Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/188

 equally from the Foreign Office as from the Home Office. His whole attention and interest were centred on foreign affairs, and there was an excellent understanding between him and Lord Clarendon, who was Foreign Secretary.

It is needless to say that the Queen was thoroughly convinced before war was declared that it could not have been avoided, that our cause was just, and that the claim of Russia to protect the Christian subjects of Turkey was a hypocritical cloak to her aggression and ambition, and that her real object was to seize Constantinople and the command of the entrance between the Black Sea and Mediterranean, with an eye ultimately to India and the possessions of England in Asia.

The Queen and Prince were exceedingly indignant with the King of Prussia for withholding his support and sympathy from England. He was a man of weak and excitable disposition, and very much influenced by his brother-in-law, the Czar. The King's brother, however, then known as the Prince of Prussia (afterwards the Emperor William), and his son, Prince Frederic William (afterwards the husband of the Princess Royal), strongly sympathized with England; and this circumstance naturally strengthened the warm friendship already existing between them and the English Royal Family. How distant at this time must have seemed the realization of Prince Albert's and Stockmar's dream of a united Germany, and of a political alliance between England and Germany. The Prince, however, never lost sight of his goal. He wrote to his stepmother at Coburg, who was strongly Russian in her sympathies. "If there were a Germany and a German Sovereign in Berlin, this [the war] could never have happened."

When once war was declared (March, 1854), the Queen threw her whole heart and soul into the cause.