The late general election in Germany showed results which have signally
verified Prince Bismarck's calculations on the tendencies of modern
democracy.
The Liberalists, who represent the opinions of the Manchester school,
lost a great number of seats—no less than forty-four; while signal
victories were won by the Conservatives, the Catholics, and the
Socialists. The doctrines of the Liberals were treated with unequivocal
contempt in the large cities, and several members of the party
retained their seats only through the support grudgingly given to
them by Socialist electors at the second ballot. At the first ballot
the Socialists testified to their absolute hatred of the Liberals
by voting for Conservative or Catholic candidates in constituencies
where they were not strong enough to carry candidates of their own;
but at the second ballot they dictated terms to the sorely mortified
party whose overthrow they had caused, and agreed to assist Liberals
who promised to vote for a repeal of the law against Socialists. The
Liberals swallowed the leek and made the promise, though throughout
the electoral campaign they had denounced the Socialists as the worst
enemies of human progress. The Socialists, on their side, went to the
polls as if obeying the injunction which Ferdinand Lassalle laid upon
working-men eighteen months before his death[27]: “I have always been
a Republican, but, promise me, my friends, that if ever a struggle
should take place between the Divine Right Monarchy and the miserable
Liberal middle-class, you will fight on the King's side against the
_bourgeois_.”
German Conservatives have regretted that Lassalle died at least six
years too soon, for it is supposed that if he had witnessed the
triumphs of Bismarck's policy and the unification of Germany after
the war of 1870, he would have used his influence over the working
classes to make them trust the great and successful champion of their
nation. This, however, is doubtful, for the post-mortem examination of
Lassalle's body revealed that he had in him the germs of disease by
which his intellect would have gradually deteriorated. He had become a
voluptuary before he died, and had he lived a little longer he might
simply have been dazzled by the conqueror s glory, and have lost his
influence by accepting honors and favors too readily as the reward of
his homage. On the other hand, if Lassalle had remained head-whole
and heart-whole, Bismarck and he could not have lived together. Both
giants, one must have succumbed to the other after some formidable
encounter. The two spent an afternoon in company at the height of
the _Conflikt-Zeit_, when Bismarck was wrestling with the Liberal
opposition in the Prussian Parliament. They smoked and drank beer,
laughed like old friends over the events of the day, talked long and
with deepening earnestness over the world's future, and separated
well pleased with each other. But Lassalle is believed to have shown
his hand a little too openly to his host. There were points where the
policy of the two blended, and one point of ultimate convergence might
have been found if Lassalle's only object had been to seek it; but his
personal ambition was at least equal to his zeal as a reformer. “He is
a composer,” said Edward Lasker, “who will never think his music well
executed unless he conducts the orchestra.”
It is well to remember what were the views of Lassalle about Germany,
and how much they differed from those of his inferior successor in
the leadership of the Socialists, Karl Marx. In a historical tragedy,
“Franz von Sickingen,” which Lassalle published in 1859, he declared
that “the sword is the god of this world, the word made flesh, the
instrument of all great deliverances, the necessary tool of all useful
undertakings.” In the 3d scene of Act III. Franz von Sickingen, the
hero in whom Lassalle portrays himself, exclaims against the sordid
ambition of petty princes, adding: “How are you to make the soul of a
giant enter into the bodies of pigmies?... what we want is a strong
and united Germany free from the yoke of Rome—an empire under an
evangelical emperor.”[28]
This has been also the wish of Bismarck's life—and this wish he has
realised; the obstacles he had to surmount before achieving success
offer a most curious subject for study. The political difficulties have
furnished matter for many books, but something remains to be said of
the social difficulties.
“A conqueror's enemies are not all in front of him,” said Wallenstein,
and we know Voltaire's apologue about that “grain of sand in the eye
which checked Alexander's march.” Bismarck, like other great fighters,
has had to shake off friends—real friends—tugging at his arm. He has
had to foil boudoir cabals more powerful than Parliamentary majorities.
He has got into those little scrapes which Lord Beaconsfield compared
to sudden fogs in a park: “You may have the luck to walk straight
home through them, or they may cause you to go miles out of your way
and to miss anything, from a dinner to an appointment on which all
your prospects depend.” Bismarck again has known the worry and agony
of being unable to convince persons of thick head or of timorous
conscience, whose co-operation was absolutely indispensable to him.
Lord Chesterfield well said that the manner of a man's discourse is of
more weight than the matter, for there are more people with ears to be
charmed than with minds to understand. Bismarck is no charmer; he has
had to contend with the disadvantage of cumbersome speech moved by
slow thoughts, and of a temper inflammable as touchwood. For many years
he was considered by those who knew him best to be more of a trooper
than a politician.
Lord Ampthill once found him reading Andersen's story on the Ugly
Duckling, which relates how a duck hatched a swan's egg, and how the
cygnet was jeered at by his putative brethren, the ducklings, until one
day a troop of lordly swans, floating down the river, saluted him as
one of their race. “Ah,” observed Bismarck, “it was a long time before
my poor mother could be persuaded that in hatching me she had not
produced a goose.”
Bismarck was born in 1814, and at the age of seventeen went to the
University of Göttingen. Here he joined a _Verbindung_—one of those
student associations whose members wear flat caps of many colors,
hold interminable _Kneipen_ or beer-carousals, and fight rapier duels
with the members of other clubs. Bismarck's _Verbindung_ was select,
containing none but the sons of noblemen, and it called itself by
Kotzebue's name, out of antagonism to a Liberal club which was named
after Karl Sand, Kotzebue's murderer.[29] There hangs in one of the
rooms at Varzin, a pencil sketch of young Otto Bismarck fighting
with a “Sandist” who was the great swashbuckler of his party. Both
combatants are dressed, as is still the custom for such meetings, in
padded leather jackets, tall hats, iron spectacles with wire netting
over the glasses, and they wear thick stocks covering all the neck and
throat. Only parts of the face are exposed, the object of the fighters
being not to inflict deadly injuries, but to slit each other's cheeks,
or to snip off the tip of a nose. Bismarck's adversary, named Konrad
Koch, was a towering fellow with such a long arm that he had all the
advantage; and after a few passes he snicked Bismarck along the left
cheek down to the chin, making a wound of which the scar can be seen
to this day. But before the duel he had bragged that he would make the
“Kotzebuan” wear the “Sandist” color, red—and, laughing triumphantly at
the fulfilment of his threat, as he saw Bismarck drenched in blood, he
so infuriated the latter that the Kotzebuan insisted on having another
bout. This was contrary to the regulations of student duels, which
always end with first blood, so Bismarck had to take patience until
his cut was healed, and until he could prove his fitness to meet Koch
again, by worsting a number of Sandists. The rapier duels were, and are
now, regular Saturday afternoon pastimes, taking place in a gymnastic
room, and the combatants on either side being drawn by lot; but it is
a rule that, when a student has beaten an opponent, he may decline
duelling with him again until this antagonist works his way up to him,
so to say, by prevailing over all other swordsmen who may care to
challenge him. Bismarck had to fight nearly half-a-dozen duels before
he could cross swords with Koch again, but on this second occasion he
dealt the Sandist a master-slash on the face and remained victorious.
This series of duels had some important consequences. A satirical
paper called _Der Floh_ (_The Flea_), which was published at Hanover,
inserted an article against student fights, and pretty clearly
designated young Bismarck as a truculent fellow. Bismarck went to
Hanover, called on the editor of the paper, and holding up to his nose
the cutting of the offensive article, requested him to swallow it.
One version of the story says that the editor's mouth was forced open
and that the article was thrust into it in a pellet; another version
states that a scrimmage ensued and that the student, after giving and
receiving blows and kicks, was hustled out of the office. But it is
certain that the affair reached the ears of the Rector of Göttingen
University, who sent for Bismarck and rebuked him in a paternal way for
his pugnacity. Bismarck did not accept the reproof. To the Rector's
astonishment he made an indignant speech, expressing his detestation
of Frenchmen, French principles and revolutionary Germans, whom he
called Frenchmen in disguise. He prayed that the sword of Joshua might
be given him to exterminate all these. “Well, my young friend, you
are preparing great trouble for yourself,” remarked the Rector, with
a shake of the head; “your opinions are those of another age.” “Good
opinions re-flower like the trees after winter,” was Bismarck's answer.
At this time, however, Bismarck's principles were not yet well set.
The son of a Pomeranian squire, he had the _Junker's_ abhorrence of
Radicals, and from the study of J. J. Rousseau's “Emile,” he had
derived the idea that all cities are nests of corruption. Though he
execrated Rousseau's name, he was so far his disciple as to look
upon country life as the perfect life; in fact, he was an idealist,
and he was often sadly at a loss for arguments with which to refute
the reasoning of political opponents. This tormented him, for he did
not wish to be a man like that Colonel in Hacklander's “Tale of the
Regiment,” who said of a philosopher: “I felt the fellow was going
to convince me, so I kicked him down stairs.” From Göttingen he
went to the University of Berlin, and there vexed his soul in many
disputations, without acquiring the consciousness that he was growing
really strong in logic. At last he heard in a Lutheran church a sermon
which left a lasting impression on his mind. He has often spoken of it
since as “my Pentecost.”
The preacher was treating of infidelity in connection with Socialist
aspirations, and he observed that men could not live without faith
in some ideal. Those men who reject the doctrine of immortality and
of a world after this, delude themselves with visions of an earthly
paradise. The Socialist's dream is nothing else; and his shibboleths
of equality, fraternity and co-operation, are but a paraphrase of the
Christian's “love one another.” Love is not necessary to the fulfilment
of the Socialist's schemes than it is to the realisation of one's image
of Heaven. A world in which there shall be no poor—in which each man
shall receive according to his needs and work to the full measure of
his capacities, having no individual advancement to expect from his
industry, but content to see other men, less capable, fed out of the
surplus of his earnings—what would this be but a paradise purged of all
human passions—envy, jealousy, covetousness and sloth? Unless there
were universal love, how could all the members of a Socialist community
be expected to work to their utmost? And if every man did not work his
best, so that the weak and the clumsy might live at the expense of the
strong and the clever, how could the community exist?
This was the substance of the sermon which Bismarck heard, and those
words “the Socialist's Earthly Paradise” have remained fixed in his
memory ever since as a terse demonstration as to the inanity of
Socialism. State Socialism is of course another matter, and very early
in life Bismarck came to the conclusion that the wise ruler must try to
make himself popular by humoring the fancies of the people, whatever
they may be, and however they may vary. If he can divert the people's
fancies towards the objects of his own preference, so much the better,
and it must be part of his business to endeavor to do this. But if
he cannot lead, he must seem to lead while letting himself be pushed
onward. “The people must be led without knowing it,” said Napoleon in a
letter which he wrote to Fouché to decline Barrère's offer of pamphlets
extolling the Emperor's policy. Bismarck has described universal
suffrage as “the government of a house by its nursery;” but he added:
“You can do anything with children if you play with them.”
It has been one of the secrets of Bismarck's strength that he has never
let himself be imposed upon by inflated talk about the “majesty of
the People.” The Democracy has been in his eyes a mere multitude of
mediocrities. “_Cent imbéciles ne font pas un sage_,” said Voltaire,
and though La Rochefoucauld inclines to the contrary opinion in some
of his well-known aphorisms,[30] it is a provable fact that the only
successful rulers are those who have had eyes enabling them to analyse
the component elements of a crowd. As sportsmen delight in tales of
the chase, and soldiers in anecdotes of war, so Bismarck has always
taken a peculiar pleasure in stories showing how one man by presence of
mind has mastered an angry mob, or outwitted it, or coaxed it into good
humor. A sure way to make him laugh is to tell him such stories, and it
must be added that he likes them all the better when they exhibit the
_bon enfant_ side of the popular character.
During the siege of Paris, whilst he was at Versailles, a pass was
applied for by a relation of M. Cuvillier Fleury, the eminent critic
and member of the French Academy. The Chancellor at once gave the
pass, saying: “M. Fleury is an admirable man. I know a capital story
about him.” The story was this: M. Fleury, who had been tutor to the
Duc d'Aumale, was in 1848 Private Secretary to the Duchess of Orleans.
When the revolution of February broke out, a rabble invaded the Palais
Royal, where the Princess resided, and began smashing works of art,
pictures, statuettes, and nicknacks. All the household was seized with
panic except M. Fleury, who, throwing off his coat, smeared his face
and hands with coal, caught up a poker, and rushed among the mob,
shouting: “Here, I'll show you where the best pictures are.” So saying,
he plied his poker upon furniture of no value, and, thus winning the
confidence of the roughs, was able to lead them out of the royal
apartments into the kitchen regions, where they spent their patriotic
fury upon the contents of the larder and cellar. The sequel of this
story is very droll, and Bismarck relates it with great relish. A few
days after he had saved the Palais Royal, M. Fleury was recognised in
the streets as the Duchess of Orleans's Secretary, and mobbed. He was
being somewhat roughly hustled when a hulking water-carrier elbowed his
way through the throng and roared: “Let that man be! He is one of the
right sort. He led us to the pillage of the Palais Royal the other day!”
Bismarck once told Lord Bloomfield that he had the highest opinion of
Charles Mathews, the actor. It turned out that this opinion was not
based on any particular admiration for Mathews's professional talent,
but on his coolness during a theatrical riot which Bismarck witnessed
during a visit to London. Mathews was manager of a theatre, and for
want of pay, part of his company had struck work. It was impossible to
perform the piece advertised, so pit and gallery grew clamorous. In
the midst of the hubbub, Mathews came before the curtain and jovially
announced that, although he must disappoint the audience of the comedy
which they had expected, he was ready to perform anything they pleased,
provided only that he could satisfy the majority. A voice from the
gallery sang out: “'Box and Cox.'” “Well, that is an excellent play,”
said Mathews gravely, “but before my honorable friend puts a motion
for its performance, I think he should explain to the audience why
he prefers it to all others.” This turned a general laugh against
the “mover,” who of course became bashful and could explain nothing.
Mathews then made a chaffing little speech on the comparative merits of
various plays, and at length withdrew, saying that as he could discern
nothing like unanimity among the audience, he thought it best that they
should all agree to meet him another day, but that meanwhile those who
liked to apply for their money at the doors should have it. It seems
that a number of men had come to the theatre on purpose to create a
disturbance, but Mathews's banter put the whole audience into good
humor, and the house was emptied without any riot.[31]
Bismarck has another favorite story about mobs. When the Grand
Duke Constantine of Russia went as Viceroy to Poland in 1862, he
was received in the streets of Warsaw with cries of “Long live the
Constitution!” A Prussian, Count Perponcher, who was present, asked a
vociferating Pole who “Constitutiona” was? “I suppose it's his wife,”
answered the Pole. “Well, but he has children,” said Perponcher,
“so you should cry: “Hurrah for Constitutiona and the little
Constitutions,”” which the Pole at once did. Hearing Bismarck tell this
anecdote—not for the first time probably—his son-in-law Count Rantzau,
once said: “You can make a mob cry anything by paying a few men among
them a mark apiece to start the shouting.” “_Nein_, but you need not
waste your marks,“ demurred the Chancellor, ”_es gibt immer Esel genug,
die schreien unbezahlt_.” (There are always asses to bray gratis).
The knowledge of how men can be swayed involves an accurate estimate of
the influence which oratory exercises over them. Bismarck, as we have
said, is not eloquent, and it is one of his maxims that a man of many
words cannot be a man of action. “The best Parliamentary speeches”—he
said, in conversation with M. Pouyer Quertier about M. Thiers—“are
those which men have delivered to criticise other men's work, or to set
forth what they themselves were _going_ to do, or to apologize for what
they have left undone.”
Action speaks for itself. “When I hear of ministers in parliamentary
countries making long speeches to defend their policy, it always
strikes me that there has been very little policy; and I am reminded
of those big dishes of stew which our frugal German housewives serve
up on Mondays with the remnants of Sunday's dinner—lots of cabbage and
carrots, making a great show, with small scraps of meat.”
Action fascinates the masses as much as speech,[32] for it demands
courage, which is of all virtues the rarest.[33] Pastor Stocker, of
anti-Semitic renown, relates that Bismarck once asked him whether
there were any text in the Bible saying, “All men are cowards?” “No,
you are thinking of the text: 'The Cretans are all liars,'” said
Stocker. “Liars—cowards, it comes to much the same thing,” answered
Bismarck; “but it's not true only of the Cretans;” and he then asked
Stocker whether the latter had met many thoroughly brave men. The Court
pastor replied that there might be several definitions of courage; but
Bismarck interrupted him with a boisterous laugh: “Oh, yes, the moral
courage of letting one's face be smacked rather than fight a duel; I
have met plenty of men who had that.”
Bismarck's own courage is that of a mastiff, and in early life it
often got him into scrapes. We have remarked how some of these might
have been detrimental to his whole career. Whilst he was doing his
One Year Voluntariate in the Prussian Light Infantry, he paid a visit
to Schleswig, which was then under Danish rule. One day, wearing
his uniform, he was seated in a _Brauerei_ when he overheard two
gentlemen holding a political conversation and expressing extreme
Liberal sentiments. With amazing impudence he walked up to their
table and requested that: “If they must talk nonsense, they would use
an undertone.” The two Schleswigers told the _Junker_ to mind his
own business, whereupon Bismarck caught up a beer-jug and dashed its
contents in their faces. This affair caused very serious trouble.
Bismarck was taken into custody and ordered out of the country. On
joining his regiment he was placed under arrest again, and there was
an interchange of diplomatic notes about him. He only escaped severe
punishment through powerful intercession being employed at Court on his
behalf.
Some years later when Bismarck had been appointed to the Legation at
Frankfort (a post which he owed to the delight with which Frederick
William IV. had read his bluff speeches in the Prussian Lower House),
he was present at a public ball, where a member of the French Corps
Législatif, M. Jouvois de Clancy, was pointed out to him as a noted
fire-eater. This gentleman had been a Republican, but had turned his
coat after the _coup d'état_. He was a big man with dandified airs,
but evidently not much accustomed to society, for he had brought his
hat—not a compressible one—into the ball-room; and in waltzing he held
it in his left hand. The sight of the big Frenchman careering round the
room with his hat extended at arm's length was too much for Bismarck's
sense of fun; so, as M. Jouvois revolved past him, he dropped a copper
coin into the hat. One may imagine the scene. The Frenchman, turning
purple, stopped short in his dancing, led back his partner to her
place, and then came with flashing eyes to demand satisfaction. There
would have been assault and battery on the spot if friends had not
interposed; but on the following day the Frenchman and the Prussian met
with pistols and the former was wounded. Unfortunately for Bismarck,
M. Jouvois knew Louis Schneider, the ex-comedian, who had become Court
Councillor to Frederick William IV., and was that eccentric monarch's
favorite companion. Schneider had but a moderate fondness for Bismarck,
and he represented his act of _gaminerie_ in so unfavorable a light to
the King that his Majesty instructed the Foreign Office to read the
newly appointed diplomatist a severe lecture.
Bismarck has never liked Frenchmen. His feelings towards them savor
of contempt in their expression, but there is more of hatred than of
genuine disdain in them, and much of this hatred has its source in
religious fervor. Bismarck is a believer. The sceptical levity of
most Frenchmen, the profanity and licentiousness of their literature,
their want of reverence for all things, whether of Divine or of human
ordinance—all this shocks the statesman, who still reads his Bible
with a simple faith, and who has attentively noted the doom which is
threatened to nations who are disobedient, During the Franco-German
War, Countess Bismarck, hearing that her husband had lost the
travelling-bag in which he carried his Bible, sent him another with
this naïve letter: “As I am afraid you may not be able to buy a Bible
in France, I send you two copies of the Scriptures, and have marked the
passages in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel _which relate to France_—also
the verse in the Psalms which says that 'The unbeliever shall be rooted
out.'”
Carlyle saw affinities between the character of Cromwell and that of
Bismarck, but the only resemblance between the two men is physical.
One may question how far Cromwell was a believer: he certainly had as
little respect for sacred words as he had for cathedrals and kings,
and he juggled with texts of Scripture as it suited his purpose.
Bismarck has never canted. His acknowledgments of Divine mercies have
only been expressed where national triumphs were concerned—never where
his own personal enterprises had to be lauded. On the other hand, he
has evinced strong religious scruples under circumstances when few
men would have credited him with such. He has spent more sleepless
hours from thinking over the deposition of George V. of Hanover than
Cromwell did from fretting over Charles I.'s execution. He reconciled
that deposition with the dictates of his reason, but not with those
of his faith in the inviolability of kings. When it had been decided
to annex Hanover, the Crown lawyers were instructed to draw up a
report of legal justifications for this measure; but when Bismarck had
read half through this document, he threw it aside with irritation:
“Better nothing than that—it reminds me of Teste's Memorandum on the
confiscation of the estates of the Orleans family.”[34]
Again Bismarck, while making it the chief occupation of his life to
study how the Plebs might be managed, has never stooped to such immoral
means for this purpose as the French officials of the Second Empire
employed. He was deeply interested in Napoleon III.'s experiments
with universal suffrage. The whole system of plébiscites, official
candidatures, prefectoral newspapers, and electoral districts, so
arranged that peasant votes should neutralise those of Radical
working-men, seemed to him “very pretty,” as he once told a disgusted
Republican refugee. But the encouragement given by De Morny, De
Persigny, and others to every kind of immorality that could amuse the
people—frivolous newspapers, improper novels and plays, gambling clubs,
and outrageous fashions in dress—this was a very different affair. De
Morny was fond of quoting the anecdote about Alcibiades having cut off
the tail of his dog to give the Athenians something to talk about,
and during Bismarck's short stay in Paris as Ambassador in 1862, he
and the Prussian statesman had more than one conversation about the
art of ruling. Bismarck had the frankness to say that he looked upon
the comedies of Dumas the younger, and indeed on most French plays of
the lighter sort, as grossly corrupting to the public morals. “_Panem
et circenses_,” smiled De Morny. “_Panem et saturnalia_,” muttered
Bismarck.
Another point upon which De Morny and Bismarck could not agree,
was about the qualities that are requisite in a public servant. De
Morny cared nothing for character. The men whom he recommended for
prefectships or posts in the diplomatic service were, for the most
part, adventurers—brilliant, witty, _diseurs de rien_ and cajolers
of the other sex. “A French Ambassador,” he maintained, “should
always consider himself accredited _auprès des reines_.” Bismarck
loathes ladies' men: and he had the poorest opinion of Napoleon III.'s
diplomatists. His own ideal of a State functionary is the blameless
man without debts or entanglements—laborious, but not pushing,
well-educated but not abounding in ideas, a man in all things obedient.
His sneering judgment on plenipotentiaries like M. Benedetti and the
Duc de Gramont is well known. He called them “dancing dogs without
collars.” They never seemed to have a master, he complained, “but stood
up on their hind legs and performed their antics without authority
from man alive. If they barked, you were sure to hear a voice from
Paris crying to them to be quiet. If they fawned you might expect to
see them receive some sly kick, warning them that they ought to be up
and biting.” Bismarck conceived some liking and respect for Napoleon
III., whom he saw to be better than his _entourage_. Had the Emperor's
health remained good, the war of 1870 would doubtless never have taken
place; but so early as 1862 Bismarck perceived that Napoleon III.'s
bodily ailments were causing an indolence of mind that left the Emperor
at the mercy of intriguing counsellors; and what he observed in his
subsequent visits to Paris in 1867 and to Plombières in 1868, confirmed
these impressions. His ceaseless study of France as the great enemy
that would have to be coped with soon, moreover added to his deep and
moody detestation of that country. When the formal declaration of war
by France reached Berlin in July 1870, Count Bismarck was staying for
a few days at Varzin. The news was communicated to him by a telegram
which was put into his hands just as he was returning from a drive. He
at once sprang into his carriage, to go to the railway station, and
on his way through the village of Wussow, he saw the parish minister
standing at the door of his manse. “I said nothing to him,” ejaculated
Bismarck, in relating the story long afterwards to some friends,
“but I just made a sign as of two sabre-cuts crosswise, and he quite
understood.”
The pastor of Wussow understood the sign of the cross in sword-cuts to
mean crusade, and as such the war against France was viewed by all good
Prussians. Bismarck and the village clergyman were at one in regarding
the French people as the Beast of the Apocalypse, and Paris as Babylon.
Such sentiments are not incompatible with Christian piety, for there
must be militants in the Church. But where Bismarck ceases to be a
Christian in the common acceptance of that term, is in his exaggerated
contempt for almost all men as individuals.[35]
His want of charity—we do not of course mean in almsgiving, for
in this respect he is as generous as the Princess, his wife,
allows him to be—is the most unamiable and disconcerting trait
in his nature. Disconcerting because misanthrophy is an evidence
of moral short-sightedness, begetting timidity and rendering a
man incapable of forming disciples to carry on his work. Without
trustfulness, a statesman can make no real friends. It may be said
that uncharitableness like Bismarck's must be the result of many
disenchantments; but a man who only keeps rooks and ravens must not
complain that all birds are black. The men who were at different times
Bismarck's most zealous helpmates—Count Harry Arnim, Herr Delbrück,
Count Stolberg and Count Eulenborg—were all discarded as soon as they
gave the smallest sign, not of mutiny, but of independence. Bismarck
would not accept advice or remonstrance from them; he required on
all occasions that blind obedience which is not loyal service, but
servility. For the same cause he would never employ Herr Edward Lasker,
whose great talents as a financier and parliamentary debater would have
been of immense value to the monarchy. He has rejected the advances
of Herr Bennigsen, the Hanoverian founder of the _Nationalverein_,
who is now leader of the National Liberals; and those of Dr. Rudolph
Gneist, who is one of the ablest politicians in Germany, but who had
the misfortune to take the wrong side during the _Conflikt-Zeit_.
Opposition, as Bismarck has often taken care to impress upon his
hearers, shall never be _regierungsfähig_ so long as he holds office.
He abominates the Parliamentary system which brings to power men who
have begun life as demagogues agitating for the abolition of this and
that, and who, afterwards, are obliged to make shameless recantations,
or to quibble away their words. The contrary system of selecting
for his assistants only men who have never sown political wild oats
is, however, compelling Bismarck to rely now on such henchmen as
Herr Von Puttkamer and Herr Hofmann. The former is the Chancellor's
brother-in-law, an excellent subordinate, supple as a glove, but with
no originality of mind or firmness that could enable him to remain
Home Minister if he were not propped up in this post. Herr Hofmann is
also a mere painstaking bureaucrat, who, if he did not hear the voice
of command, would be quite inapt to think for himself. Of late Prince
Bismarck is said to have been training his son, Count Herbert to act
as his Secretary and to take his place by-and-by. Count Herbert is a
clever man, but dynasties of _maires du palais_ have never succeeded
in any country, and it is strange Bismarck should have forgotten that
the Hohenzollern dynasty has owed its rapid rise to a respect for that
principle which he is now ignoring, namely the selection of the best
men without favoritism. If independence of mind and character have been
eyed with suspicion by the Prussian kings, as they now are by the
Chancellor, Germany would have had no Bismarck.
The popular idea of a genial, soldierly, blunt-spoken Bismarck is a
wrong one. Bismarck can be jovial among friends and good-humoredly
affable with strangers; but genial he is not. There is a sarcastic
tone in his voice which grates on the ears of all who are brought in
contact with him for the first time, and his unconcealed mistrust for
the rectitude of all public men, of no matter what country, who do not
happen to be in his good graces at the time, is too often offensive. It
must be remembered that when Bismarck has quarrelled with public men,
it has generally been because, having changed an opinion himself, he
has been unable to persuade men to do the same at a moment's notice.
Turn by turn, Free-trader and Protectionist, inclining one day to the
Russian, another to the Austrian alliance, coquetting at one time
with England, then with Italy, and even with France, he has ever been
actuated by the sole desire to use every passing wind which might push
the interest of his Government. He has declined to formulate any policy
in details, because against such a policy parties might coalesce,
whereas by veering and tacking often, he throws disunion among his
opponents. He appropriates what is best in the new designs of this or
that party, takes for his Sovereign and himself the credit of carrying
them into execution, and then leaves the original promoters with a
sense that power has gone out of them—that they have been played with,
but that they have nothing to complain of.
This policy of variations, however, has exposed Bismarck to some
cutting rebukes from loyal Prussians whose consciences were not
acrobatic. The trouble with Count Harry Arnim began when this
diplomatist—“_Der Affe_,” as he was nicknamed by his familiars—said to
Countess Von Redern, at one of the Empress Augusta's private parties,
that he had hitherto been trying to walk on his feet in Paris, but
that from “his latest instructions he gathered that he was expected
until further notice to walk on his hands.” The saying was reported to
Bismarck and made “his three hairs bristle.” “The 'Ape' has only been
employed, because we thought him quadrumanous,“ he exclaimed, and from
that moment there was war between the two men.
Another time Bismarck had to bear a snub from a young nobleman of the
House of Hatzfelt. This gentleman, being left in charge of a Legation
during the absence of the Minister, sent home a despatch embodying
views favorable to the policy which the Chancellor had, until then,
been pursuing towards the country where the attaché was residing.
But it so chanced that the Chief of the Legation had been summoned
to Berlin on purpose to receive instructions for a change of policy;
so that when the attaché's despatch arrived, it gave no pleasure in
Wilhelmstrasse, and the Chancellor spoke testily of its writer as a
”_Schafsköpf_.” Hearing this, the attaché resigned. He was a young man
of high spirit, who had many friends at Court, and it was pointed out
to the Chancellor by an august peacemaker, that the young fellow had
not been very well-treated. Somewhat grudgingly—for he does not like
to make amends—the Chancellor was induced to send his Secretary to the
ex-attaché offering to reinstate him. But the recipient of this dubious
favor drew himself up stiffly and said: “Germany has not fallen to so
low a point that she needs to be served by _Schafsköpf_; and for the
rest, you may tell the Chancellor that I have not been trained to turn
somersaults.”[36]
It has been mentioned that Bismarck has had to contend with many a
boudoir cabal. The Empress Augusta's long antipathy to him is no
secret, and the Chancellor has never had to congratulate himself much
on the friendliness of the Crown Prince's and Princess's circle. The
ill-will of royal ladies enlists that of many other persons influential
in society; but it stands to Bismarck's honor that he has never used
newspapers to combat these drawing-room foes. The revelations made to
the public some years since by an ex-member of the “Reptile's Bureau”
were no doubt in the main true, and they showed that the Chancellor had
raised the art of “nobbling” the Press to a high pitch of perfection.
Not only had he, all over Germany, newspapers supported in part out of
the Secret Service Fund and inspired wholly by the Press Bureau, but
he has been accused of employing hirelings on the staffs of newspapers
reputed as independent, and through these he was in a position to
procure the insertion of articles in foreign journals, these effusions
being afterwards reprinted in German papers as genuine expressions of
foreign opinion.
All this constituted a very powerful organization, which the Chancellor
might have used with telling effect in fighting society caballers.
But while he has not scrupled to direct the heaviest artillery of his
newspapers and not unfrequently torpedo attacks against open political
opponents, he would never let his difficulties with “_die Wespen_” as
he called society aggressors, be made the subjects of Press comments.
Newspapers, guilty of assailing members of the Imperial family or of
the Court household, have been unsparingly prosecuted by his orders.
“_Er is kein Journaliste!_” exclaimed a too zealous partisan-writer,
who had gone to the Chancellerie with a proposal for creating in
Berlin a newspaper like the Paris _Figaro_, “_er könne sich nicht
auf die feine Malice zu verstehen_.” This may be rendered as, “He
won't throw mud;” and it is no small compliment to the integrity of a
statesman, whom his enemies are wont to describe as more astute than
Machiavelli, and more unscrupulous than Richelieu.[37]
In the autumn of the present year the Pope gave a commission to the
painter Lenbach to paint a portrait of Prince Bismarck. The Chancellor
agreed to sit; the artist went several times to Varzin, and people have
been asking ever since what is the meaning of this strange fancy of Leo
XIII.'s to have a portrait of the arch-enemy of Rome, the formidable
champion of the Kulturkampf. A French journalist has suggested that
there is at the Vatican an artistic Index Expurgatorius—a _Galerie des
Réprouvés_—and that Bismarck's portrait is to hang there in the place
of honor, between that of Dositheus the Samaritan, and Isaac Laquedem
the Wandering Jew.
It is more likely that the Pope aspires to some political
_rapprochement_ with Germany, and if he have such a hope it must have
come to him from the knowledge that the Chancellor would not object
to a reconciliation. But if Bismarck consents to make peace with the
Vatican, and to find some official post for Herr Windhorst, it would
not be that any of his own private Lutheran prejudices against Rome
have vanished. He is a doughty Protestant in whose religion there is
no variableness, but he may veer on the Kulturkampf as he did on that
of free trade, simply because, having failed, after doing his best, to
crush the Catholics, he will see no use in recommencing the struggle.
And whatever is useless seems to Bismarck a thing which should not be
attempted, indeed, many of his great triumphs hitherto have been won
by shaking hands with yesterday's enemy, and saying “Let us two stand
together.” Before long the world may see Prince Bismarck recognise
the Roman Catholic Church as one of the greatest living forces of
Continental Conservatism, and enlist its services in the work of
“dishing” both Liberals and Socialists. It is significant that in
one of his few autumn speeches, Bismarck was heard quoting Joseph De
Maistre's dictum about the Soldier and the Priest being the sentries of
civilisation.—_Temple Bar._