You recently mentioned a speech of [Chancellor] Hertling to the students. Quite nice, but the one in the Herrenhaus [House of Lords] is very, very bad. This is the worst we have ever heard. So the dynasty is in danger if we do not introduce the idiotic equal franchise, against better conviction? And no Prussian gives him a reply? That is worse than the whole Bethmann and much worse than anything that happens or can happen at the front.

Letter to Mrs Seeckt (9 September 1918), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 105-106.