When Herzl met the Foreign Minister, Von Buelow, again, it was in the presence of the Reich Chancellor, Hohenlohe. At once he perceived a different nuance in the conversation and a dissonance in comparison with the conversation he had had with Count Eulenberg. He thought that the Chancellor and the Foreign Minister were not in agreement with the Kaiser and did not dare to say it openly; or, on the other hand, they might be favorably inclined but would not be willing to say it to him.
Finally, Herzl saw the Kaiser in Constantinople. After Herzl had introduced the subject of his visit, the Kaiser broke in and explained why the Zionist movement attracted him.
"There are among your people," said the Kaiser, "certain elements whom it would be a good thing to move to Palestine."
He asked Herzl to submit, in advance, the address he intended to present to him in Jerusalem. When he was asked what the Kaiser should place before the Sultan as the gist of the Jewish proposals, Herzl replied "a chartered company under German protection."
Herzl met the Kaiser, as arranged, in Palestine. Herzl arrived in Jaffa on October 6, 1898. On a Friday morning, he awaited the coming of the Kaiser and his entourage on the road that ran by the Colony of Mikveh Israel. The Kaiser recognized him from a distance. He said a few words about the weather, about the lack of water in Palestine, and that it was a land that had a future.
In the petition Herzl later submitted to the Kaiser, many of the pregnant passages were deleted by the Kaiser's advisers. All passages that referred specifically to the aims of the Zionist movement, to the desperate need of the Jewish people and asking for the Kaiser's protection of a projected Jewish land company for Syria and Palestine, had been removed. The audience with the Kaiser took place on Monday, November 2nd. The Kaiser thanked Herzl for the address which, he said, had interested him extremely. It was the Kaiser's opinion that the soil was cultivable. What the land lacked was water and shade.
"That we can supply," said Herzl. "It would cost billions, but it will bring in billions too."
"Well, you certainly have enough money, more than all of us," said the Kaiser.
It was a brief interview. It was vague and seemed to lead nowhere. Herzl was under the impression that certain influences had been exerted between the interview in Constantinople and the audience in Jerusalem.
When the official German communique was issued, the encounter with Herzl was hid in a closing paragraph and deprived of all significance. This is how it read: