On the 10th of April he returned to the charge, in a despatch the phraseology of which Lord Salisbury described as being “as menacing as will often be found in despatches even of a professedly hostile character,” once more insisting that the Emperor’s position as regards the Poles was due to the grace and favour of the Treaty of Vienna, and quite different to what it would have been had His Majesty held Poland as part of the original dominions of the Crown, or if he had acquired it by the unassisted success of his army and unsanctioned by the consent of any other Power, etc., etc. The formal declaration that Russia had broken her treaty engagements, the intimation that she had not fulfilled her duties of comity as a member of the community of nations, the distinct statement that the course she was pursuing was dangerous to the general peace of Europe, “and might under possible circumstances produce complications of the most serious nature—all these expressions, interpreted by diplomatic usage, were simple threats of war.”[37] These threats were accentuated by a conversation which Lord Russell reported as having taken place between himself and Baron Brunnow, the Russian Ambassador. Baron Brunnow said there was one question which he felt entitled to ask, and that was whether the communication Her Majesty’s Government were about to make at St. Petersburg was of a pacific nature. I replied that it was, but that as I did not wish to mislead him I must say something more. Her Majesty’s Government had no intentions that were otherwise than pacific, still less any concert with other Powers for any but pacific purposes. “But the state of things might change. The present overture of Her Majesty’s Government might be rejected as the representation of March 2nd had been rejected by the Imperial Government. The insurrection in Poland might continue and might assume larger proportions; the atrocities on both sides might be aggravated, and extended to a wider range of country. If in such a state of affairs the Emperor of Russia were to take no steps of a conciliatory nature, dangers and complications might arise not at present in contemplation.” “If this was not a threat of war,” says Lord Salisbury, “language has no meaning.” Every one of these _mights_ and _might be’s_ did occur, but the threats remained mere gas. Prince Gortchakoff, cool, calm, and courteous, refused with firmness to acknowledge any of Lord Russell’s pretensions.