By PRINCE OUTISKY

(1815-1898)

[Footnote 18: This sketch was written by Prince Outisky in

1885. The Emperor William I. died in March, 1888, and his son a

few months later. The views of the young Emperor William II.,

thus advanced to the throne, did not at all coincide with those

of Bismarck, and he retired into private life in 1890. Four

years later a somewhat ostentatious reconciliation took place

between him and the emperor; but Bismarck did not return to

power, his great age perhaps incapacitating him for active

work.

As regards his early life, he was born at Schoenhausen, April 1,

1815, educated at Goettingen, Berlin, and Griefswald, and at

first entered the army. He became a member of the General Diet

in 1847, was successively ambassador to Austria, Russia, and

France, and in 1862 became Minister of the King's House and

Foreign Affairs in Prussia. He was created a count in 1865; and

in 1871, having achieved his great aim in the coronation of his

king as Emperor of United Germany at Versailles, he became

Chancellor of the Empire and Prince von Bismarck-Schoenhausen.]

[Illustration: Bismarck. [TN]]

The "aureole of unpopularity" which encircled Bismarck's brow during

four short years of inaugural premiership has, to all appearance,

vanished under the influence of unbroken success, making room throughout

the world for a confiding deference to his capacity and forethought,

that every year seems to intensify. It is he, in the belief of most

governments, who has preserved to them what never was more indispensable

for their very existence--peace in Europe. With supreme adroitness, he

avoids entanglements for himself and his country, bears many an affront

patiently before retorting, keeps up the appearance of a good

understanding after its substance has long passed away, but, when fairly

engaged in diplomatic contention, lays out his field in a manner that

insures success. People agree, therefore, that it is best to take him as

he is. And it is in the nature of man when he has once accorded that

favor to a fellow-creature, to "take him as he is," that he ends by

liking him. Thus Bismarck, of all living men the most unlikely to

succeed in the race after a world-wide popularity, is probably at this

moment the best-liked man in either hemisphere.

His own countrymen have shown a decided indisposition to admit him among

their household gods. To them he was, from the commencement of his

political career, the very embodiment of what had gradually become the

most objectionable type of Teuton existence--the unmitigated squireen or

Junker, with his poverty and arrogance, with his hunger and thirst

after position and good living, with his hatred for the upstart liberal

burgher class. "Away with the cities! I hope I may yet live to see them

levelled to the ground." Is there not a ring of many centuries of social

strife, so laboriously kept down by the reigning dynasty, in these

stupendous words, which were pronounced by Bismarck in 1847, when among

the leaders of the conservatives in the first embryo parliament of the

Prussian monarchy? And if uncongenial to the generation of Prussians

among whom he had grown up, how infinitely greater was the dislike

against him of South Germans, more gifted, as a rule, by nature, to whom

the name of Prussian is synonymous of all that is strait-laced and

overweening and unnatural and--generally inconvenient.

Little of that sentiment remains among the Germans of the present day.

Such strangers as have had the opportunity of observing the attitude of

the nation during the late celebration of his seventieth birthday, agree

in declaring them to have been spontaneous, enthusiastic, and at times

almost aggressive. Some tell us, to be sure, that the farther from

Berlin the more gushing has been the ecstasy. The electors of Professor

Virchow and of Herr Loewe, in whose electoral districts a torchlight

procession on the eve of Bismarck's birthday had to elbow its way

through immense crowds, must have kept at home. The municipality of

Berlin, a model body of civic administrators, sent a birthday letter to

their "honorary citizen," but abstained, with proper self-respect, from

tendering their congratulations through a deputation. No Berlin citizen

of any importance had a hand in the management of the procession. Yet,

if thousands kept aloof, tens of thousands shared the national

enthusiasm--students of universities chiefly, but older men too, even in

distrustful, radical Berlin. And as for South Germany, where the gospel

of protection seems, perhaps, to be more firmly believed in than any

other, we read of trains to Berlin taken by storm, banquets,

processions, chorus-singing--of real, heartfelt, rapturous

effervescence.

There cannot be a shadow of doubt that, to numberless non-Prussians at

any rate, the new era of German unity has brought a symbol of greatness

not before known, and that they worship in Bismarck the hero who has

given them a country to love, who has delivered them from the pettiness

and self-satisfaction of Philistinism.

Now, if this be so--if, indeed, the countries of the world at large, and

Germany in particular, acknowledge him almost affectionately as the

leading statesman of the day, would it not be an interesting study to

examine the degree of merit due to him personally, the character of the

present administration, and what lasting good or lasting evil may be

expected from this new phase of European politics? The subject, through

its weight and its bulk alike, excludes full treatment within the limits

of an essay. Nevertheless, since it intertwines itself with nearly every

other question of moment, a few remarks by an outsider may be

acceptable.

[Illustration: Proclamation of the German Empire at Versailles.]

None but the incorrigibly childish can be inclined to ascribe to good

luck a prosperous career extending over near twenty-three years, spent

under the fiercest glare of the world's sunshine. No minister of any

age was more bitterly assailed or opposed, even at the court of which he

is now the acknowledged major domus in the manner of the Pepins and

other Thum-Meiers of the Frankish monarchy. The king's brother, Prince

Charles, detested the innovator whose opinions on the necessity of

Austria being removed from membership in a remodelled German

confederation, had for years leaked out from the despatch-boxes of the

Foreign Office. Even the Junkers, whose dauntless leader he had been

before and after the revolutionary events of 1848, shrank instinctively

from a man who could not be credited with veneration for the Holy

Alliance. It is remembered in Berlin that, on the nomination of one of

them, well at court, a diplomatist of some standing, to the post of

under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, the new member of the

government confessed to his friends that he accepted the post _in spite_

of Bismarck's "foreign" policy, and only in consideration of his

contempt for parliamentarism. The queen, on the other hand, brought up

in principles of constitutional government, and strongly attached to the

English alliance, viewed with horror the bold pugilist who was daily

assailing, not the persons only of the people's representatives, but

some of the very foundations of every parliamentary edifice. Yet fiercer

was the animosity shown him on every occasion by the Princess Royal of

England, whose father had early taught her that a throne, to be safe,

requires absolute solidity of institutions and agreement with the

people, and who seriously trembled for the preservation of her

children's future. Her husband expressed himself forcibly on a public

occasion against some reactionary measures of the government. As the

court, so were the liberal parties, so the people in general. When a

fanatic, of the name of Kohn, attempted Bismarck's life in May, 1866,

there were few persons who did not regret his failure. It may be said

with truth that, for years, two men only understood a portion at least

of his political views, and shared them. One was King William. Isolated

as Herr von Bismarck was, he learned to rely implicitly on his

sovereign's faithfulness, and has had no reason to regret his trust; for

the king, though greatly his inferior in intellect, and far from unblest

with legitimist predilections, was as firmly convinced as his minister

that the confederation of German states, and Prussia herself, might be

swept away unless placed upon a new footing, in one of those tornadoes

which used periodically to blow across the continent of Europe. Thus,

the new departure was as much his own programme as Bismarck's, and

although he started (in 1861) with a hankering after "moral" rather than

material conquests, he gradually understood the necessity for war, and

has of a certainty "taken kindly," as the saying is, to material

conquests of no inconsiderable magnitude.

None, even among Bismarck's modern sycophants, would pretend that their

hero was the inventor of German unity. Passionately, though not

over-wisely, had that ideal been striven after and suffered for by the

best patriots in various parts of Fatherland, their vision becoming hazy

just as often as they attempted to combine two opposite claims, that of

a national texture, and that of a headship of Austria, which is

non-German in a majority of its subjects, and alien in nearly all its

interests. The Frankfort Parliament of 1848 marks the transition to a

clear insight, inasmuch as its final performance, the constitution of

1849, placed the new crown on the King of Prussia's head. When offered,

it was haughtily declined under the applause of Bismarck and his

friends. The king refused because its origin lay in a popular assembly;

in Bismarck's eyes its chief defect was that Prussia would be dictated

to by the minor states. It was not until later, in 1851, when appointed

Prussian ambassador to the Germanic Diet, chiefly because of his defence

of the Treaty of Olmuetz, which placed Prussia at the mercy of Austria,

that he recognized the central point to be the necessity of thrusting

Austria out of the confederation. It is proved now that he was sagacious

enough also to perceive that such a wrench would not lead to a permanent

estrangement, but that Austria, removed once and for all from her

incubus-like and dog-in-the-manger position within the federate body,

would become, in her own interest and that of European peace, New

Germany's permanent ally.

These, then, became the two purposes of his active life ever since the

day when, at the age of thirty-six, he obtained a share of the

responsibility in the management of affairs as ambassador in Frankfort;

first, to transfer _Austria to a position in the East_, and then to

bestow upon the Fatherland _political unity under Prussia, the royal

prerogative in the latter remaining uncurtailed_, so far as

circumstances would allow. Thirty-four years have now elapsed. His

opponents, in his own country or out of it, are at liberty to reiterate

that he was born under a lucky star; that he merely took up the thread

of German unification where the Frankfort Parliament of 1849 had let it

drop; that anybody could have utilized such mighty armaments as those of

Prussia with the same effect; that, given total disregard of principle

or moral obligations, the result, in the hands of any political

gamester, must have been what it was. There is something to be set

against each of these assertions. For it was not the goddess of Fortune

which pursued Bismarck in the ungainly shape of his former friend, that

spiteful Prince Gortschakoff. The Frankfort assembly had left the

Austrian riddle unsolved, and apparently insoluble. There was no hand in

the country firm or skilful enough, no brain sufficiently hard or

enlightened as to the needs of the day--not the king's, not Count

Arnim's, nor certainly that of any other known to his contemporaries.

And finally, when a public man so deftly gauges the mental capacities or

extent of power of his antagonists--such as Count Beust, or Napoleon, or

Earl Russell--that he knows exactly how far he can step with safety;

then such a "gamester," however terrible the risks to which he may have

exposed his country, is a great man. Complete unity of aims throughout,

power given to carry them out, a wonderful absence of very serious

mistakes, and finally a life sufficiently prolonged to admit of

retrospection; in each of these respects the career of Bismarck

resembles that of Mr. Disraeli.

The oft-told story of his diplomatic adventures at Frankfort, at Vienna,

at Petersburg, and at Paris, and still more of his rulership in Prussia

since 1862, and in Germany since 1866, has been uniform under two

aspects. First, as already mentioned, in the stern continuity of his

purposes. And secondly, in the mistaken view entertained regarding him

at each successive period of his public life. Passing under review the

whole career of this political phenomenon, you naturally pause before

its strangest and its most humorous feature, viz., that, although living

under the closest inspection, he was misunderstood year after year. Who

would, consequently, deny the possibility at least, of Bismarck's being

so misunderstood, by friend and foe, at this present moment?

While those despatches were written by him from Frankfort which

Poschinger's researches have now exhumed, their writer was thought, by

his partisans just as much as by his enemies, to be occupied solely with

strengthening the "solidarity of conservative interests" and the

supremacy of Austria, or with spinning the rope of steel which was to

strangle all parliaments in Germany. And yet we know positively at

present that, with increasing vigor day by day, did he warn his

government against the scarcely concealed intention of Austria to

"_avilir la Prusse d'abord et puis l'aneantir_" (Prince Schwartzenberg's

famous saying in 1851); we observe with surprise how quickly legitimist

leanings disappear behind his own country's interests; we stand aghast

at the iron sway obtained by so young a man over the self-conceit of a

vacillating, yet dogmatic and wilful, king (Frederick William IV.). It

was he whose advice, given in direct opposition to Bunsen's, led to the

refusal by Prussia of the Western alliance during the Crimean war. But

he did not give this advice, as German liberals then believed, out of

subservience to the autocrat of the North, whose assistance his party

humbly solicited in order to exterminate liberalism. He persistently

gave it to thwart Austria and to preserve Prussia (then in no brilliant

military condition) from having to bear the brunt of Muscovite wrath,

which he cunningly judged to be of more lasting importance in the coming

struggles than the friendship of Western Europe. At a time when European

politicians considered that he was the mouthpiece of schemers for a

Russo-French alliance in his repeated and successful endeavors to gain

Napoleon's good-will, he was adroitly sounding the French emperor's mind

and character. He soon convinced himself that it was shallow and

fantastic, and he built upon this conviction one of the most hazardous

designs which ever originated in a brain observant of realities--that

identical design which eventually led Prussia, some years later, first

to Schleswig and then to Sadowa, with the "arbiter of Europe," as

Napoleon was then called, stolidly looking on! And what is one to say of

the four years of parliamentary conflicts (1862 to 1866), during which

no one doubted but that his object in life and his _raison d'etre_

consisted in a reinstatement of the Prussian king on the absolute throne

of his ancestors--a reaction from all that was progressive to the

grossest abuses of despotism? All this time he was fighting a desperate

battle against backstairs influences, which with true instinct were

deprecating and counteracting his schemes of aggrandizement and national

reorganization. It is clear, on looking back to that period which has

left such indelible marks on the judgment of many well-meaning liberals,

that his exaggerated tone of aggressive defence in the Prussian Landtag,

the furious onslaught of his harangues, were intended to silence the

tongues at court which denounced him as a demagogue and a radical.

Paradoxical as it may sound, one may safely assert that nothing more

effectually helped King William in his later foreign policy, than the

opinion pervading all Europe in 1864 and 1866, that, having lost all

hold upon the minds of his people, weakened and crippled in every sense

of the word by Bismarckian folly, his Majesty could never strike a blow.

There was peace and concord in Germany between 1866 and 1877. Without

becoming a liberal, and while opposing every attempt to outstep certain

limits, Bismarck created and rather enjoyed an alliance with the

majority formed in his favor by the national liberals and a moderate

section of the conservatives. The German Empire, proclaimed by the

German sovereigns at Versailles in January, 1871, was of his creation;

and while established upon somewhat novel principles of federation by a

parliamentary statute, it looked to outsiders like a home for progress

and liberty. There were dangers lurking, it is true, beneath many a

provision of the new constitution, such as the absence of an upper

house, and the substitution in its stead of delegates from the separate

governments, acting in each case according to instructions received,

authorized to speak whenever they chose before the Reichstag, but

deliberating separately and secretly both upon bills to propose, and

upon replies to give to resolutions of the Reichstag. In fact, this

Bundesrath, or federal council, represents the governing element under

the emperor, with functions both administrative and legislative. By an

artificial method of counting, Prussia, although she would command

three-fifths of all the voters by virtue of her population, has less

than one-third. Thus the possibility of an imbroglio between the

governments is ever present, as well as that of a hasty vote in the

popular assembly.

[Illustration: Bismarck before Paris.]

It will never, probably, be quite understood why Prince Bismarck broke

loose from a political alliance which, it would seem, had given no

trouble whatever. In foreign affairs the house, in its immense majority,

abstained from even the faintest attempt at interference. As for

patronage, it has been said that no appointment was ever solicited for

anyone by a member of the liberal party. From ministerial down to menial

posts no claim was raised, no request preferred. If the section of

moderate conservatives above mentioned has furnished a few ambassadors

like Prince Hohenlohe, Count Muenster, Baron Keudell, and Count Stolberg,

that was by the chief's free will. Why, then, it has been asked, a

change so absolute as the one the world has witnessed, from the saying

of the chancellor in 1877, that his ideal was to have high financial

duties on half a dozen objects and free trade on all others, to one of

the most comprehensive tariffs in the world two years later? His own and

his friends' explanations are lamentably deficient--"growing anaemia and

impoverishment of the country," "drowning of native industry by foreign

manufacturers," "corn imported cheaper than produced," and what not. The

present writer, looking from afar, has always thought two motives to

have been paramount in the chancellor's mind when he separated from the

liberals and became, not a convinced, but a thorough-going

protectionist. It is not said that these were his only motives.

Chess-players know that each important move affects not only the

figures primarily attacked, but changes the whole texture of the play.

First, then, and foremost, fresh sources of income were wanted to make

the finances of the empire independent from the several exchequers of

the states bound by statute to make up for any deficiency _pro rata

parte_ of their population. Two or three objects would have provided the

needful, viz., spirits and beetroot sugar, and (with due caution)

tobacco; or an "imperial" income tax, changing according to each year's

necessities; or both systems combined. Tobacco, it is true, was tried,

and the attempt failed. Spirits would bear almost any taxation, but the

chancellor does not choose to tread upon the tender toe of the great

owners of land who are potato-growers, and consequently distillers on a

large scale. And another important class of agriculturists, the beetroot

growers and sugar-producers, were not to be trifled with either. But how

about direct taxation, the manly sacrifice of free peoples, the plummet

by which to sound the enlightenment of a nation? The chancellor

instinctively felt, I believe, that there he would be going beyond his

depth; that under such a _regime_ the free will of citizens must have

the fullest swing; the "prerogative" would suffer, if not immediately,

yet as a necessary sequence. And so he deliberately abandoned free trade

and espoused indirect taxation and protection.

Success, let free traders say what they please on the subject, success

has accompanied Bismarck's genius on this novel field, as well as on the

older fields where all mankind acknowledges his superiority. For the

coffers of the empire are filling. A motley majority in the Reichstag

not only accepts, but improves upon his protectionist demands. He has

become the demigod of the bloated manufacturing, mining, and landlord

interests throughout the country. He is now about to win the last of the

great industries, and the one which withstood his blandishments the

longest, viz., the trans-oceanic carrying trade. He is credited with

having improved the state of certain trades, even by such as know

perfectly well that, like the former depression, the present improvement

in those has been universal. The whole country is becoming

protectionist. All young men, even in Hamburg and Bremen, believe in

protection as "the thing." The Prussian landlord, whose soul was steeped

in free trade so long as Prussia was a grain-exporting country,

cherishes protectionist convictions now that she must largely import

cereals. The bureaucrat who had never sworn by other economic lawgivers

than Adam Smith and his followers, now accepts Professor Adolphus

Wagner's ever-changing sophisms. And as for the south and the west of

Germany, why, they adore the man who had fulfilled that dream of

protection in which they, as disciples of Friedrich List, had grown up.

It is true that all large cities, even there, are protesting against the

lately imposed and quite lately increased duties upon cereals; but then,

"can any good thing come out of" large cities? Compared to the

difficulties that impede the action of the free trade party in Germany,

Mr. Bright's and Mr. Cobden's up-hill work sinks into insignificance.

Nothing, to a beginner in the study of Bismarck's character, would

appear so utterly puzzling as his demeanor toward the communists,

socialists, or, as they call themselves in Germany, Social Democrats.

One of his most trusted secretaries is an old ally and correspondent of

Herr Karl Marx, the high-priest of communism, who, toward the end of his

London career, rode the whirlwind and directed the storm of German

socialism. Bismarck himself confesses to having received in private

audience Lassalle, one certainly of the most capable men of modern

Germany, and to whom as its first author, a retrospective inquiry would

trace back the present formidable, closely ruled organization of

socialist operatives of Germany. The first minister of the Prussian

crown was closeted once--people say more than once, but that does not

matter--with the ablest subverter of the modern fabric of society. He

found him "mighty pleasant to talk to." He liked his predilection for a

powerful supreme authority overawing the organized masses, though

"whether he did so in the interest of a dynasty of Lassalles or of

Hohenzollern's" seemed to Herr von Bismarck an open question. After

Lassalle's tragical death in 1864, we observe how the Prussian

government, while watching with Argus-eyes every excess of speech among

liberals, allowed his first successors, Schweizer and others, a vulgar

set of demagogues, such license of bloody harangue as has of late years

got Louise Michel into trouble in republican France. Then we hear of

nothing as between Bismarck and the socialists for some years--the years

I have described above as years of peace and concord in Germany--till

suddenly, on the occasion of two attempts made in 1878, by Hoedel and by

Nobiling against the emperor's life, he came down upon that sect as with

a sledge-hammer. His famous anti-socialist bill was at first rejected.

It passed into law only after a dissolution, the electors having in

their affectionate pity for the wounded emperor unequivocally given

their verdict in favor of suppression. It has since been reaccepted

three times by an unwilling house, and with exertions of the same man

who had fostered and protected the beginnings of socialism, and who had

the watchword given out at the last general elections in 1884, that "His

Serene Highness the Chancellor would prefer the sight of ten

Social-Democrats to that of one Liberal (Deutsch-Freisinige.)"

Now, what is the clew to this comedy of errors? No mere waywardness or

perversity of character, but some powerful bias and a first-cousinship

in principle must account for one of the strangest anomalies in modern

history. Perhaps the following consideration will render both the "bias"

and the "first-cousinship" at least intelligible. Prince Bismarck is a

good hater. Now, if he has any one antipathy stronger than another, and

that through life, it is that against the burgher class, the reverse of

aristocrats, the born liberals, townsmen mostly yet not exclusively--the

"bourgeois," as the French call them (although, if I err not, the exact

counterpart to the "bourgeois" species is not found on German soil), a

law-abiding set, independent of government, paying their taxes, and

thoroughly happy. When they, through their representatives, bade him

defiance in 1862 to 1865, and thwarted his measures of coercion, his

inmost soul cried, _Acheronta movebo!_ He sent for Lassalle, he paid his

successors' debts, and generally assisted the sect. So much for the

"bias." And now for the "first-cousinship." No student of history will

deny that despotism, whenever it has arisen, or been preserved in highly

civilized communities, will extend more of a fatherly care to the masses

than liberalism. This cannot be otherwise; for liberalism sets itself to

educate the masses to self-responsibility, and each individual to thrift

and self-reliance. The sight of an able-bodied beggar is, to a genuine

liberal, a source of anger first, and only on further contemplation, of

pity. He will exert all his energies to remove every obstacle from out

of the way of his poorer brethren; he will preach wise economy, and

facilitate it by personal sacrifices and legislative inducements; but he

will not tempt the government of his country to act as a second

providence for the operative classes. Quite the reverse is Bismarck's

opinion. According to him, the state should exercise "practical

Christianity." With Titanic resolution to drive out Satan through

Beelzebub, he does not shrink from acknowledging and proclaiming the

"right of labor." There is probably nothing left to say after your lips

have spoken these unholy, blood-stained words. If there was, he would be

the man to say it rather than allow himself to be outbid by mob-leaders

of the socialistic feather. _Droit au travail_, forsooth! The phrase has

cost thousands their lives in the Parisian carnage of June, 1848. In the

mouth of Karl Marx and other outspoken champions of his cause, it means

absorption by the state of all the _sources_ of labor, such as land and

factories, because by such absorption only can the state insure work for

the unemployed. In the mouth of Bismarck it means a lesser thing, of

course, in extent, but not in its essence. As chief minister of Prussia

he has ably brought about the purchase of nearly all lines of railway

within that monarchy. As chancellor of the empire he has tried his very

best to obtain a monopoly on tobacco. All accident insurance companies

have already been ruined and their place taken, so far as accidents to

factory-hands, etc., are concerned, by an imperial office. His mighty

hand is stretched out already to suppress and absorb all other

insurances. The kingdom of the Incas, in ancient Peru, as described in

Prescott's volumes, has probably not done more work for its subjects

than Bismarck's ideal of a German empire would do for its inhabitants.

With every species of occupation or enterprise managed directly by

government, why should the ruler of an empire, or of a socialist

republic, hesitate about proclaiming a right to labor? A critic might

object that its proclamation by Bismarck, in 1884, was premature,

inasmuch as he had failed in carrying his Monopoly bill, and could not

be certain of success regarding other state encroachments. Granted. But

a "first-cousinship" between his views on social reform and those of

Messrs. Bebel and Liebknecht, is an actuality of modern Germany, and

should be seen to by those who desire this central power of Europe to

remain exempt from a social revolution. Cursory as this review of

Bismarck's past life and present policy has of necessity been, some

indulgent reader may perhaps bestow upon me--besides his thanks for

having withstood the temptation to quote the pithy, and at times

impassioned, utterances of the wittiest man in power of the present

day--just enough of his confidence to believe that I have suppressed no

trait of importance.

However, since there is one thing more important still than a great man,

namely his country, let us not dismiss the interesting subject of this

retrospect without inquiring what that country has gained and what lost

through his agency. Germany possesses a federation, not constructed

after any existing pattern, not made to please any theory, not the

object of anybody's very passionate admiration, but accepted in order to

alter as little as possible the accustomed territorial and political

arrangements. In one sense it has no army, for the Prussian and the

Bavarian armies, although the empire bears the cost, still exist. In one

sense it possesses not the indirect taxation, for the individual states

do the collecting of custom-house duties, etc. In one sense it has

scarcely any organ of administration, for the whole internal government,

the schools, courts of law, and police, all belong to the single states;

and foreign affairs, the navy, the post-office, and railways in Alsace,

are the only fields of imperial direct administration. Yet, what it has

is valuable enough. The empire rules the army and can legislate over and

control a prodigious amount of national subjects. Its foreign policy is

one. The military command is one. Certain specified sources of revenue

are the empire's. Patriotic aspirations are fulfilled. The individual

sovereigns in Germany possess a guarantee of their status, the operative

classes an opportunity for organization and improvement on a large

scale. Monarchical feeling has gained in depth, both generally and with

personal reference to the emperor and to the crown prince, both

"representative men" in the best sense of the word, and the crown

prince, the most lovable man of his day.

Another salutary constitutional reform--not of Bismarck's making, for he

gave his consent unwillingly and not without first having marred its

beauty, but yet an effect of his great deeds--is the Prussian "Kreis"

and "Provinzial-Ordnung," first introduced in 1874. No more logical

deduction was possible than this commencement of decentralization within

the Prussian monarchy. Before that date provincial diets had existed for

fifty years, and a kind of assembly had also managed certain affairs for

the Kreis, an administrative unit smaller than an English county, and

averaging about one hundred thousand inhabitants. In the same proportion

as German unity made progress, it was believed that self-government

ought to become more extensively introduced, and the "tendency of the

blood toward the head" or capital, be obviated. The example of home rule

presented by the "Kreis" and the provinces of Prussia since this reform,

is not assuredly of a nature to frighten weak nerves. But much money is

now usefully spent within and by the provinces independently of any

decree from a central authority; and as regards willingness to work on

provincial and (so to say) county boards, it is said to be beyond all

praise. An English public man of high standing assured me, some years

ago, that these Prussian beginnings of home rule had attracted the

serious notice of Mr. Gladstone. I do not wonder at it.

Another permanent good for which Germany seems indebted to Bismarck, and

the last I will mention, is of quite modern date--I mean his colonial

policy. Individual Germans have, at all times and in immense numbers,

found their way across the sea. On the Baltic and North Sea coast,

German ports, though few in number, yet command a very large trade.

Next to the English, German traders form the most numerous community in

every place, however remote, where business of any kind can be

transacted. But to convert the inland Philistines--that vast majority of

Germans who have never sniffed sea-air--into enthusiasts for a colonial

empire required all Bismarck's ability and prestige. No doubt he

descried in the movement a chance for a diversion of the public mind

from obnoxious topics. It was useful to him to produce an impression as

if the export trade, stagnating as it must under the baneful effects of

modern protection, could rally under the influence of colonial

enterprise. These considerations would not, however, suffice to explain

his long-considered, cautious proceedings in this matter. To comprehend

his motives fully, it will be necessary to admit that his prescient mind

would consider the time, apparently not very far distant, when what are

now styled Great Powers will be dwindling fast by the side of such

gigantic empires as seem intent upon dividing the earth's surface

between them, like England with her colonial possessions, and Russia.

The effect upon this country, its foreign policy, and the very character

of its inhabitants, would be alike cramping, unless a way for expansion

was opened for each. When the political schemes of a considerable man

are subjects of speculation, it is wiser to guess at something exalted

if you wish to come near the truth. So probably in this case. No doubt

he, too, has foreseen the reaction which, at no very remote period of

German history, will gain a mastery over people's minds, when failures

and disappointments begin to crowd around each of the present equatorial

enterprises. But he believes in his countrymen's capacity to overcome

failure and disappointment without recourse to costly warlike

expeditions, for which Germany is unfitted by her institution of

universal and short military service.