“Your Government is full of confidence in the vitality of the country and refuses to surrender to Prussian demands, but you do not know what are the feelings of the nation. And if the nation is not of your way of thinking, or if your Government is mistaken, if instead of pushing back the enemy you were to see him advance still further? His demands would only be increased and you would have imposed sacrifices on your country that are as fruitless as they are painful.”
It was difficult not to admit the justice of this reasoning, and I did not hesitate to tell him so. But I again and insistently asked him to reflect and to admit that it was impossible to go to the country to sound its feelings while the enemy refused us the physical means of doing so. I assured him that the Government would have been happy to be able to consult the country, and that even now there was no greater nor more pressing desire; but how was it to be effected?
“Can one make Electors come together with rifles on their shoulders in order to vote, while the Prussians are advancing to occupy our towns? Is it not evident that to have Elections we must have an armistice?
“Just now,” I said, “I think I gathered that if you had a counsel to give us it would be to try and have the Elections in the shortest possible time, and to ask for a shorter armistice than in the previous negotiations, which fell through over the question of re-victualling. Would you in such a case offer your good services, and would you charge yourself with reopening the negotiations on this matter?” He answered: “I have already told M. Thiers that the best form of negotiation would be for you to address the General Staff at Versailles direct and without intermediary.”
I pointed out to Lord Granville that he himself knew the situation sufficiently well to foresee that the result of direct negotiations with the General Staff at Versailles could only be negative. “Besides,” I said, “the question which I have taken the liberty of putting to you had its sole raison d’être in our conversation. The question was born of the moment and is part of a purely personal reflection. It was only suggested to me by my desire to show you how much I have at heart the understanding of the remarks which I have the honour of hearing from your lips.”
After Lord Granville’s advice to address ourselves direct to the General Staff at Versailles, it was clear to me that the only wish of the English Government was not to expose itself, to keep strictly and prudently out of the way and to interfere in the negotiations as little as possible—that is to say, to have nothing to do with them. For all this there was a peremptory reason. It was not entirely lack of goodwill, but the fear of compromising themselves.
Everywhere I observed this exaggerated fear of being dragged into a conflict with Prussia. At that time I regarded this feeling as one of weakness, but on reflection it seems to me that it must be judged less severely. One cannot arm from one day to another. Moreover, a great Power cannot raise its voice without giving its words the support of arms should it not be listened to. And Prussia, as I have already said, would have listened to nothing, unless it were a general at the head of a strong army. Now England at that time had no army either. She was in a complete state of peace. Besides, had she not been warned by her rebuff from the Prussian General Staff that she had only one thing to do: keep quiet!
In fact if Lord Granville thus sent me back to Versailles to re-open negotiations for an armistice it was because “Odo”—that is the Christian name by which he called the Under-Secretary of State, Mr. Odo Russell, who was with the General Staff—had written him that M. de Bismarck would no longer listen to him. “M. Odo,” said he, “wrote to me only yesterday that France had now better approach the General Staff direct and that M. de Bismarck has nothing further to say to me.”
It was an irrefutable argument, and the least I could do to repay such frankness was not to insist any more, unless it were openly to ask the Secretary of State that England should go to war.
But yet I did not wish to retire. Seeing that Lord Granville still listened to me with interest and appeared in no hurry to terminate our interview, I moved the armchair, on which I was seated and which I had pushed back a little during the last part of our conversation, a little nearer to him. His knees nearly touched mine. I looked at him, trying to read into his blue eyes, and I said:—