One illustration is worth many arguments. At the Berlin Congress affairs at a time began to march ill. The Russian plenipotentiary was making mischief. Disraeli quietly pencilled some requisitions on the part of England and forwarded them to him. “If you accept these,” he said, “peace--if not, war.” Bearing these two further principles of foreign policy in mind, let me endeavour to sketch Disraeli’s attitude towards various other powers. With America I deal separately in the next chapter. Friendship with France amounted with him almost to a passion, and none would have rejoiced more heartily at the amity which our King has recently renewed. He himself knew the French well, and in the ’forties had met with the most cordial welcome on two occasions from the King, the Court, the lights of literature and science, the politicians and the people. He thought that with French alliance other powers might exclaim as Shakespeare’s Constance exclaimed-- “France friends with England, what become of me!” France was the nation of society, the nurse of arts and manners. England and France supplied reciprocal wants. Their friendship is a pledge for European peace. Had the Czar been made aware of it in time, the blunder and misfortune of the Crimean War would not have taken place. In _Coningsby_ he called Paris “the university of the world,” and enlarged on commercial exchange between two first-class powers in a vein at once light and serious. In 1845, France regarded Peel as the guardian of Anglo-French cordiality, and feared the chance of Palmerston’s return to office as fraught with a possible treatment of “the French connection with levity or disregard.” Louis Philippe relieved his anxieties by consulting Disraeli on this point.[130] “A good understanding,” was Disraeli’s interpretation in 1864, “between England and France is simply this--that so far as the influence of these two great powers extends, the affairs of the world shall be conducted by their co-operation instead of by their rivalry. _But co-operation requires not merely identity of interest but reciprocal good feeling. In public as well as in private affairs, a certain degree of sentiment is necessary for the happy conduct of matters._” In another speech ten years earlier he also observed that Anglo-French relations were not dynastic, but depended on commercial interests.