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I ventured to raise my eyes to his Majesty’s as I observed—

‘Your Majesty has taken no steps to make your repudiation public?’

The Kaiser gave an angry frown.

‘That is the serious part of the affair,’ he answered. ‘Kruger, in his eagerness to proclaim to the world that I was on his side, had sent copies of this infamous production to every newspaper in the two hemispheres before it reached my eyes. At the moment when I first saw it, it had already been read and commented upon all round the globe. The British newspapers were already threatening war, and my own people had been excited to a pitch of enthusiasm such as no other act of mine has ever called forth. You see the position I was placed in. If I were now to disavow this forgery, my disavowal would be received everywhere with the same scepticism as was felt even by my own Chancellor. The British would triumph over me, and my own subjects would never forgive me for what they would regard as a surrender to British threats.’

I sat silent. I realised the full difficulty of the Kaiser’s position. He was committed in spite of himself to the act of some impostor, whose real motives were yet to be discovered, but who had already succeeded in bringing the two greatest Powers of Europe to the verge of war.