Page:The guilt of William Hohenzollern.djvu/105

Rh not difficult to explain the attitude of our semi-official Press.

"Momentarily, we must, on the one hand, prevent any weakening of public opinion, now favourable to our policy, in the Monarchy, and, on the other hand, we must not allow thoughts of mediation to spring up with other Powers owing to a language on the part of our Press by which the situation is systematically accentuated."

The regulation of the tone of the Press was followed by other "sedatives," the principal of which was the departure of the military chiefs. We have already seen that the Minister for War and the Chief of the General Staff were sent on leave to Austria for the express purpose of hoodwinking Europe.

To this William remarked that it was childish. This is not quite comprehensible, for he himself went on furlough, too, at that time. Here we must return to the mysterious conferences held by Wilhelm before he started on his Scandinavian trip. These were held with the greatest secrecy possible, so as to prevent premature alarm. The rigorous secrecy is evidenced by the concluding sentence of the Bussche notes of August, 1917: " Thoroughly reliable source" It was, therefore, not a question of a fact generally known in Government circles, but of one known only to the trusted few.

Had the public learned anything of a war council, the cat would have been out of the bag immediately; then all the world would have known what had been hatched at these conferences. Just as, after the Kaiser's interview with Bethmann, the meeting with the military chiefs became unavoidably necessary in view of the