mnly declared to be incompatible with the independence of the
Porte, and the European balance of power. In view of this declaration
and of the presence of the Russian Army of invasion in the
Principalities, the Powers could not but be ready to confirm their
word by action. If "the Turk" now goes into the background, and if
the approaching War appears to you as a "War of tendency" this is
the case only because the very motives which may induce the Emperor to
insist on his demands--in defiance of the opposition of the whole of
Europe, and with the danger of a War that may devastate the world, do
betray a _distinct tendency_, and because the grave consequences of
the War must appear much more momentous than the original ostensible
cause of it, which at first appeared only as the request for a key to
the back door of a mosque.

Your Majesty asks me "to examine the question in a spirit of love for
peace, and even now to build a bridge for the Imperial honour." Ah, my
dear Sir and Brother, all the inventive gifts, all the architecture
of diplomacy and of goodwill, have been uselessly wasted during these
last nine months in this bridge-building! The _Projets de Notes, de
Conventions, de Protocoles_, etc., etc., have proceeded, by the dozen,
from the Chancelleries of the different Powers, and one might call
the ink wasted on them another Black Sea. But everything has been
shipwrecked against the self-will of your honourable brother-in-law.

If now your Majesty informs me "_that now you mean to persist in
complete neutrality_," and if, on this occasion, you refer us to your
Nation, who are said to exclaim with sound common sense: "Acts of
violence have been done by the Turks, the Turk has good friends
in large numbers, and the Emperor has done us no harm"--I do not
understand you. Certainly I should understand this language if I
heard it from the Kings of Hanover or of Saxony. But I have, hitherto,
looked upon Prussia as one of the Great Powers which, since the peace
of 1815, have been guarantors of treaties, guardians of civilisation,
defenders of the right, the real arbiters of the Nations; and for
my part I have felt the divine responsibility of this sacred office,
without undervaluing at the same time the heavy obligation, not
unconnected with danger, which it imposes on me. If you, dear Sir
and Brother, abdicate these obligations, you have also abdicated that
position for Prussia. And should such an example find imitators,