The Kaiser's suggestion did not even carry with it the implication that Germany would stop the military preparations that it was then carrying on in feverish haste, so that the contention of the Kaiser, however plausibly it was veiled in his telegram, was that _Germany and Austria_ _should have full freedom to prepare for war against Russia, while Russia was to tie its hands and await the outcome of further parleys, with Austrian cannon bombarding Belgrade_. In this correspondence the Kaiser displayed his recognized ability as a writer and speaker, for in this rapid-fire exchange of telegrams the Kaiser was easily the better controversialist. He assumed the rôle of a disinterested party, who, at the request of a litigant, agrees to become an impartial mediator. He was neither. The Czar had not asked him to be a mediator, although in the later telegrams the Russian monarch accepted that term. The Czar in his first telegram had asked the Kaiser as a party to the quarrel "to restrain your ally from going too far." The Kaiser, having adroitly accepted a very different rôle, promptly shifts the responsibility upon the Czar of embarrassing the so-called "mediation." This enabled him to assume the attitude of "injured innocence" and very skillfully he played that part. This at least is clear that in this correspondence the Kaiser was either guilty of insincerity or he betrayed a fatal incapacity to grasp the essentials of the quarrel. I prefer the latter construction of his conduct. Against the bellicose efforts of his Foreign Office and his General Staff, I believe that for dynastic reasons he strove for a time to adjust the difficulty, but his egomania and his life-long habit of personal absolutism blinded him to the fact that he was taking an untenable, indeed an impossible, position, in contending that Russia should effectually tie its hands while Germany and Austria should be left free to prepare for eventualities. Had there been a breathing spell and the Kaiser had had more time for reflection, possibly the unreasonableness of his contention would have suggested itself, but he found on his sudden return from Norway that his country, through the fatuous folly of its military party, was almost irrevocably committed to war. Probably he did not dare to reverse openly and formally its policy. His popularity had already suffered in the Moroccan crisis. This consideration and the histrionic side to his complex personality betrayed him into his untenable and fatal position.