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384 they said, not to wait till France was again powerful and had won allies; surely the wisest thing was while she was still weak and friendless to take some excuse (and how easy would it be to find the excuse!), fall upon her, and crush her—crush and destroy, so that she could never again raise her head; treat her as she had in old days treated Germany. How far this plan was deliberately adopted we do not know, but in the spring of this year the signs became so alarming that both the Russian and the English Governments were seriously disturbed, and interfered. So sober a statesman as Lord Derby believed that the danger was real. The Czar, who visited Berlin at the beginning of April, dealt with the matter personally; the Queen of England wrote a letter to the German Emperor, in which she said that the information she had could leave no doubt that an aggressive war on France was meditated, and used her personal influence with the sovereign to prevent it. The Emperor himself had not sympathised with the idea of war, and it is said did not even know of the approaching danger. It did not require the intervention of other sovereigns to induce him to refuse his assent to a wanton war, but this advice from foreign Powers of course caused great indignation in Bismarck; it was just the kind of thing which always angered him beyond everything. He maintained that he had had no warlike intentions, that the reports were untrue. The whole story had its origin, he said, in the intrigues of the Ultramontanes and the vanity of Gortschakoff; the object was to make it appear that France owed her security and