If now your Majesty informs me "_that now you mean to persist in complete neutrality_," and if, on this occasion, you refer us to your Nation, who are said to exclaim with sound common sense: "Acts of violence have been done by the Turks, the Turk has good friends in large numbers, and the Emperor has done us no harm"--I do not understand you. Certainly I should understand this language if I heard it from the Kings of Hanover or of Saxony. But I have, hitherto, looked upon Prussia as one of the Great Powers which, since the peace of 1815, have been guarantors of treaties, guardians of civilisation, defenders of the right, the real arbiters of the Nations; and for my part I have felt the divine responsibility of this sacred office, without undervaluing at the same time the heavy obligation, not unconnected with danger, which it imposes on me. If you, dear Sir and Brother, abdicate these obligations, you have also abdicated that position for Prussia. And should such an example find imitators, then the civilisation of Europe would be delivered up to the play of winds; right will then no longer find a champion, the oppressed will find no longer an umpire. Let not your Majesty believe that what has been said in this letter is aimed at persuading you to change your resolves; it flows from the affectionate heart of a sister, who could not pardon herself, were she not, at so weighty a moment, to let you see into her inmost soul. So little is it my intention to desire to win you over to our view, that nothing has grieved me more than the suspicion, expressed in your name by General von der Groeben, that England had desired to seduce you from your purpose by opening a prospect of advantages to be gained. The baselessness of such a supposition is evident from the Treaty itself which had been offered to you, and whose most important clause consisted in the promise of the contracting parties, _not to desire in any case to derive from the War any advantage for themselves_. Your Majesty could not have given a more powerful proof of your unselfishness than by the very fact of attaching your signature to this Treaty. To come to a close. You suppose that War may already have been declared; you express, however, at the same time, the hope that it may not already have actually broken out. I cannot unfortunately hold out any hope that the sentence will be followed by any stay of execution. Shakespeare's words: "Beware Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in, Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee,"