ambassador again, and sent to tell him through the
aide-de-camp on duty that his Majesty had nothing further to
communicate to the ambassador.

Efforts have been made to represent Bismarck's "editing" of the Ems
telegram as the decisive step leading to war; and in his closing years,
when seized with the morbid desire of a partly discredited statesman to
exaggerate his influence on events, he himself sought to perpetuate this
version. He claims that the telegram, as it came from Ems, described the
incident there "as a fragment of a negotiation still pending, and to be
continued at Berlin." This claim is quite untenable. A careful perusal
of the original despatch from Ems shows that the negotiation, far from
being "still pending," was clearly described as having been closed on
that matter. That Benedetti so regarded it is proved by his returning at
once to Paris. If it could have been "continued at Berlin," he most
certainly would have proceeded thither. Finally, the words in the
original as to the King refusing Benedetti "somewhat sternly" were
omitted, and very properly omitted, by Bismarck in his abbreviated
version. Had he included those words, he might have claimed to be the
final cause of the War of 1870. As it is, his claim must be set aside as
the offspring of senile vanity. His version of the original Ems despatch
did not contain a single offensive word, neither did it alter any
statement. Abeken also admitted that his original telegram was far too
long, and that Bismarck was quite justified in abbreviating it as
he did[29].

[Footnote 29: _Heinrich Abeken_, by Hedwig Abeken, p. 375. Bismarck's
successor in the chancellory, Count Caprivi, set matters in their true
light in a speech in the Reichstag shortly after the publication of
Bismarck's _Reminiscences_.