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 momentous than the original ostensible cause of it, which at first appeared only as the request for a key to the back door of a mosque.
Your Majesty asks me "to examine the question in a spirit of love for peace, and even now to build a bridge for the Imperial honour." Ah, my dear Sir and Brother, all the inventive gifts, all the architecture of diplomacy and of goodwill, have been uselessly wasted during these last nine months in this bridge-building! The Projets de Notes, de Conventions, de Protocoles, etc., etc., have proceeded, by the dozen, from the Chancelleries of the different Powers, and one might call the ink wasted on them another Black Sea. But everything has been shipwrecked against the self-will of your honourable brother-in-law.
PRUSSIAN NEUTRALITY
If now your Majesty informs me "that now you mean to persist in complete neutrality," and if, on this occasion, you refer us to your Nation, who are said to exclaim with sound common sense: "Acts of violence have been done by the Turks, the Turk has good friends in large numbers, and the Emperor has done us no harm"—I do not understand you. Certainly I should understand this language if I heard it from the Kings of Hanover or of Saxony. But I have, hitherto, looked upon Prussia as one of the Great Powers which, since the peace of 1815, have been guarantors of treaties, guardians of civilisation, defenders of the right, the real arbiters of the Nations; and for my part I have felt the divine responsibility of this sacred office, without undervaluing at the same time the heavy obligation, not unconnected with danger, which it imposes on me. If you, dear Sir and Brother, abdicate these obligations, you have also abdicated that position for Prussia. And should such an example find imitators, then the civilisation of Europe would be delivered up to the play of winds; right will then no longer find a champion, the oppressed will find no longer an umpire.
Let not your Majesty believe that what has been said in this letter is aimed at persuading you to change your resolves; it flows from the affectionate heart of a sister, who could not pardon herself, were she not, at so weighty a moment, to let you see into her inmost soul. So little is it my intention to desire to win you over to our view, that nothing has grieved me more than the suspicion, expressed in your name by General von der Gröben, that England had desired to seduce you from your purpose by opening a prospect of advantages to be gained. The baselessness of such a supposition is evident from the Treaty itself which had been offered to you, and whose most important clause consisted in the promise of the contracting parties, not to desire in any case to derive from the War any advantage for themselves.
Your Majesty could not have given a more powerful proof of your unselfishness than by the very fact of attaching your signature to this Treaty.
WAR DECLARED
To come to a close. You suppose that War may already have been declared; you express, however, at the same time, the hope that it may not already have actually broken out. I cannot unfortunately hold out any hope that the sentence will be followed by any stay of execution. Shakespeare's words:
"Beware