"I promised Sir Ernest that I would use my best endeavours to this end when an opportunity should present itself, and we arranged to have another meeting in the near future.
"There is no doubt but that my friend is an extremely well-qualified negotiator. I do not recollect that during my long experience, extending over many years, I have ever come across a man who could discuss matters for hours at a time with so much self-reliance, deliberation, and fixity of purpose."
This report was passed on by the Kaiser to Herr v. Tirpitz, the Secretary for the Navy, who not only expressed his approval of the project, but also recommended that the Imperial Chancellor, Herr v. Bethmann-Hollweg, who had succeeded Prince Bülow on July 14th should be kept informed of all that was done to bring about an understanding. The Chancellor, accordingly, was presented by the Kaiser himself with a copy of Ballin's report. This was the correct thing to do, as it avoided a _faux pas_ such as, during the chancellorship of Prince Bülow, had sometimes been made. Future developments, however, proved that this step deprived the whole action of its spontaneity, and its immediate effect was that the Secretary for the Navy was relieved of all responsibility in the matter. Ballin, in later days, summed up his views on this way of dealing with the subject by saying that if Herr v. Tirpitz had been left a free hand in the whole matter--if, for instance, _he_ had conducted it as Imperial Chancellor--it would hardly have turned out a failure. The main object of the negotiations that Ballin had carried on was to ensure that a number of "experts and men of moderate views," i.e. naval experts in the first instance, should join in conference in order to discuss how, without injury to their relative fighting efficiency, both countries could bring about a reduction of their naval armaments. This plan was so simple and so obviously right that, had it been carried out as a preliminary to something else, and had the attention of the experts been drawn to the enormous political importance of their decision, success would have been assured. The procedure, however, which the Chancellor adopted compelled him to combat the active opposition of the various departments involved even before a meeting of the naval experts could be arranged for, and this was a task which far exceeded the strength of Herr v. Bethmann-Hollweg, the most irresolute of all German chancellors, the man to whom Fate afterwards entrusted the most momentous decision which any German statesman has ever had to make.
