As I have already mentioned, I had not had the slightest connection with Berlin for some years previous to the war, and certainly not for two years after it broke out.
In the winter of 1917, when I met the Emperor again in my capacity as Minister for Foreign Affairs, I thought he had aged, but was still full of his former vivacity.

In spite of marked demonstrations of the certainty of victory, I believe that William II.

even then had begun to doubt the result of the war and that his earnest wish was to bring it to an honourable end.

When in the course of one of our first conversations I urged him to spare no sacrifice to bring it to an end, he interrupted me, exclaiming: "What would you have me do?
Nobody longs for peace more intensely than I do.

But every day we are told that the others will not hear a word about peace until Germany has been crushed." It was a true answer, for all statements made by England culminated in the one sentence _Germanium esse delendam_.