He was a stolid, insecure man, gloomy and filled with fear of the future, convinced that Germany’s enemies were growing stronger so rapidly that within not many more years the empire’s position would be hopeless. This fear had caused him to toy with the idea of preventive war (an idea that Bismarck had ridiculed as “committing suicide out of fear of death”), though he had never actually advocated or prepared for such a war.
