As for the Crown Princess, though she had been spared the sight of the worst horrors, she had nevertheless seen enough to enable her, with her eager, imaginative sympathy, to share in the fullest degree her husband's intense feeling. She never felt she could do enough to mitigate the sufferings of the soldiers, both on the battlefield and afterwards in the weary months of convalescence in hospital. This autumn she organised an enormous bazaar at the New Palace in aid of the wounded, to which contributions came from all over the world. The Crown Prince himself went round collecting money for the soldiers, and the whole enterprise brought in a large sum for the fund. The years that followed up to the outbreak of the war with France were not very eventful. At the beginning of 1867, the Crown Prince and Princess stayed a while at Dover, where they met Princess Alice and her husband, who went back with them to stay for a few weeks in Berlin. They afterwards went together to Paris, at the invitation of the Emperor and Empress of the French, in order to visit the great International Exhibition then being held there. The Crown Prince had served as president of the Prussian Committee for the Exhibition. Their stay in France gave great pleasure to the Crown Princess; the two sisters visited many philanthropic centres, and made an exhaustive survey of French art. It was on this visit to Paris that the Crown Princess first conceived the idea of the School of Design in Berlin which now bears her name, for she was greatly impressed by the imaginative fertility of the Parisian craftsmen, and by the perfection of their work. The Crown Princess left Paris before her husband. Princess Alice wrote to her mother on June 9: "Dear Vicky is gone. She was so low the last days, and dislikes going to parties so much just now, that she was longing to get home. The King [of Prussia] wished them both to stop, but only Fritz remained. How sad these days will be for her, poor love! She was in such good looks; every one here is charmed with her." The Crown Prince had induced his father to visit the Exhibition, and the King, who brought Bismarck with him, had a magnificent reception from the Imperial Court. The Crown Prince and Princess did not abate their interest in politics, and they certainly shared Bismarck's view at this time that an arrangement with France was in every way desirable in order to avert war and to consolidate the gains of 1866. In the autumn a terrible scarcity, almost amounting to famine, in East Prussia afforded a fresh opportunity for the practical sympathy of the Crown Prince and Princess. Together they organised a relief fund and relief works by which the sufferings of the population were much mitigated.