as really not strong enough to meet the coalition of
Austria and Russia, but it was also that the King was really of two
minds; he was constitutionally unable to maintain against danger a
consistent course of policy.

Bismarck was one of the few men who defended the action of the Ministry.
In the ablest of all his speeches he took up the gauntlet, and exposed
all the weakness and the dangers of Radowitz's policy. This was not a
cause in which Prussia should risk its existence. Why should they go to
war in order to subject Prussia not to the Princes but to the Chambers
of the smaller States? A war for the Union would, he said, remind him of
the Englishman who had a fight with the sentry in order that he might
hang himself in the sentry-box, a right which he claimed for himself and
every free Briton. It was the duty of the councillors of the King to
warn him from a policy which would bring the State to destruction.

"Still I would not shrink, from the war; I would advise it, were
anyone able to prove to me the necessity for it, or to point out
a worthy end which could be attained by it and in no other way.
Why do great States wage war nowadays? The only sound principle
of action for a great State is political egoism and not
Romanticism, and it is unworthy of a great State to fight for any
matter which does not concern its own interests. Shew us,
gentlemen, an object worthy of war and you have my vote. It is
easy for a statesman in his office or his chamber to blow the
trumpet with the breath of popularity and all the time to sit
warming himself by his fireside, while he leaves it to the
rifleman, who lies bleeding on the snow, whether his system
attains victory and glory. Nothing is easier; but woe to the
statesman who at such a time does not look about for a reason for
the war which will be valid when the war is over. I am convinced
you will see the questions which now occupy us in a different
light a year hence, when you look back upon them through a long
perspective of battle-fields and conflagrations, misery and
wretchedness. Will you then have the courage to go to the peasant
by the ashes of his cottage, to the cripple, to the childless
father, and say: 'You have suffered much, but rejoice with us,
the Union is saved. Rejoice with us, Hassenpflug is no longer
Minister, Bayernhofer rules in Hesse.'"

Eloquent words; but what a strange comment on them his own acts were t