Your President has been kind enough to mention our journey to Palestine and the acts which I accomplished there. I dare say that many different impressions of a lofty nature forced themselves upon me, and they were partly religious, partly historical, and partly drawn from modern life, but aside from the celebration in our church (October 31, 1898), the loftiest and the deepest was the consciousness that I was standing on the Mount of Olives, that I was treading upon the very place where the greatest battle which was ever fought out upon the earth, the battle for the salvation of mankind, had been fought out by our Saviour. This fact moved me, as it were, on that same day to renew my oath to the flag above that I would leave nothing untried in order to unite my people and to push aside whatever might be able to divide it. But as I was tarrying in the far country, and in different places where we Germans feel so keenly the lack of dear woods and beautiful waters, I remembered the lakes of the mark with their dark, clear waves, and the woods of oak and of fir, and I thought to myself that, although in Europe they sometimes looked down upon us, we are none the less much better off in Brandenburg than in foreign countries. And when I think of the tree and of the use we make of it and our love for the woods I am reminded of an incident that is very interesting for us as we begin to develop the empire. It was after the great and noble achievements of the year 1870-1. The troops had returned home; the tumult and the enthusiasm had subsided, and the old work of founding and developing our newly conquered Fatherland was now to begin. There, for the first time, the three paladins of the great old Emperor, the great General,[19] the powerful Chancellor,[20] and the faithful Minister of War,[21] were sitting together at their common meal. After they had emptied the first glass to the Lord of the Land and to the Fatherland, the Chancellor spoke and turning to his two colleagues said: "We have now achieved everything for which we have striven, suffered, and fought. We have reached the highest point of which we had ever dreamed. What can there now be, after what we have lived through, which shall interest or elevate or inspire us?" There was a pause and then the old master of battles said suddenly, "We can watch the tree grow," and a deep silence fell upon the room. [19] Moltke. [20] Bismarck. [21] Roon. Yes, gentlemen! The tree which we watch growing and for which we must care is the German imperial oak. A healthy growth is in store for it because it stands under the protection of the people of the mark in whose land it is rooted. It has lived through many a storm and has often been threatened, but the stalk and the shoot which are sunk in the sands of the mark will, God willing, endure to all eternity!