s me homesick for Reinfeld
or St. Petersburg. I cannot enter the swindle in better company
than yours; but both of us were happier on the Sadower Heath
behind the partridges."

So he wrote late at night, but the next morning in a postscript he
added: "If the King will to some extent meet my views, then I will set
to the work with pleasure." In the letter he discusses at length the
programme; he does not attach much importance to the homage; it would be
much better to come to terms on the military question, break with the
Chamber, and dissolve. The real difficulty he sees, however, is foreign
policy; only by a change in the management of foreign affairs can the
Crown be relieved from a pressure to which it must ultimately give way;
he would not himself be inclined to accept the Ministry of the Interior,
because no good could be done unless the foreign policy was changed, and
that the King himself would probably not wish that.

"The chief fault of our policy is that we have been Liberal at
home and Conservative abroad; we hold the rights of our own King
too cheap, and those of foreign princes too high; a natural
consequence of the difference between the constitutional tendency
of the Ministers and the legitimist direction which the will of
his Majesty gives to our foreign policy. Of the princely houses
from Naples to Hanover none will be grateful for our love, and we
practise towards them a truly evangelical love of our enemies at
the cost of the safety of our own throne. I am true to the sole
of my foot to my own princes, but towards all others I do not
feel in a single drop of blood the slightest obligation to raise
up a little finger to help them. In this attitude I fear that I
am so far removed from our Most Gracious Master, that he will
scarcely find me fitted to be a Councillor of his Crown. For this
reason he will anyhow prefer to use me at the Home-Office. In my
opinion, however, that makes no difference, for I promise myself
no useful results from the whole Government unless our attitude
abroad is more vigorous and less dependent on dynastic
sympathies."

Bismarck arrived in Berlin on July 9th. When he got there the crisis was
over; Berlin was nearly empty; Roon was away in Pomerania, the King in
Baden-Baden; a compromise had been arranged; there was not to be an act
of homage but a coronation. There was, therefore, no more talk of his
entering the Ministry; Schlein