Page "History of Schleswig-Holstein" Paragraph 153

This was convenient for Palmerston, as the government knew that Britain was almost powerless on the continent and had no chance of countering Prussia's military or manufacturing might.

Meanwhile, in 1864, the Danish royal family, impressed by Victoria's trappings of Empire, arranged the marriage of the Princess to the future Edward VII, so helping to reverse the Anglo-German alliance, which led to the 1914 war.

Niall Ferguson in Empire quotes Kitchener in 1914: " We haven't an army, and we have taken on the foremost military power in Europe ".