was intended to draw us into the war.  I remember that I was obliged at that time, from 1853 to 1855 to alternate like a pendulum, so to speak, between Frankfort and Berlin because the late king, thanks to the confidence he had in me, used me as the real advocate of his independent policy whenever the insistence of the western powers that we too should declare war on Russia grew too strong, and the opposition of his cabinet too flabby for his liking.  Then the play was staged—­I do not know how often—­when I was called back here and ordered to write for His Majesty a more pro-Russian dispatch, and Mr. von Manteuffel resigned, and I requested to be instructed by His Majesty to follow Mr. von Manteuffel, after the dispatch was gone, into the country or anywhere else, and to induce him to resume his office.  Yet each time Prussia, as it was then constituted, was hovering on the brink of a great war.  It was exposed to the hostility of the whole of Europe, except Russia, if it refused to join in the policies of the west European powers, and, if it did, it was forced to break with Russia, possibly for a very long while, because the defection of Prussia would probably have been felt very painfully in Russia.

During the Crimean War, therefore, we were in constant danger of war.  The war lasted till 1856, when it was at last concluded by the treaty of Paris, and we found, in the Congress of Paris a sort of Canossa prepared for us, for which I should not have assumed the responsibility, and against which I vainly counseled at the time.  We were not at all obliged to play the part of a greater power than we were, and to sign the treaties made there.  But we were dancing attendance with the view of being permitted to sign the treaty.  This will not again happen to us.

That was in 1856, and as early as in 1857 the problem of Neuchatel was again threatening us with war.  This did not become generally known.  In the spring of that year I was sent to Paris by the late king to negotiate with Emperor Napoleon concerning the passage of Prussian troops in an attack upon Switzerland.  Everyone who hears this from me will know what this would have meant in case of an understanding, and that it could have become a far-reaching danger of war, and might have involved us with France as well as with other powers.  Emperor Napoleon was not unwilling to agree.  My negotiations in Paris, however, were terminated because his majesty the king in the meanwhile had come to an amicable understanding in the matter with Austria and Switzerland.  But the danger of war, we must agree, was present also during that year.

While I was on this mission in Paris, the Italian War hung in the air.  It broke out a little more than a year later and came very near drawing us into a big general war of Europe.  We went so far as to mobilize, and we should undoubtedly have taken the field, if the peace of Villafranca had not been concluded, somewhat prematurely for Austria, but just in time for ourselves, for we should have been obliged to wage this war under unfavorable circumstances.  We should have turned this war, which was an Italian affair, into a Franco-Prussian war, and its cessation, outcome, and treaty of peace would no longer have depended on us, but on the friends and enemies who stood behind us.