Note 23 — Chapter XVI · THE ILLNESS OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.

Bismarck’s personal opinion of the terms of peace was that Germany asked too much or took too little. She should have either left France her territory, thereby depriving her of an incitement to revenge, or she should have broken and crushed her so utterly, that she must have been paralysed for a century. As it was, in spite of the heavy war-indemnity which Germany exacted, France in fifteen years recovered herself sufficiently to render her antagonism formidable, and as a standing inducement to a war of revenge, she had ever before her eyes the hope of recovering Alsace, Lorraine, and her lost fortresses.