to the British point of view, and
felt that in our place he could not recede."

It was not hard to see Bismarck's interests. The mischief to Germany of
another European war before Paris had fallen; the moral support to be
derived by the Tours government from a revival of the old Anglo-French
alliance; the chances of Beust and other persons fishing in the troubled
waters of an extended European conflict; the vital importance of peace to
the reconstruction of Germany--these were the disadvantages to his own
country and policy, of a war between England and Russia; these worked the
change in his mind between afternoon and midnight, and led him to support
the cause of England and peace against Gortchakoff and his circular.
Characteristically, at the same time he strove hard to drive a bargain
with the English agent, and to procure some political advantages in
exchange for his moral support. "In politics," he said, "one hand should
wash the other" (_eine Hand die andere waschen muss_). In Mr. Odo Russell,
however, he found a man who talked the language, kept the tone and was
alive to all the arts of diplomatic business, and no handwashing followed.
When Mr. Russell went to his apartment in the Place Hoche at Versailles
that night, he must have felt that he had done a good day's work.

In the following year, papers were laid before parliament, and attention
was drawn to the language used by Mr. Russell to Bismarck, in the pregnant
sentence about the question being of a nature in its present state to
compel us with or without allies, to go to war with Russia.(226) Mr.
Gladstone, when directly challenged, replied (Feb. 16) that the agent had
used this argument without specific authority or instruction from the
government, but that the duty of diplomatic agents required them to
express themselves in the mode in which they think they can best support
the proposition of which they wish to procure acceptance. Mr. Odo Russell
explained to Mr. Gladstone (Feb. 27) that he was led to use the argument
about England being compelled to go to war with or without allies by these
reasons: that we were bound by a definite treaty to regard any
retractation of the stipulations of March 30, 1856, as a cause of
war;(227) that Gortchakoff's assumption of a right to renounce provisions
directly touching Russian interests seemed to carry with it the assumption
of a right to renounce all the rest of the treaty; that Mr. Gladstone's
government had decl