ian nation in the firm resolution to defend itself. In reporting
this conversation to the Foreign Office the charge d'affaires said
that Bismarck appeared to be sincerely afflicted with regret for the
rupture between the two countries, that he evidently saw, too late,
his error in having secretly encouraged the Hohenzollern candidature,
and that the result of all these unhappy complications had left the
well-meaning chancellor inconsolable. Such a candid confession of
remorse and regret moved the Frenchman's compassion to a degree that
profoundly irritates M. Ollivier:

'Un tel exces de credulite finit par exasperer. Et la plupart des
diplomates de ce temps-la etaient de cette force. Bien pietre
serait l'histoire qui se modelerait sur leurs appreciations.'

We may agree that the sympathy of the charge d'affaires with
Bismarck's ingenuous contrition was ill-bestowed. But the tendency to
fix upon French diplomacy a responsibility for national calamities
that is much more justly chargeable to the account of the Imperial
Government, is somewhat unduly prominent in certain parts of M.
Ollivier's otherwise fair and conscientious narrative of the
transactions that culminated in the war.

When Bismarck announced to the Prussian Reichstag that war had been
declared, he was interrupted by an outburst of long and enthusiastic
cheering. He said, briefly, that he had no papers to lay before them,
because the single official document received from the French
Government was the declaration of war; and the only motive for
hostilities he understood to be his own circular _telegramme de
journal_ addressed to Prussian envoys abroad and to other friendly
Powers for the purpose of explaining what had occurred. This, he
observed, was not at all an official document. He added that a demand
for a letter of excuses had been made through Werther to the king; and
the real origin of the war he alleged to be the hatred and jealousy
with which the independence and prosperity of Germany were regarded in
France. Upon this adroit but incomplete exposition of causes and
circumstances M. Ollivier comments with intelligible severity, laying
stress on the fact that afterwards Bismarck threw off his disguise,
and openly took to himself the credit of having deliberately contrived
to bring on the war at his own time. In fact, the later German
historians have confirmed this statement by their critical examination
of the records and other evid