the effect
that the Cabinet had throughout made every possible exertion to
preserve peace, but that their patience was exhausted when they found
that the King of Prussia had sent an aide-de-camp to the French
ambassador informing him that no more interviews could be granted, and
that the Prussian Government, by way of giving point and unequivocal
significance to this message, had circulated it to all other foreign
governments in Europe. Having spared no pains to avoid war, the
ministers would now accept the challenge, and prepare for the
consequences.

M. Ollivier has given a vivid description of the scene that ensued.
His final words were barely audible in the storm of applause that
swept through the assembly, and the vote of urgency for the motion to
provide the necessary war-funds was demanded with enthusiastic
outcries, varied by angry vituperation of the few deputies who stood
up to oppose it. But Thiers immediately arose and, in spite of many
disorderly interruptions, made a passionate appeal to the assembly to
reflect before precipitating the country into war. His speech, with
the violent cries of dissent interjected by the war-party, is
reproduced by M. Ollivier in order, as he says, that his readers may
judge for themselves how far it merited the unstinted eulogy that has
since been bestowed upon it; for M. Ollivier evidently considers that
those who have credited Thiers with heroic patriotism in making this
strenuous effort to avert the catastrophe have over-praised him. Yet
with this view we believe that few of those who read the pages in this
volume which contain the speech will agree. They will admire, rather,
the courage and fervid eloquence of a veteran statesman who vainly
strove to persuade a frantic assembly that it was fatally misled, that
it was plunging the nation into war on a mere point of form, grasping
at a shadow after the substantial and reasonable demand for
satisfaction had been obtained by Leopold's renunciation; who reminded
the deputies that the official papers authenticating the supposed
insult had never been laid before them, and implored them not to risk
the issues of a terrible contest upon a doubtful question of national
susceptibility. M. Ollivier goes so far as to affirm that no one could
be more justly accused of having brought on the war of 1870 than
Thiers himself, because it was his vehement condemnation of the policy
which allowed Prussia to beat down Austria in 1866, and to