People are telling me that I am regarded by the Chancellor (and indeed in wider circles) as the leader of the so-called War Party, and by no means fa… - Alfred von Waldersee

What he is most lacking in are fixed aims and the faculty of persisting in the line he has taken up.

Either we are tremendously clever or the French strategists dreadful bunglers.

We are living although the majority of the people do not realize it, in the midst of an immense revolution. What is radically wrong with our condition lies in the harsh contrast between rich and poor. This cannot go on forever, as we are human beings with human differences. No use is being made of religion, the only way towards alleviation and compensation; on the contrary, attempts are being deliberately made to excite the masses into asserting their equality with the middle and upper classes. The State contents itself with attempts to improve the material circumstances of the workers, with the only result that their covetousness has been intensified. The possibility of acquiring great sums of money by speculation has developed a fondness for luxury and enjoyment which has taken hold of wide circles. German family life is going to the dogs. Unfortunate marriages, divorces, youthful corruption, pleasure-seeking, the anxiety to seem richer than one is–all this is increasing terribly. In the lower classes of the great cities the demoralization has already reached a high degree ... The unequal distribution of wealth with all its consequences must lead in the end to a catastrophe.