A serious epilogue to the above-mentioned audience was provided by the Conservatives. The Civil Cabinet informed the party leaders of the Chancellor's audience and what happened there, with the request that the party might now take back its "Open Letter." This request--which was made solely in the interest of the Crown, not of myself personally--was declined by the party. Not until 1916, when the war was under way, did we get into touch again, through a delegate of the party, at Great General Headquarters. Just as the Conservatives did not do enough out of respect for the Crown to satisfy me, so also the Liberals of the Left, the Democrats and the Socialists, distinguished themselves by an outburst of fury, which became, in their partisan press, a veritable orgy, in which loud demands were made for the limitation of autocratic, despotic inclinations, etc. This agitation lasted the whole winter, without hindrance or objection from high Government circles. Only after the Chancellor's audience did it stop. Later, a coolness gradually arose between the Chancellor and the political parties. The Conservatives drew away from the Liberals--rifts appeared in the bloc. Centrists and Socialists--but, above all, the Chancellor himself--brought about its downfall, as Count Hertling repeatedly explained to me later--for the last time at Spa. He was proud to have worked energetically toward causing Bülow's downfall. When matters had reached an impossible pass, the Chancellor drew the proper conclusions and recommended to me the choice of Herr von Bethmann as the fifth Chancellor of the Empire. After careful consultations, I decided to acquiesce in the wish of Prince Bülow, to accept his request for retirement, and to summon the man recommended by him as his successor. [6] One of the most startling incidents of the Kaiser's reign was the interview with him printed in the London _Daily Telegraph_ of Oct. 28, 1908. In it he said that "Englishmen, in giving rein to suspicions unworthy of a great nation," were "mad as March hares"; and that "the prevailing sentiment among large sections of the middle and lower classes of my own people is not friendly to England. I am, therefore, so to speak, in a minority in my own land, but it is a minority of the best elements, just as it is in England with respect to Germany." German opinion was, he admitted, "bitterly hostile" to England during the Boer War, and, that the German people, if he had permitted Boer delegates in Berlin, "would have crowned them with flowers." He asserted that he had formulated a plan of campaign in South Africa which Lord Roberts adopted in substance. The Kaiser was quoted in this interview as declaring Germany needed a large fleet chiefly on account of the Far Eastern situation.