Mr. Gladstone freely recognised that France had rights to England’s friendship. “But,” he said, “I do not think those rights are such as to make us intervene in a war which France has commenced herself and without us. I do not think our friendship can go to the point of our declaring war against Prussia and fighting at your side.” At this point Mr. Gladstone reproachfully repeated the charge which had everlastingly been made against us since the beginning of the war and which I encountered everywhere from those I addressed. “Who was it,” said he, “who definitely commenced this deplorable war? Who was it who provoked it without any reason and for the sole purpose of conquest, for the purpose, that is, of taking the Rhine?” My answer was a very simple one. I looked at the question from Mr. Gladstone’s own standpoint and loyally recognised the wrong we had done. The war was the work of the French Government. The French Government alone had commenced it without sufficient reason and for a, from a philosophic standpoint, inexcusable and immoral purpose--that of conquest. I did not even try to exculpate the nation, by saying, as I might have done, that the French people were far from desiring the war, and that, had they been consulted, they would have refused it with all their energies. I admitted the nation’s responsibility on the ground of their having supported the Imperial Government and accepted a régime which had the power of plunging them into such a war and in such circumstances. It is best to argue after his own fashion with a Minister who likes to mix philosophy and politics. “But do you not perceive that the situation is to-day no longer the same? The Government which commenced the war no longer exists. To-day the people are free and have pronounced their opinion--they have never wanted the war. To-day they want it less than ever. They are offering ransom to the enemy. Do you not think that the wrongs of the past have been made good, as far as the nation is concerned, by the overtures made by M. Jules Favre to M. de Bismarck at Ferrières?” I was not mistaken. Such arguments as these were to his taste. Mr. Gladstone freely recognised that the interview at Ferrières might be regarded as a considerable event. It had given another character to the continuation of the war, and to-day the rôles were changed. It was Prussia who was now pressing the purpose of conquest, and it was France who was now defending the sacred soil of her territory. Mr. Gladstone put much lucidity and eloquence into the task of expounding his views concerning wars of conquest, legitimate defence of one’s territory, and the “impious” continuation of war.... I will not write down the entire system of England’s learned Prime Minister, but will only state that he himself admitted what I had said at the beginning--namely, that a great nation had the right and even the duty to intervene in an _impious war_ in order to finish it in the interests of morality.