ps,
Lord Palmerston's Cabinet, of which Lord Russell was a member, found
it necessary to maintain neutrality during the war, especially in
view of the fact that Queen Victoria was strongly opposed to any
active interference on the part of England. In spite of this
attitude of the queen a marriage was arranged in 1863 between the
Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, and the daughter of King
Christian IX of Denmark, Princess Alexandria. Although it is true
that the personal relations of the ruling houses of the different
European countries did not any longer possess the same importance
that they formerly had, this new alliance undoubtedly had, even if
not immediately, an important influence on English foreign politics.
For not only was the Princess of Wales, later Queen of England,
unable to forget and forgive the territorial loss which her father
had suffered at the hands of Prussia, but this attitude was shared
by her sister, who was to become a few years later, as wife of
Alexander III of Russia, a powerful influence at the Russian court.
To a certain extent, of course, the influence of the Princess of
Wales did not make itself felt until she had become Queen of
England, and possibly not very strongly then, and it was also
somewhat counteracted by the fact that one of Queen Victoria's
daughters was married to the Crown Prince of Prussia, who later, as
Frederick III, became for a short time the German Emperor.

During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 England maintained the
strictest neutrality and showed the same attitude during the few
years following, covering Napoleon III's attempts to stop the tide
of Prussian ascendancy. The English Government of that period was
headed by one of the most famous statesmen that England has ever
produced, Benjamin Disraeli. There can be no doubt that his attitude
toward affairs on the European continent was strongly influenced by
Queen Victoria's own attitude, who, it may be frankly acknowledged,
was strongly pro-German on account of her personal relations, which
not only included a German prince as son-in-law, but also a German
prince as husband. The official explanation which the prime minister
gave of England's policy of noninterference at that time was that
England had "outgrown the European continent because she was no
longer a mere European power. England is the metropolis of a great
maritime empire extending to the boundaries of the furthest oceans
... she is as ready, and