There are few more agitated passages to be found in the records of diplomacy than those letters to Lord Granville in which she argued, threatened, entreated, and, finally falling back on the last strength of woman, her weakness, complained that she was "completely exhausted by anxiety and suspense," and "so tired and unwell she can hardly hold up her head or hold her pen." Her will prevailed in the end, and she was able to congratulate herself that, "owing to the determined stand she had made against her two principal ministers, she had saved the country from an unnecessary war." When Prussia, completely reversing her attitude, made those very claims of the Danish King which she had contested by force of arms her pretext for annexing the two duchies under the "rights of conquest," the Queen suffered a bitter disillusionment, and, on her instructions General Grey wrote to Lord Granville, that "Prussia should at least be made aware of what she and her Government and every honest man in Europe must think of the gross and unblushing violation of every assurance and pledge that she had given which Prussia had been guilty of." It will hardly be contended now that a war which should have left Schleswig-Holstein in the hands of Denmark would have been anything but exceedingly advantageous, economical, and opportune for Great Britain. Even before, in the formal division of the spoils, Prussia had obtained Austrian recognition of her right to Kiel, she had occupied that port and transferred her naval headquarters thither from Dantzig. The construction of the North Sea Baltic Canal was delayed many years, mainly by the opposition of Count Moltke, who argued that its cost would be so great that it would, on the whole, be cheaper to build a second fleet with the money. He further urged that the canal would be navigable only in the summer, and that in the event of a war the army would be weakened by the necessity of providing for its defence. But for the doubts and jealousies of the sister service, the German Navy might years ago have enjoyed the benefits of that prolongation of the Canal, contemplated by Bismarck, which would have allowed its ironclads to steam from Kiel to Wilhelmshaven without putting out into the open sea.