The Governments which really played a part in the wrangles were those of France, Russia, Prussia and in a lesser degree Austria, which, though very half-hearted, was not for the last time being towed by Prussia _im schlepptau_, as a German publicist put it. She was dragged in by the fear of losing in the Diet an influence which had already been seriously undermined, if not exploded, by Bismarck. The real arbiter in the case was England. Upon the conduct of England depended the issues of peace or war. Unfortunately her course was being steered by a pilot unskilled, fickle, timid and obstinately vain; a man who, as the conduct of the Polish question had shown, undeterred by more than one sordid repulse, was full of brag and bluster, till the critical moment should come—then collapsing like a soap-bubble. It was their appreciation of Lord Russell that made foreign statesmen tremble for the fate of Denmark, nor was it long before this want of faith in him was fully justified. In the case of the Danish duchies question, as in the case of the Polish insurrection, in order rightly to understand what was taking place at St. Petersburg, it is well to consider for a moment what was the condition of international affairs. We may leave to those who are curious in such political puzzles the complicated intrigues which now have only an academic or historic interest. The question of the incorporation of Schleswig, its unity with Holstein, the position of the infinitesimally small Duchy of Lauenburg, the great language dispute and the so-called “wrongs” of the Schleswigers and the Holsteiners, together with the claims of the Duke of Augustenburg—all these are ghosts long since laid; they were never anything more than pretexts, nor can anything else be said of Prussia’s plea that her hand was being forced by the small German States; it is enough for the politician of to-day to know what was the true objective of the war; that question still lives with us, growing in importance every day. Had the duchies lain inland, far away from the coast, the right to their possession would never have disturbed Europe. Kiel was the Naboth’s vineyard—Kiel with the seaboard of the Baltic, and the North Sea—Kiel with the possibility of a German military and commercial Navy. That, as we shall see presently, is an incontrovertible fact; we have it out of the mouths of German statesmen themselves—out of the mouth of Lord Palmerston.