The picture of Imperial Germany drawn from certain comments made by most of the permanent officials at the British Foreign Office and by many representatives abroad in the decade before 1914 has survived, in effect, to this day. It was not a flattering one. According to Sir Charles Hardinge, Permanent Under Secretary from 1906 to 1910, it was ‘generally recognised that Germany is the one disturbing factor owing to her ambitious schemes for a “Weltpolitik” and for a naval as well as a military supremacy in Europe’; in November 1909 he described her as ‘the only aggressive Power in Europe’. What she wanted was ‘a free hand for the Continent’. This she would use ‘to consolidate her supremacy in Europe’. Sir Arthur Nicolson, who succeeded Hardinge, similarly maintained that ‘the ultimate aims of Germany surely are, without doubt, to obtain the preponderance on the continent of Europe, and when she is strong enough, [to] enter on a contest with us for maritime supremacy’. Sir William Tyrrell, who acted from 1907 to 1915 as Private Secretary to Sir Edward Grey, the Foreign Secretary, declared at the height of the Agadir crisis of 1911: ‘What she wants is the hegemony of Europe.’ One of the Assistant Under Secretaries, Crowe, made it clear that by ‘hegemony’ was understood no less than the elimination of the independence of the other Powers – the removal of their capacity to pursue foreign policies independent of the dictates of Berlin.