When I went to see Daru yesterday he opened the conversation by telling me that he had received a letter from La Valette, from which he learned that Count Bismarck had refused to consent to your suggestion that Prussia should disarm. Three reasons were, Count Daru said, given by Count Bismarck, none of which appeared to have any weight.
The first was that he could not even mention the subject to the King. This device had, Daru said, been resorted to by Count Bismarck in the affair of Luxemburg; in fact, it seemed to be the usual mode which the Count took of avoiding any discussion which he did not like; it was however the duty of Ministers to bring wholesome proposals before their Sovereign, whether the proposals were palatable or not. In fact, Daru seemed to think that if Count Bismarck himself desired to disarm, he would be able to obtain the consent of the King.
The second argument was that the neighbours of Prussia need not be uneasy at her military strength, because she was not a conquering Power. This, Count Daru thought, might have been said with reason, if Prussia had made no acquisition since 1815; but to say so now, he declared, to be simply preposterous. Prussia had shown herself to be a particularly ambitious Power, and her ambition had been already extremely successful. For his own part, he rather admired than blamed her desire to aggrandise herself, but he could not be expected to listen seriously to an assertion that her power was no cause of alarm because she was not a conquering nation.
Count Bismarck's third argument was that Prussia was not nearly so ready for war as France--that, in fact, she had only 300,000 men under arms, while France had upwards of 400,000. This, also, Count Daru thought, simply ridiculous. Prussia could, he said, at any moment, without an act of the Legislature, without a law, without even a Royal Decree, by a simple order of the Minister of War, call an immense force into the field, a force, too, of trained men, at a moment's notice. There was nothing in France like this.
Daru went on to say that Count Bismarck's arguments did not at all mend the matter. France must act as if Prussia had simply refused to disarm. How was this state of things to be dealt with?