Prince Bismarck's view that the Russian ambassador, Prince Shuvaloff, would have renewed the reinsurance treaty with him but not with his successor, is naturally the honest, subjective way of looking at the matter--judged in the light of fact, however, it does not hold water, in view of what the two parties concerned had to consider at that time. For instance, the Under Secretary of State of the Prince, Count Berchem, stated officially in a report to the Prince that the treaty could not be renewed, which meant that it could not be renewed through Shuvaloff, either. I thought that not the old treaty, but only a new and different kind of treaty, was possible, in the drawing up of which Austria must participate, as in the old Three-Emperor-Relationship. But, as I said, treaties with Nicholas II would not have seemed absolutely durable to me, particularly after the sentiment of the very influential Russian general public had also turned against Germany. Our acts were founded upon the clear perception that Germany could reach the important position in the world and obtain the influence in world affairs necessary to her solely by maintaining world peace. This attitude was strengthened, moreover, by personal considerations. Never have I had warlike ambitions. In my youth my father had given me terrible descriptions of the battlefields of 1870 and 1871, and I felt no inclination to bring such misery, on a colossally larger scale, upon the German people and the whole of civilized mankind. Old Field Marshal Moltke, whom I respected greatly, had left behind him the prophetic warning: Woe to him who hurls the firebrand of war upon Europe! And I considered as a political legacy from the great Chancellor the fact that Prince Bismarck had said that Germany must never wage a preventive war; that German resistance would be neutralized if she did. Thus the trend of the German policy of maintaining the peace was determined by political insight, personal inclination, the legacies of two great men, Bismarck and Moltke, and the desire of the German people to devote itself to peaceful labors and not to plunge into adventures. Whatever has been said in malevolent circles about the existence of a German party favoring war is a conscious or unconscious untruth. In every land there are elements which, in serious situations, either from honest conviction or less lofty motives, favor the appeal to the sword, but never have such elements influenced the course of German policy.