In former days I was the pupil of Albert Sorel at the Free School of Political Science. That great master was good enough to admit me to his intimacy; and he brought to light and maturity the latent and instinctive propensity which I had for foreign politics. My practical studies abroad led me to Germany in 1894, just at the time when the Pangerman _movement_ had begun. As the movement was manifestly the modern development of the Prussianism of the Hohenzollerns, I was then extremely struck by its importance. The movement appeared to me so threatening for the future that I resolved to follow all the developments of the Pangerman _plot_, which was already the consequence of the movement, and which from 1895 onward had taken definite shape. The task which I thus laid on myself was at once arduous, vast, and thrilling, for from that time it was certain that the Germans based their political and military Pangerman plan on a study of all the political, ethnographical, economic, social, military and naval problems not only of Europe but of the whole world. In truth, the intense labour accomplished in the cause of Pangermanism by the Germans in the last twenty-one years has been colossal. They have carried it out everywhere with a formidable tenacity and a methodical thoroughness which will be the astonishment of history. Indisputably, the Pangerman plan, which is the result of this gigantic effort, is the most extraordinary plot which the world has ever witnessed. I made the study of that plot for twenty-one years the work of my life, convinced as I was, in spite of the scepticism which long greeted my efforts to give warning of the peril, that the study would serve a useful purpose one day. The study has necessitated very many and very long journeys of inquiry. I was obliged in fact to go and learn, on the spot, at least the essential elements of the complex problems mentioned above, which have been the base of the Pangerman plan, in order that I might be able to grasp the most distant ramifications of the Prussian programme for dominating the world. This obligation led me to sojourn in very different countries. That the reader may have an idea of at least the material extent of my inquiries, I will indicate the number of the towns in which I have been led to work for the purpose of discovering the constituent elements, direct and indirect, of the Pangerman plan. The United States, 14; Canada, 11; Japan, 11; Corea, 4; China, 11; Indo-China, 19; British India, 24; Spain, 1; Italy, 4; Belgium, 6; Luxemburg, 1; Holland, 5; Switzerland, 4; England, 8; Greece, 2; Bulgaria, 4; Roumania, 3; Serbia, 8; Turkey, 3; Germany, 16; Austro-Hungary, 18.