Of Lord Granville's account of the mediation and its failure
we have given an outline elsewhere. It was, as is usual with him, most happily phrased so as to give offence to neither party, and yet not so as to appear watery and unmeaning. He added, what has been much commented on, that the Government had received absolutely no official information of the course taken by the negotiations, and the manner in which they were broken off or the circumstances attending them, which is interpreted by some of the Tory organs as a deliberate slight to England, but is in all pro- bability simply due to the ordinary delays of so complicated a situation. " We are now," he said, "entirely without knowledge of the means by which peace may be secured." The English Government would give any amount of pains and labour to faci- litate a peace, or to help any other power more able to bring it about, but for the moment it saw no opportunity or excuse for hopeful mediation. This is not giving much substantial basis to Mr. Gladstone's hopes.
