It happened that Bismarck, when the telegram arrived, was dining with Roon and Moltke, who had both been summoned to Berlin.  The three men were gloomy and depressed; they felt that their country had been humiliated, and they saw no prospect of revenge.  This feeling was increased when Bismarck read aloud the telegram to his two colleagues.  These repeated and impatient demands, this intrusion on the King’s privacy, this ungenerous playing with his kindly and pacific disposition, stirred their deepest indignation; to them it seemed that Benedetti had been treated with a consideration he did not deserve; the man who came with these proposals should have been repulsed with more marked indignation.  But in the suggestion that the facts should be published, Bismarck saw the opportunity he had wished.  He went into the next room and drafted a statement; he kept to the very words of the original telegram, but he left out much, and arranged it so that it should convey to the reader the impression, not of what had really occurred, but of what he would have wished should happen.  With this he returned, and as he read it to them, Roon and Moltke brightened; here at last was an answer to the French insults; before, it sounded like a “Chamade” (a retreat), now it is a “Fanfare,” said Moltke.  “That is better,” said Roon.  Bismarck asked a few questions about the army.  Roon assured him that all was prepared; Moltke, that, though no one could ever foretell with certainty the result of a great war, he looked to it with confidence; they all knew that with the publication of this statement the last prospect of peace would be gone.  It was published late that night in a special edition of the North German Gazette, and at the same time a copy was sent from the Foreign Office to all German embassies and legations.

It is not altogether correct to call this (as has often been done) a falsification of the telegram.  Under no circumstances could Bismarck have published in its original form the confidential message to him from his sovereign; all he had to do was to communicate to the newspapers the facts of which he had been informed, or so much of the facts as it seemed to him desirable that the public should know.  He, of course, made the selection in such a form as to produce upon public opinion the particular effect which for the purposes of his policy he wished.  What to some extent justifies the charge is that the altered version was published under the heading, “Ems.”  The official statement was supplemented by another notice in the North German Gazette, which was printed in large type, and stated that Benedetti had so far forgotten all diplomatic etiquette that he had allowed himself to disturb the King in his holidays, to intercept him on the promenade, and to attempt to force demands upon him.  This was untrue, but on this point the telegram to Bismarck had been itself incorrect.  Besides this, Bismarck doubtless saw to it that the right instructions should be given to the writers for the Press.