Dr. Mahlon's memorandum of conversations with Dr. Helfferich and Herr
Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach in mid-July, 1914, confirms the Lichnowsky memorandum, and clinches the proof of the Kaiser's guilt as war-maker. Dr. Mahlon was in July, 1914, a director of Krupp's ; and Dr. Helfferich, who was then a director of the Deutsche Bank, was able to tell him that in a week's time Vienna would send Serbia "a very severe ultimatum, with a very short interval for the answer. . . . A whole series of definite satisfactions will be demanded at once ; otherwise Austria-Hungary will declare war on Serbia." Dr. Helfferich added that the Kaiser had expressed his decided approval of this course ; and he admitted that in his own view this certainly looked like a world-war. Dr. Mahlon then communicated these facts to his co-director Herr Krupp. He was not surprised, but annoyed that Dr. Helfferich should know so much. "Government people can never keep their mouths shut." The situation was really very serious. The Kaiser had told him that he would declare war if Russia mobilized, "and this time people would see that he did not turn about." His denial of indecision "was almost comic in its effect." What was a comedy to Herr Krupp speedily became is tragedy for Europe. Of course Dr. Helfferich and Herr Krupp have denied that these conversations took place, and the German Government have attri- buted Dr. Mahlon's statement to neurasthenia. They disposed of the Lichnowsky memorandum as the offspring of conceit, pique, and disappointment—with as little prospect of belief in the one case as in the other.
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