The author of the following pages, Karl Max, Prince Lichnowsky, is a member of a family which holds estates both in German and Austrian Silesia, and has an hereditary seat in the Upper House of the Prussian Diet. The father of the present Prince and his predecessor in the title was a Prussian cavalry general, who, at the end of his life, sat for some years in the Reichstag as a member of the Free Conservative Party.

His uncle, Prince Felix, was elected in 1848 to represent Ratibor in the German National Assembly at Frankfort-on-Main; he was an active member of the Conservative wing, and during the September rising, while riding with General Auerswald in the neighbourhood of the city, was attacked and murdered by the mob.

The present Prince, after serving in the Prussian army, in which he holds the rank of Major, entered the diplomatic service. He was in 1885 for a short time attached to the German Embassy in London, and afterwards became Councillor of Embassy in Vienna. From 1899 to 1904 he was employed in the German Foreign Office, and received the rank and title of Minister Plenipotentiary.

In 1904 he retired to his Silesian estates, and, as he states, lived for eight years the life of a country gentleman, but read industriously and published occasional political articles. He himself recounts the circumstances in which he was appointed Ambassador in London on the death of Baron Marschall von Bieberstein.

Baron Marschall, who had been Secretary for Foreign Affairs under the Chancellorships of Count Caprivi and for a time under Prince Hohenlohe, had achieved great success as Ambassador at Constantinople, and also, from the German point of view, as chief German Plenipotentiary at the Second Hague Conference in 1907. Baron Marschall was, to use an expression of Bismarck's, "the best horse in Germany's diplomatic stable." And great things were expected of him in London. But he lived only a few months after his appointment.

Prince Lichnowsky's high social rank, his agreeable manners, and the generous hospitality which he showed in Carlton House Terrace gave him a position in English society which facilitated the negotiations between England and Germany, and did much to diminish the friction that had arisen during the time that Prince BÜlow held the post of German Chancellor.

The pamphlet which is here translated gives an account of his London mission; after his return to Germany he has lived in retirement in the country, but has contributed occasional articles to the Press. The pamphlet, which was written in August, 1916, was not intended for publication, but was distributed confidentially to a few friends. The existence of it had long been known, but it was only in March of this year that for the first time extracts from it were published in the Swedish paper Politiken. Longer extracts have since appeared in the London Press; for the first time a complete translation made from the German original is now placed before the public.