On the night in question, however, much had happened. The Emperor had, a month before, returned from a visit to England, where he had been engaged by speeches and hand-shakes, public and private, blowing a narcotic dust into the nostrils of your dear but, alas! too confiding nation.
You British were all dazzled—you dear English drank the Imperial sleeping-draught, prepared so cunningly for you and your Cabinet Ministers in what we in Berlin sometimes called "the Downing-Strasse." You lapped up the cream of German good-fellowship as a cat laps milk, even while agents of our Imperial War Staff had held Staff-rides in various parts of your island. All of you were blind, save those whom your own people denounced as scaremongers when they lifted their voices in warning.
We at Potsdam smiled daily at what seemed to us to be the slow but sure decline of your great nation from its military, naval, and commercial supremacy. The Kaiser had plotted for fourteen years, and now he was being actively aided by his eldest son, that shrewd, active agnostic with a criminal kink.
"Heltzendorff!" exclaimed the Crown-Prince, as he suddenly entered the room where I was busy attending to a pile of papers which had accumulated during our absence in Westphalia, and which had been sorted into three heaps by my assistant during our absence. "Do get through all those letters and things. Burn them all if you can. What do they matter?"
"Many of them are matters of grave importance. Here, for instance, is a report from the Chief of Military Intelligence in Washington."
"Oh, old Friesch! Tear it up! He is but an old fossil at best. And yet, Heltzendorff, he is designed to be of considerable use," he added. "His Majesty told me to-night that after his visit to England he has conceived the idea to establish an official movement for the improvement of better relations between Britain and Germany. The dear British are always ready to receive such movements with open arms. At Carlton House Terrace they strongly endorse the Emperor's ideas, and he tells me that the movement should first arise in commercial and shipping circles. Herr Ballin will generate the idea in his offices in London and the various British ports, while His Majesty has Von Gessler, the ex-Ambassador at Washington, in view as the man to bring forth the suggestion publicly. Indeed, to-night from the Wilhelmstrasse there has been sent a message to his schloss on the Mosel commanding him to consult with His Majesty. Von Bernstorff took his place at Washington a few months ago."
"But Von Gessler is an inveterate enemy of Britain," I exclaimed in surprise, still seated at my table.
"The world does not know that. The whole scheme is based upon Britain's ignorance of our intentions. We bring Von Gessler forward as the dear, good, Anglophile friend with his hand outstretched from the Wilhelmstrasse. Oh, Heltzendorff!" he laughed. "It is really intensely amusing, is it not?"
I was silent. I knew that the deeply-laid plot against Great Britain was proceeding apace, for had I not seen those many secret reports, and did I not possess inside knowledge of the evil intentions of the Emperor and his son.
"Get through all that—to-night if you can, Heltzendorff," the Crown-Prince urged. "The Crown-Princess leaves for Treseburg, in the Harz, to-morrow, and in the evening we go to Nice."