Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/241

 confidence between the sisters and their respective husbands never wavered. Prince Louis went to Berlin, before the actual outbreak of hostilities, to see his brother-in-law, and he then made sure that though their respective allegiance brought them into conflict as soldiers, yet as men they would remain brothers and friends. North Germany under Prussia was, as every one knows, successful in the conflict, and the victorious Prussian army marched into Darmstadt just at the time of the birth of Princess Alice's third daughter (July 11th, 1866). The newly made mother lay in bed hearing the shouts of her husband's victors, at the very time knowing that he was still under fire, and that she was unable to get any news of his safety. The christening of the little Princess was put off till it could take place on the day on which the treaty of peace was ratified at Berlin; the baby then received the name of Irène, in commemoration of the event. The poor little Princess of peace had very warlike godfathers,—the whole of the cavalry brigade which had been commanded by her father in the late war. It is significant that just before this war Princess Alice had written to the Queen using the expression: "I long to … know that your warm heart is acting for Germany." That is the woman all over: to feel, is to translate feeling into action wherever power to do so is not lacking. The warp and woof of home and politics are ever conspicuous in the Princess Alice's letters. When the Schleswig-Holstein question first began to threaten war, she wrote to the Queen, filling the first part of the letter with her speculations on the political situation, and then passing to her baby's first tooth, "She makes such faces if one ventures to touch her little mouth;" and the Princess then goes on to mention some of her activities in trying to set the hospital at Darmstadt in good order, and to interest the