Belle-Alliance, the joint
victorious struggle against France had rendered it possible to put an
end to the opposition between a yielding Rhine-Confederation policy
and the German national impetus of the days between the Vienna
congress and the Mainz commission of inquiry, days marked by the names
of Stein, Goerres, Jahn, Wartburg, up to the crime of Sand. The blood
shed in common from the day when the Saxons came over at Leipzig down
to their participation at Belle-Alliance under English command had
fostered a consciousness before which the recollections of the
Rhine-Confederation were blotted out. The historical development in
this direction was interrupted by the anxiety aroused by the
over-haste of the national craving for the stability of state
institutions.

This retrospect strengthened me in my conviction, and the political
considerations in respect to the South German states proved applicable
likewise, _mutatis mutandis_, to our relations with the populations of
Hanover, Hesse, and Schleswig-Holstein. That this view was correct is
shown by the satisfaction with which, at the present day, after a
lapse of twenty years, not only the Holsteiners, but likewise the
people of the Hanse towns, remember the heroic deeds of their sons in
1870. All these considerations, conscious and unconscious,
strengthened my opinion that war could be avoided only at the cost of
the honor of Prussia and of the national confidence in it. Under this
conviction I made use of the royal authorization communicated to me
through Abeken, to publish the contents of the telegram; and in the
presence of my two guests I reduced the telegram by striking out
words, but without adding or altering, to the following form: "After
the news of the renunciation of the hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern
had been officially communicated to the imperial government of France
by the royal government of Spain, the French ambassador at Ems further
demanded of his Majesty the King that he would authorize him to
telegraph to Paris that his Majesty the King bound himself for all
future time never again to give his consent if the Hohenzollerns
should renew their candidature. His Majesty the King thereupon decided
not to receive the French ambassador again, and sent to tell him
through the aide-de-camp on duty that his Majesty had nothing further
to communicate to the ambassador." The difference in the effect of the
abbreviated text of the Ems telegram as compared with