This Imperial Conference took place on July 5th and the Serbian ultimatum was sent on July 22nd. That is just about the two weeks’ interval which the financiers had demanded to complete their plans. All the great stock exchanges of the world show that the German bankers profitably used this interval. Their records disclose that stocks were being sold in large quantities and that prices declined rapidly. At that time the markets were somewhat puzzled at this movement, but Wangenheim’s explanation clears up any doubts that may still remain. Germany was changing her securities into cash for war purposes. If anyone wishes to verify Wangenheim I would suggest that he examine the quotations of the New York stock market for these two historic weeks. He will find that there were astonishing slumps in quotations, especially on the stocks that had an international market. Between July 5th and July 22nd Union Pacific dropped from 155½ to 127½, Baltimore and Ohio from 91½ to 81, United States Steel from 61 to 50½, Canadian Pacific from 194 to 185½, and Northern Pacific from 111⅜ to 108. At that time the high protectionists were blaming the Simmons-Underwood Tariff Act as responsible for this fall in values, while other critics of the Administration attributed it to the Federal Reserve Act, which had not yet gone into effect. How little the Wall Street brokers and the financial experts realised that an Imperial Conference which had been held in Potsdam, and presided over by the Kaiser, was the real force that was then depressing the market! Wangenheim not only gave me the details of this Potsdam Conference, but he disclosed the same secret to the Marquis Garroni, the Italian Ambassador at Constantinople. Italy was at that time technically Germany’s ally. The Austrian Ambassador, the Marquis Pallavicini, also practically admitted that the Central Powers had precipitated the war. On August 18th, Francis Joseph’s birthday, I made the usual ambassadorial visit of congratulation. Quite naturally the conversation turned upon the Emperor, who had that day passed his eighty-fourth year. Pallavicini spoke about him with the utmost pride and veneration. He told me how keen-minded and clear-headed the aged Emperor was, how he had the most complete understanding of international affairs, and how he gave everything his personal supervision. To illustrate the Austrian Kaiser’s grasp of public events, Pallavicini instanced the present war. The previous May, Pallavicini had had an audience with Francis Joseph in Vienna. At that time, Pallavicini now told me, the Emperor had said that a European war was unavoidable. The Central Powers would not accept the Treaty of Bucharest as a settlement of the Balkan question, and only a general war, the Emperor had told Pallavicini, could ever settle that problem. The Treaty of Bucharest, I may recall, was the settlement that ended the second Balkan war.