Apart from my professional work, I was most interested in the study of current political events, particularly those which were connected with foreign relations. I approached these by way of the German policy of alliances which, ever since my Austrian days, I had considered to be an utterly mistaken one. But in Vienna I had not yet seen quite clearly how far the German Empire had gone in the process of' self-delusion. In Vienna I was inclined to assume, or probably I persuaded myself to do so in order to excuse the German mistake, that possibly the authorities in Berlin knew how weak and unreliable their ally would prove to be when brought face to face with realities, but that, for more or less mysterious reasons, they refrained from allowing their opinions on this point to be known in public. Their idea was that they should support the