Wilhelm’s indiscretions appeared to confirm the widespread belief that he was a dangerous loose cannon. Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, who had carelessly passed the text before publication, and who was to resign the following summer, described the ‘dark foreboding [that] ran through many Germans that such clumsy, incautious, over-hasty – such stupid, even puerile – speech and action on the part of the Supreme Head of State could lead to only one thing – catastrophe’.
