship has kept from him those things, which, I am sure, had he known in the days when his intellect was susceptible to the influence of fact, would have made him a man instead of an Emperor. Here was a man who honestly believed that he was doing what was best for his people, but so hopelessly warped by his training and so closely surrounded by satellites that even had the truth borne wings, it could not have reached him. To me it seems that the menace of the Hohenzollerns lies in this: not that they are worse than other men, not that they mean ill to the world, but that time and experience have left them unaroused by what others know as progress. They stand in the pathway of the world to-day, believing themselves right and regarding themselves as victims of an oppressive rivalry. They do not know that their viewpoint is as tragically perverted as that of the fox who, feeling that he must live, steals the farmer’s hens. But, like the farmer, the world knows only that it is injured; and just as the farmer realizes that he must rid himself of the fox, so the world knows, to-day, and says that the Hohenzollerns must go! CHAPTER IX. _In England—and how I reached there. I am arrested and imprisoned for fifteen months. What von Papen’s baggage contained. I make a sworn statement._ Back in Berlin, I sought out Major Köhnemann, and together we spent many days in planning my future course of action. It was a war council in effect, for the object toward which we aimed was nothing less than the crippling of the United States by a campaign of terrorism and conspiracy. It was not pleasant work that I was to do, but I knew, as every informed German did, that it was necessary. Therefore I accepted it. What would you have? Germany was in the war to conquer or be conquered. America, the source of supply for the Allies, stood in the way. Knowing these things, we set about the task of preventing America from aiding our enemies, by using whatever means we could. We did not feel either compunction or hostility. It was war—diplomatic rather than military, but war none the less. I do not intend to go into the details of our plans at the present moment. Those will have their place in a later chapter. Enough to say that after a brief visit to both the eastern and western fronts I left Germany for England—en route to America with a program that in ruthlessness or efficiency left nothing to be desired.