It is difficult to exaggerate the part played by the personality of the Kaiser in German imperial politics at that moment. If one probed any great German question to the bottom, one always came back to that fact. Take the question of the Navy—that vital Anglo-German problem of the early century. The Army chiefs were, I think, quite ready to contemplate a naval “deal,” if only to keep England out of the land-wars of the Continent. The Social Democrats, of course, were more than willing; they were anti-naval as well as anti-militarist. But to the Kaiser the Navy was always prime favourite; it was his toy, his darling dream, his cherished ambition. His sincerest belief and hopes were expressed in the phrase, “Our future lies on the ocean.” He stimulated the popular zeal for the Navy in every possible way. The Nord Deutsche Lloyd Liners had elaborate pictures comparing the respective navies, and showing the smallness of the German in comparison with ours; the great German Navy League was constantly pushed forward; and no Minister could long remain in power who did not sympathise with this cult. The curious thing was that the German populations along the sea-board were not half so enthusiastic for the Navy as the inland populations, who seemed enthusiastic in proportion to their ignorance of the sea. Many Germans used to put down the Kaiser’s passion for the Navy to his English blood. He was a very enthusiastic yachtsman; and, as most yachtsmen are Englishmen, that threw him into constant relations of intimacy with English sailor-men. The English yachtsmen on the North Sea found him almost excessive in his friendliness. I remember an instance given to me by a famous English yachtsman, fond of cruising in northern waters. A German torpedo-boat had accidentally one evening broken the bowsprit of his yacht. During the night, while the owner was asleep, a body of carpenters came on board of the English yacht and mended the bowsprit. In the morning, after breakfast, the Kaiser arrived himself. He had sent the carpenters. “Well!” he said, “how do you like your new bowsprit?” Then he looked at it whimsically. “When you go back to England,” he said, “tell them it was ‘made in Germany’!” And yet at that very time this friendliness towards English yachtsmen—of which this was only one example—was not preventing the Kaiser from regarding the British naval power with a haunting jealousy that led him into the constant intrigues against England, of which we gain a glimpse in the secret correspondence discovered in the palace of the Russian Czar.