BERLIN, Friday, March l, 1940
 
     At six o'clock I called upon Staatssekretar von Weizsacker in his office at the Foreign 
 
Office. His position corresponds to Under Secretary in our system.
 
          Herr yon Weizsacker is a typical example of the German official of the old school of the 
 
nineteenth century. He is reminiscent of the first Bernstorff and of the first Bulow, and not of their 
 
more famous sons. He is, I believe, sincere, and spoke throughout our hour' s talk with deep 
 
feeling.
 
          He had had a particularly happy home life--very typically German in the devotion to him of 
 
his three sons.  His greatest pleasure, he told me, was when he and his wife and the three boys 
 
could have an evening of chamber music together in their house. Today the family is shattered. 
 
His youngest son of twenty was killed in the Polish war. The other two sons are serving on the 
 
Western Front.
 
          He is retained at the Foreign Office, I was told, solely because of his expert knowledge of 
 
German foreign relations, and is never permitted to advise on policy.  
 
     I outlined to the Under Secretary the nature of my mission.
 
          At the conclusion of my statement, to which I added some excerpts of my earlier 
 
conversation with Herr yon Ribbentrop, Herr von Weizsacker hesitated a moment and said, "I am 
 
going to be quite frank with you. I have been strictly instructed not to discuss with you in any way 
 
any subject which relates directly or indirectly to the possibility of peace."