“You don’t understand, dear,” interrupted my father. “It is only an impudence, a trick of this Herr v. Beust, nothing else. The duchies, besides, belong to us already, for we have conquered them.”
“But surely not conquered them for yourselves? for the Augustenburg.”
“That again you do not understand. The reasons, which before the outbreak of a war are put forward by the cabinets as the motive for it, retreat into the background as soon as the battles are once engaged. Then the victories and defeats bring out quite new combinations; then kingdoms diminish or increase, or shape themselves in relations before unforeseen.”
“These reasons then are really no reasons, but only pretexts?” I asked.
“Pretexts? no,” said one of the generals, coming to my father’s aid; “motives rather, starting-points for the events which then shape themselves according to the scale of the results.”
“If I had had to speak,” said my father, “I would really not have given in to any peace negotiations after Düppel and Alsen; all Denmark might have been conquered.”
“What to do with it?”
“Incorporate it in the German Bund.”
“Why, your speciality is only that of an Austrian patriot, dear father. What business is it of yours to enlarge Germany?”
“Have you forgotten that the Hapsburgs were German emperors, and may become so again?”