Another noble German of my acquaintance who had at one time been on terms of exceptional intimacy with the Kaiser was the wealthy and distinguished Baron von K----, who, in the two decades previous to the outbreak of the war, had divided his time about equally between his ancestral castle on the Rhine and a great Northern California ranch brought him by his wealthy American wife. I met him first at a house-party in Honolulu about ten years ago, and at that time he appeared to take considerable pride in his friendship with the Kaiser, of whom he was wont to speak often and sympathetically. Since then I have encountered him, now in America, now in Europe, on an average of once a year, and on each succeeding occasion I noticed a decreasing warmth on his part, not so much for Germany and the Germans, for whom he still expressed great affection, but rather toward the Kaiser and his policies. It must have been fully seven years ago that he told me, at the Lotus Club in New York, that the mad race of armaments in which Germany was setting the pace for the rest of Europe could only end in one way--a great war in which his country would run a risk of losing far more than it had any chance of winning. It was not long after this that I heard that Baron von K---- had returned hurriedly and unexpectedly from Germany to America, taking with him his two sons who had been at school there. I never learned exactly what the trouble was, but a friend of his told me that it had some connection with an effort that had been made to induce the youngsters to become German subjects and join the army, flattering prospects in which were held out to them. Von K---- is said to have declared that the boys should never be allowed to set foot in Germany again. Whether this latter statement is true or not, it is a fact that neither of the lads has ever since crossed the Atlantic, and that both are now at Harvard. In the spring of 1911 von K---- cut short what was to have been a fortnight’s business trip to Germany to one of four days, the change in plan, as I have since learned, being due to an ‘invitation’ (an euphemism for a command) from the Kaiser to invest a huge sum of money in one of his armament concerns, great extensions in which were contemplated. Von K---- refused point-blank, rushed through his business, and took the first boat for New York. I did not see him until the following year, but friends told me that for a couple of months after his return to California he absolutely refused to talk of Germany or of German affairs even with his intimates.