The convention of Olmuetz was the most complete humiliation to which any European State has ever been subjected.  Prussia had undertaken a policy, and with the strong approval of the great majority of the nation had consistently maintained it for over a year; Austria had required that this policy should be surrendered; the two States had armed; the ultimatum had been sent, everything was prepared for war, and then Prussia surrendered.  The cause for this was a double one.  It was partly that Prussia was really not strong enough to meet the coalition of Austria and Russia, but it was also that the King was really of two minds; he was constitutionally unable to maintain against danger a consistent course of policy.

Bismarck was one of the few men who defended the action of the Ministry.  In the ablest of all his speeches he took up the gauntlet, and exposed all the weakness and the dangers of Radowitz’s policy.  This was not a cause in which Prussia should risk its existence.  Why should they go to war in order to subject Prussia not to the Princes but to the Chambers of the smaller States?  A war for the Union would, he said, remind him of the Englishman who had a fight with the sentry in order that he might hang himself in the sentry-box, a right which he claimed for himself and every free Briton.  It was the duty of the councillors of the King to warn him from a policy which would bring the State to destruction.

“Still I would not shrink, from the war; I would advise it, were anyone able to prove to me the necessity for it, or to point out a worthy end which could be attained by it and in no other way.  Why do great States wage war nowadays?  The only sound principle of action for a great State is political egoism and not Romanticism, and it is unworthy of a great State to fight for any matter which does not concern its own interests.  Shew us, gentlemen, an object worthy of war and you have my vote.  It is easy for a statesman in his office or his chamber to blow the trumpet with the breath of popularity and all the time to sit warming himself by his fireside, while he leaves it to the rifleman, who lies bleeding on the snow, whether his system attains victory and glory.  Nothing is easier; but woe to the statesman who at such a time does not look about for a reason for the war which will be valid when the war is over.  I am convinced you will see the questions which now occupy us in a different light a year hence, when you look back upon them through a long perspective of battle-fields and conflagrations, misery and wretchedness.  Will you then have the courage to go to the peasant by the ashes of his cottage, to the cripple, to the childless father, and say:  ’You have suffered much, but rejoice with us, the Union is saved.  Rejoice with us, Hassenpflug is no longer Minister, Bayernhofer rules in Hesse.’”

Eloquent words; but what a strange comment on them his own acts were to afford.  In 1850 Prussia