has brought me the official letter of your Majesty, as well as the confidential one,[1] and I send your kind messenger back, with these two answers to you. He will be able to tell you, orally, what I can express only imperfectly in writing, how deep my pain is, after our going so far, faithfully, hand in hand, to see you, at this weighty moment, separating yourself from us. My pain is still further increased by the fact that I cannot even conceive the grounds which move your Majesty to take this step.
The most recent Russian proposals came as an answer to the last attempt for an understanding which the Powers believed could be arrived at honourably, and they have been rejected by the Vienna Conference, not because they were not in accordance with the literal wording of the programme, but because they were contrary to the intention of it. Your Majesty’s Ambassador has taken part in this Conference and its decision, and when your Majesty now says: “The task of Diplomacy ceases at the exact point where that of the Sovereigns emphatically begins”; I am unable to assent to such a definition. For what my Ambassador does, he does in my name, and I feel myself not only bound in honour thereby, but also placed under an obligation to take upon myself the consequences which the step which he is directed to take may lead to.
The dreadful and incalculable consequences of a War weigh upon my heart not less than on your Majesty’s. I also know that the Emperor of Russia does not wish for it. He, none the less, demands from the Porte things which all the Powers of Europe—among them, yourself—have solemnly declared to be incompatible with the independence of the Porte, and the European balance of power. In view of this declaration and of the presence of the Russian Army of invasion in the Principalities, the Powers could not but be ready to confirm their word by action. If “the Turk” now goes into the background, and if the approaching War appears to you as a “War of tendency” this is the case only because the very motives which may induce the Emperor to insist on his demands—in defiance of the opposition of the whole of Europe, and with the danger of a War that may devastate the world, do betray a distinct tendency, and because the grave consequences of the War must appear much more momen-
- ↑ The Prussian Court considered itself under no obligation to engage in the impending struggle, till its own interests became directly involved; it would not (said Baron Manteuffel, President of the Ministry, on the 18th of March) take part, for the protection of the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, “in a conflict, the full scope of which cannot yet be apprehended, and the original subject-matter of which does not affect the interests of our fatherland.”
