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BLOOD and IRON
_Origin of German Empire
As Revealed by Character
of Its Founder, Bismarck_
BY
JOHN HUBERT GREUSEL
THE SHAKESPEARE PRESS
114-116 E. 28th St.
New York
1915
Copyright, 1915, John Hubert Greusel
_Dedicated to Stella My Wife_
CONTENTS
BOOK THE FIRST: BISMARCK'S HUMAN ESSENCE
Chapter I--The Man Himself
1. The Giant's Ponderous Hammer
2. Grossly Human Is Our Bismarck
3. Despite Political Bogs
4. Genius Combined with Foibles
Chapter II--Blood Will Tell
5. Iron-headed Ancestry
6. Animal Basis of Rise to Power
7. "The Wooden Donkey Dies Today!"
Chapter III--The Gothic Cradle
8. The Child of Destiny
9. Soft Carl, Spartan Louise
Chapter IV--Sunshine and Shadow
10. Amazing Powers of Hereditary Traits
11. The Wolf's Breed
12. Twenty-eight Duels!
13. Fizzle of First Official Service
BOOK THE SECOND: THE GERMAN NATIONAL PROBLEM
Chapter V--The Great Sorrow
14. The German Crazy Quilt
15. The Diamond Necklace
Chapter VI--Prussia's De Profundis
16. The Lash and the Kiss
17. The Prussian Downfall
18. Prussia Becomes Germany
19. Kingcraft Comes Upon Evil Days
20. The Star of Hope
21. The King Keeps Reading His Bible
22. The Deluge
BOOK THE THIRD: BISMARCK SUPPORTS HIS KING
Chapter VII--Fighting Fire with Fire
23. Voice in the Wilderness
24. The Young Giant
25. Speechless for One Whole Month
26. Bellowing His Defiance
Chapter VIII--Bismarck Suffers a Great Shock
27. Bismarck Scorns French Political Millennium
28. Militarism as National Salvation
29. King Marches with Mob!
Chapter IX--So Much the Worse for Zeitgeist
30. Not Politics--Human Nature
31. Setting Back the Century Clock
32. The Master at Work
33. Bismarck Nudges His King
34. Mystical High-flown Speeches
BOOK THE FOURTH: BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER
Chapter X--Socrates in Politics
35. The Frankfort School of Intrigue
36. Preparing for German Unity
37. Tyrants Are Necessary
38. Bismarck, in Naked Realism
Chapter XI--The Mailed Fist
39. Democracy Stems from Aristocracy
40. Parallel Elements of Power
Chapter XII--By Blood and Iron!
41. The Man of the Hour
42. Rough and Tumble
43. On Comes the Storm
44. Bismarck Decides to Rule Alone
Chapter XIII--The Dream of Empire
45. Bismarck Tricks Them All
46. Prussian Domination Essential
47. By Faith Ye Shall Conquer
48. Was Bismarck a Beast?
BOOK THE FIFTH: THE GERMAN PEOPLE ARE ONE AND UNITED
Chapter XIV--Windrows of Corpses
49. Devil or Saint, Which?
50. Sleeping Beside the Dead
51. The Rejected Stone
52. His Ikon?
53. "The Dying Warrior"
54. Sadowa Summed Up
55. Manure
Chapter XV--The Great Year, 1870
56. "These Poor Times"
57. The Bugle Blast
58. Bismarck's Ironical Revenge
59. The Weaver's Hut
60. Zenith!
Chapter XVI--The Versailles Masterpiece
61. The Kaiser's Crown
62. Divine-right, a Politico-Military Fact
BOOK THE SIXTH: ONCE A MAN AND TWICE A CHILD
Chapter XVII--The Downfall
63. Bismarck's Secret Discontent
64. "Who Made United Germany?"
65. The Irony of Fate
66. Last Illusion Dispelled
67. Binding Up the Old Man's Wounds
68. Awaiting the Call
69. Refuses to Pass Under the Yoke
70. Glory Turns to Ashes
Chapter XVIII--Hail and Farewell
71. His Final and Most Glorious Decoration
72. "As One Asleep"
BOOK THE FIRST
Bismarck's Human Essence
CHAPTER I
The Man Himself
1
Hark, Hark! The giant's ponderous hammer rings on the anvil
of destiny. Enter, thou massive figure, Bismarck, and in
deadly earnest take thy place before Time's forge.
¶ It is, it must be, a large story--big with destiny! The details
often bore with their monotony; they do not at all times march on;
they drag, but they do indeed never halt permanently; ahead always is
the great German glory.
¶ Forward march, under Prince Bismarck. He is our grim blacksmith,
looming through the encircling dark, massive figure before Time's
forge.
The sparks fly, the air rings with the rain of blows: he is in deadly
earnest, this half-naked, brawny Prussian giant; magnificent in his
Olympian mien; his bellows cracking, his shop aglow with
cheery-colored sparks as the heavy hammer falls on the unshapen ores
on the big black anvil.
¶ Thus, toiling hour after hour in the heat and sweat, our Pomeranian
smith with ponderous hammer beats and batters the stubborn German iron
into a noble plan--for a great Nation!
* * * * *
¶ From a human point, we do not always see the ultimate glory.
For that is obscured by dark clouds of party strife, extending over
years, the caprices of men and the interplay of ambitions both within
and without the distracted German lands. Russia, Austria, Italy, Great
Britain, France, Spain, have their spies engaged in all the under-play
of political intrigue; there are a thousand enemies at home and
abroad, in camp, court and peasant's cottage.
¶ And at times, weary of it all, we throw down the book convinced
that, in a welter of sordid ends, the cause is lost in shame.
But, somehow, some way, Germany does in truth ultimately emerge
triumphant, in spite of her amazing errors and the endless plots of
enemies.
She does indeed justify her manhood--and thus the Bismarck story is of
imperishable glory.
* * * * *
¶ We say that Bismarck had to re-inspire the Germans to be a fighting
nation.
What we mean is that the spirit of the ancient Teutons had to be
aroused; for though it slumbered for centuries, it never died.
Rome found that out when she was still in her infancy; the Germans
burnt the town by the Tiber; and the fearsome struggle between the
Romans and the Germanic tribesmen lasted almost unbroken for nearly
five centuries.
¶ The Romans regarded the Germans as the bravest people in the world.
The migrations of the Cimbri and Teutones, and the frightful struggles
in which after superhuman endeavors the Roman Marius destroyed his
German enemies is one of the heroic pages of all history. It was a
hand-to-hand contest, and torrents of human blood ran that day. Menzel
tells us, (Germany, p. 85), that the place of battle enriched by a
deluge of blood and ultimately fertilized by heaps of the slain,
became in after years the site of vineyards whose wines were eagerly
sought by connoisseurs.
¶ The Cimbri were drawn up in a solid square, each side of which
measured 7,000 paces. The foremost ranks were fastened together with
chains, that the enemy might not readily break through. Even the
German dogs that guarded the baggage train fought with animal
ferocity. The battle went against the Germans and the slaughter was
frightful. When all was lost, the Germans killed their women and
children, rather than see them fall into the hands of the Romans.
German courage inspired terror and created foreboding throughout the
Roman world. It is a heroic story and sustains the German tradition
that Germans born free under their ancient oaks never will be slaves,
though the whole world is against them.
The success varied, but the Germans conquered, even in death, becoming
lineal descendants of the Empire. And on the ruins were builded the
German nation, as the successor of the old Holy Roman Empire.
* * * * *
¶ We picture to you these shadowy glimpses of remote battle-scenes to
show you that Germans were ever fighting men, who preferred death to
loss of liberty.
On the ruins of Roman imperial glory, Teutonic conquerors founded an
Empire that defied time and chance for upwards of 1,000 years; then
there crept in a peculiar dry rot. The ancient German oak died at the
top. Along came Napoleon, hacking away the limbs and scarring the
gnarled trunk with fire and sword. The ruin seemed complete. Dead at
the top, dead at the root, men said. And what men say is true. There
is no longer a Germany, except as a mere geographical designation;
when you speak of the German Empire you recall merely the echo of a
once mighty name.
It now becomes Bismarck's solemn duty, fortified by a noble
appreciation of the ancient legend, to make the German oak green again
in its immortal youth. And he watered the roots with blood.
¶ We cannot tell you the great story in a few baby-sentences; you must
read and grasp the broad spirit as it gradually unfolds. Bismarck in
the crudity of his early inspiration scarcely finds himself for years.
But all the while he is holding fast to the idea that the Fatherland
should under God be free and united, sustained by the ancient Teutonic
brotherhood in arms.
We present him in part as a tyrant, a wild, intolerant spirit, working
his own plans to be sure, but those plans in the end are to redound to
the good of the nation he long and unselfishly serves.
We ask you to see him in his weakness and we hope with some of his
strength, always with his high purpose.
We ask you to behold him as a man with all a strong man's frailties
and faults. We do not spare him. We paint him black, now and then,
deliberately, that you may know how very small ofttimes are the very
great; also to realize that if we are to wait for perfect human beings
to front our reforms then those reforms will never be made.
Bismarck is too great a man to be belittled by the glamour of spurious
praise for spurious virtues.
It was not necessary for him to cease to be a human being in order to
carry out his work. He remained, to the end, grossly human, for which
the gods be praised.
2
Grossly human is our Bismarck, whose lust for control is
idiomatic; let us get this clearly, first of all.
¶ Did you ever see a bulldog battle with one of his kind? The
startling fact is this: The dog suddenly develops magnificent reserve
force, making his battling blood leap; is transformed into a catapult,
bearing down his adversary or by him borne down--it matters not
which!--for the joy of battle. To fight is the realization of his
utmost being.
¶ A peculiar fact known to all admirers of a fighting bulldog is this:
The dog during the fight, looks now and then at his master near-by, as
much as to say, "See how well I fight!"
¶ Thus Bismarck looked at his King.
* * * * *
¶ The nature of the pit bulldog is seen in Bismarck's head. His surly
face inspires a sense of dread. There is that in his physiognomy that
shows his ugly disposition, when aroused. If you saw that moody face
in the crowd, one glance would be sufficient to make you feel how
vituperative, short, sharp, murderous the unknown man could be, on
occasion.
¶ Yet the fear stirred by the sight of a pit bulldog is ofttimes
largely illusionary. The dog at heart is genial in a brute way, and
never a more loyal servant than the bulldog to his friends--devoted
even to death, to his master.
¶ It is the sense of dread in the bulldog's head that strikes home! So
with Bismarck's physiognomy. The Iron Chancellor had but to come into
the room to make his onlookers experience uneasiness. There was an
ever-present suggestion of pent-up power, that could in an instant be
turned upon men's lives, to their destruction!
¶ It is true that Bismarck had his genial side, but it cannot be said
that he drew and held men to him. He had thousands of admirers to one
friend. During the greater part of his life he was either hated or
feared--at best, misunderstood. Like the pit bulldog, Bismarck was
born to rule other lives--and he fulfilled his mission.
¶ The element of absolutism in the man, his uncompromising severity,
his command of the situation regardless of cost, sorrow or suffering
to other men, is seen in his realistic physiognomy. We study these
facts more and more, as we go along.
* * * * *
¶ There was always something imperious about this great man. He
brooked no interference. His excessive dignity compelled respect. He
never allowed familiarities; you could not safely presume on his good
nature. He never permitted you to get too near. This abnormal
self-confidence conveyed the idea that this giant in physique and in
intellectual power was truly cut out for greatness.
One of his favorite pranks, as a boy, was to amuse himself making
faces at his sister; he could frighten her by his queer grimaces.
From early youth, he was accustomed to take himself very seriously,
and by his offensive manners conveyed an immediate impression of the
ironical indifference in which he held humanity, in the mass.
¶ He was a born aristocrat, in a sense of high, offensive
partisanship.
¶ Men shrank from him, cursed him, reviled his name; but they
respected his intellect, even in the early days when he used his
power in an undisciplined way; yes, was painfully learning the
business of mastering human lives.
¶ The brute in the man loomed large; the unreasoning but magnificent
audacity of the bulldog expressed itself in scars, wounds,
deep-drinking bouts, fisticuffs, and in twenty-eight duels.
¶ But he had another kind of courage, greater in import than that
expressed by physical combat.
* * * * *
¶ When we say Bismarck's work is a revelation of his will to power, we
emphasize again how unnecessary it is to make him either less or more
than a human being. There is a school of writers that never mentions
his name except with upturned eyes, as though he were a demigod. The
tendency of human nature is to idealize such as Bismarck out of all
semblance to the original, creating wax figures where once were men of
flesh and blood.
¶ Men rise to power largely in uniform ways; that psychic foundation
on which they draw is always grossly human, rather dull when you
understand it, always conventional;--and the great Bismarck himself is
no exception.
¶ In doing his work, Bismarck is following the psychic necessities of
his character; is acting in a very personal way, upheld always by the
soldier's virtue, ambition. There is also a large element of
self-love. His idiomatic lust for control is to be accepted as a
root-fact of his peculiar type of being. And while on the whole his
ambition is exercised for the good of his country, herein he is
acting, in addition, under the ardent appetite, in his case a passion,
to dominate millions of lives; urged not perhaps so much from a
preconceived desire to dominate as from an inherent call to exercise
his innate capacity for leadership.
¶ Making allowance for the idea that Bismarck is a devoted servant of
the King of Prussia, it is not necessary to believe that Bismarck
poses as the Savior of his country. In fact, he distinctly disavows
this sacrifice, has too much sense to regard himself from this absurd
point of view.
¶ The words carved on Bismarck's tomb at his own request, "A Faithful
German Servant of Emperor William I," show that however much other men
were unable to comprehend the baffling Bismarckian character, the Iron
Chancellor himself had no vain illusions.
¶ When he was 83 and about to die, the old man taking a final sweep of
his long and turbulent life, asked himself solemnly: "How will I be
known in time to come?"
¶ Fame replied: "You have been a great Prince; an invincible maker of
Empire, you have held in your hand the globe of this earth; call
yourself what you will, and I will write a sermon in brass on your
tomb."
¶ But the Iron Chancellor, after mature reflection, decided that his
entire career, with all its high lights and its deep shadows, could be
expressed in four simple words, "A Faithful German Servant." He knew
exactly what he was, and how he would ultimately be represented in
history.
¶ Think what this means. On those supreme questions of Life and Time
involving the interpretation of Destiny--a problem hopelessly obscure
to the average man--Bismarck brought a massive mind charged with a
peculiar clairvoyance; often, his fore-knowledge seemed well-nigh
uncanny in its exact realism; and if you doubt this assertion, all we
ask is that you withhold your verdict till you have read Bismarck's
story, herein set forth in intimate detail.
¶ How clear the old man's vision to discern behind all his Bismarckian
pomp and majesty, in camp, court and combat, only the rôle of faithful
servant.
¶ The phrase on his tomb proclaims the man's great mind. His
overbrooding silence, as it were, is more eloquent than sermons in
brass.
* * * * *
¶ In studying Bismarck, the man, we merge his identity in the events
of his time; but we must sharply differentiate between the events and
the man. We incline to the belief that hereditary tendencies explain
him more than does environment. It is Bismarck as a human being, and
not the tremendous panorama of incidents leading to German sovereignty
that always holds our interest. Life is life, and is intensely
interesting, for its own sake.
Thus, we are at once freed from a common fallacy of biographical
writing--that vicious mental attitude, as vain as it is egotistical on
part of the over-partial historian, who would warp some manifest
destiny on human life.
¶ Bismarck needs no historical explanation, no reference to hackneyed
categories in the card-index of Time. Whether his plan was dedicated
to this world or to the glory of some invisible God, you may debate as
you will, but Bismarck will be neither greater nor less because of
flights of your imagination.
¶ He is a great man in the sense that he did large things, but this
does not make him other than he is, nor does his story lose because we
know him to be grossly human in his aims. His life does not borrow
anything because a certain type of mind professes to see behind
Bismarck's history, as indeed behind the careers of all great men,
some mysterious purpose apart and beyond human nature's daily needs.
It was not necessary for Bismarck to cease to be a human being, to
accomplish what he accomplished.
* * * * *
¶ Also, for the reason that Bismarck was a genius, he is an exception
to conventional rules covering the limitations of little men.
¶ Bismarck was a born revolutionist. Look at his terrible jaw, which,
like the jaws of the bulldog, when once shut down never lets go till
that object is in shreds.
¶ He was a true bulldog in this that, like the thoroughbred bulldog,
Bismarck favored one feed a day. He took a light breakfast, no second
breakfast, but at night would eat one enormous meal.
The bulldog follows a similar practice, when eating never looks from
the plate, and the water fairly runs from his eyes, with animal
satisfaction.
¶ Bismarck compelled men to do his bidding--as the wind drives the
clouds and asks not when or why. It is enough to know that that is the
wind's way!
He knew the coward, the thief, the soldier, the priest, the citizen,
the king, and the peasant.
He knew how to betray an enemy with a Judas kiss; how to smite him
when he was down; how to dig pitfalls for his feet; how to ply him
with champagne and learn his secrets; how to permit him to win money
at cards, and then get him to sign papers; how to remember old
obligations or to forget new favors; how to read a document in more
than one way; how to turn historical parallels upside down; how to
urge today what he refused to entertain a year ago; how to put the
best face on a losing situation; and how to shuffle, cut and stack the
cards, or at times how to play in the open.
¶ He was not a humanitarian with conceptions of world peace or world
benevolences. He was for himself and his own ends, which were tied to
his political conception of a new Germany.
¶ And all the time he was helped out by his extraordinary vital
powers, his ability to work all night like a horse week after week; go
to bed at dawn and sleep till afternoon; then drive a staff of
secretaries frantic with his insistent demands.
¶ Likewise, he was helped out by his remarkable personality. Actor
that he was, he sometimes gained his point by his frankness, knowing
that when he told the exact truth he would not be believed.
¶ Also, he could bluff and swagger, or he could speak in the polite
accents of the distinguished gentleman; he could gulp a quart of
champagne without taking the silver tankard from his lips; in younger
years he used to eat from four to eleven eggs at a meal, besides
vegetables, cakes, beer, game and three or four kinds of meats; his
favorite drink was a mixture of champagne and porter.
* * * * *
¶ He was a chain-smoker, lighted one cigar with another, often smoked
ten or twelve hours at a stretch. His huge pipes, in the drawing room;
his beer, in the salons of Berlin; his irritability, his bilious
streaks, his flashes of temper; his superstition about the number 13;
his strange mixing of God with all his despotic conduct; his fondness
for mastiffs; his attacks of jaundice; his volcanic outbursts; his
belief in ghosts, in the influence of the moon to make the hair grow;
his mystical something about seven and combinations of seven; his
incessant repetition of the formula that he was obeying his God--were
but human weaknesses that showed he had a side like an everyday common
man.
¶ On top of it all he was great, because he knew how to manage men
either with or without their consent; but he always studied to place
himself in a strategic position from which he could insist on his
demand for his pound of flesh.
¶ Sometimes, it took years before he could lull to sleep, buy, bribe
or win over the men he needed; again when the game was short and
sharp, he kicked some men out of his path contemptuously, others he
parleyed with, still others he thundered against and defied; but
always at the right time, won his own way.
¶ Yes, even Bismarck's card-playing is subordinated to the shrewd ends
of diplomacy. Dr. Busch, the press-agent of Bismarck during the
Franco-Prussian war, tells us that Bismarck once made this frank
confession:
¶ "In the summer of 1865 when I concluded the Convention of Gastein
with Blome (the Austrian), I went in for quinze so madly that the rest
could not help wondering at me. But I knew what I was about. Blome had
heard that this game gave the best possible opportunity for
discovering a man's real nature, and wanted to try it on with me. So I
thought to myself, here's for you then, and away went a few hundred
thalers, which I really might have charged as spent in His Majesty's
service. But at least I thus put Blome off the scent, so he thought me
a reckless fellow and gave way."
3
Despite vast areas of political bogs, quaking under foot,
that one must traverse, our Otto is not inaccessible!
¶ For many years they hate him like hell-fire itself, this Otto von
Bismarck. The Prussians hate him, the Austrians, the Bavarians, to say
nothing of the intervening rabble; but our tyrant is strong enough, in
the end, to win foreign wars, and then the haters veer about, almost
in a night, come up on bended knees and kiss the hand that
smites--that hand of Bismarck, at once the best-beloved and the
most-hated hand of his time. What more pray do you ask of human
nature?
¶ Now here is a strange reality: If you look at the general outlines
of the German map in 1815, you will see that the frontiers trace in a
startling way the scowling outlines of Frederick the Great, "Old
Fritz," who first dreamed this German unity idea.
But mighty Frederick is in the royal tomb these many years; and a new
Frederick in spirit is rapidly learning the business of king-maker and
empire-builder.
* * * * *
¶ Behind the name Bismarck is a story extraordinary, compounded of the
intrigues, blood and passions of Austria, Russia, Italy, France,
Belgium, Bavaria, Spain, and England.
Volumes would not suffice to give you the bewildering details;
mountains of diplomatic letters, orders, telegrams, truths,
half-truths, shuffling, cutting and stacking; you go confusedly from
palace to people, prince to pauper, university to prison pen--all the
way from Waterloo to Versailles, where William I received at last his
great glory, German Emperor.
¶ Bismarck's story is best told in flashes of lightning--as you try to
picture a bolt from the black skies.
By the patience of the methodical historian who laboriously examines
each document in the National archives, one fills soon enough a
ten-volume account--with a swamp of cross-references, footnotes to
each paragraph, and with notes to the footnotes.
¶ Yet this Bismarck is not inaccessible if we get at his inner side,
grasp the man's essence.
Strong arm and tireless brain Time asked;--a man who could neither be
bent, broken nor brow-beaten; a man who would for 40 years follow a
plan by no means clear; often had to go out in the dark and find his
way, all old landmarks lost, and no pole-star in sight.
¶ I dwell on one outstanding fact, all down through his career: I
mean Bismarck's power to conceal pain. Hurricanes of insulting
criticisms swept around his head, year after year, but on the whole
Otto's attitude was that of the mountain that defies the storm. He
would never give in that, as it seemed to onlookers, a shaft of
disagreeable truth had struck home; that a soft-nosed bullet, well
aimed, had torn his flesh or broken a bone; or that a dagger-thrust,
going directly through his coat of the White Cuirassier had pierced
his heart.
¶ Even in his bitter defeats, he had a peculiar idiomatic way of
making out that the result was exactly what he desired. It was of
course only an adroit explanation to protect his pride; the brazen
invention of a nature that would not acknowledge itself in error. Here
is Bismarck, to the core.
¶ For a long and turbulent life-time Bismarck's soul was tried by the
very tortures of the damned!
4
Wherein it is set forth that Otto von Bismarck's massive
political genius, combined with his personal foibles, mark him
as a heroic figure, side by side with Frederick the Great.
¶ In attempting to depict a consistent Bismarck, we find that his life
has been as much misinterpreted through the carping need of envious
political critics as through the bad art of historically well-disposed
friends.
The perplexing problem is to blend his massive mental grasp, side by
side with his strange fits of irritability, his turbulence, his
deep-drinking, his gluttony, his wild pranks.
About him at all times, whether expressed or concealed, there floated
an ironic derision of the littleness of the average man, whom at heart
Bismarck despised.
While the eyes of detractors are everywhere, the voice of hero-worship
has likewise conspired to make an impossible idol of a man with very
human and ofttimes crying frailties; the biographic truth is to be
found somewhere between these two extremes; but even with this clear
clue in mind, it is often difficult to reconcile amazing personal and
diplomatic inconsistencies with which his career abounds.
¶ Then, too, there is something that strikes like the irony of
Socrates, only bitter instead of light; and Bismarck reveals now and
then a touch remindful of that Rabelaisian hero whose enormous
capacity could only be quenched by draining the river dry. To tell
Bismarck's inner life-story, in a large way, one must often deal with
a series of pictures akin to the gods and devils in Dore's
delineations for Dante's "Inferno."
It often seems as though every important act of this great man's life
was charged with the significance of Destiny, stands forth vividly
against a background of intrigue, superstition, personal follies, the
smoke and flame of battle--a heroic figure side by side with such
master-spirits as Frederick the Great.
Like Frederick the Severe, this Bismarck is very human indeed, and has
his crying weaknesses, and his enemies, God knows, tried for forty
years to get rid of him by intrigue, often by assassination; yet until
his great duty is done he must hold firmly to his place, must do the
work which brings him no peace, or rest, only trouble year after year.
* * * * *
¶ Throughout the amazing story, no matter which way we travel, we
always return to a profound sense of this giant's will and his massive
knowledge of human life, expressed in his ability to force the
shrewdest men in Europe to do his bidding.
His sense of power is so supreme that sometimes it really seems that,
as Bismarck himself often sets forth, his authority fell from heaven.
Here, there is a direct harking back to the ancient days in the Alt
Mark, to the Circle of Stendal with its little town of Bismarck, on
the Biese, where stands the ancient masonry dating from 1203, and
known as the "Bismarck Louse."
¶ The strange legend of the Bismarck Louse tells worlds of the ancient
Bismarck power, in those far-off times, helps us in the year 1915 to
grasp certain obscure phases of the Bismarck racial strength,
inherited by Otto von Bismarck.
¶ This medieval Bismarck Tower received its name from a gigantic louse
which inhabited this place, and had to be fed and appeased; therefore,
every day the superstitious peasants of the district brought huge
quantities of meat and drink, for the monster's food. It is needless
to add that these visits were encouraged by the Bismarck lord of the
soil, in Alt Mark;--and here you see already the cunning in managing
human nature so characteristic of the Bismarck genius.
¶ The purely social application of this gossip may, however, be eyed
with suspicion, as a French canard. It was so easy for "Figaro" to
libel the Bismarck of 1871, whereupon the whole French press followed
and barked at the Iron Chancellor's heels.
He was caricatured, spit at, reviled, depicted as the beast-man in
Europe.
¶ For one thing, Bismarck knew France was the richest nation in
Europe, also that she had ambition for the left bank of the Rhine; and
to General Sheridan, who chanced to be at Sedan and Gravelotte on
official business, Bismarck said, "The only way to keep France from
waging war in the near future is to empty her pockets."
¶ French newspaper editors lashed themselves into insanity trying to
invent new names for the man who had brought the downfall of the
Empire, at Sedan; the man who at Versailles was arranging the hardest
terms of peace ever conceived by a diplomatic Shylock, bent on having
his pound of flesh.
¶ Paris journalists called him "the incarnation of the evil spirit,"
"the Antichrist," "the shrewd barbarian," "crime-stained ogre, who was
always thrashing his wife with a dog-whip," "he kept a harem, from
which no Berlin shopkeeper's daughter was safe;" "once he became
enamored of a nun and hired ruffians to kidnap her and bear her away
to his castle;" "he is the father of many illegitimate children, in
Berlin some say as many as fifty;" "he once lashed one of his Russian
mistresses over the bare shoulders because he suspected her of looking
at another admirer;" "he uses his confidential diplomatic knowledge to
add to his huge private fortune by gambling on every Bourse in
Europe."
¶ How magnificent--if it were indeed only true! What a relief that
would be over the tame details of average human life, and what a boon
to biographers this grand wickedness! Alas, the tales are only
important as specimens of French drawing room gossip of 1871!
¶ The fables never bothered Bismarck a moment. When he was ready, he
repaid them in his own splendid coin; and certainly he was past-master
of the gentle art of putting a razor-edge on an insult!
¶ Bismarck had his vituperative side. Egged on by his wife and his
son, Bismarck became at times verbally ferocious. His wife, a
descendant of those terrible Frankish women-warriors, stemming from
barbarian times, could under stress exercise a barbarian's stark
freedom of speech; and when Bismarck, furious at some insult, was
replying with a political cannonade, she would infuriate him to still
greater exertions by suggesting:
¶ "Bismarck, hiss a little! Hiss a little!"
* * * * *
¶ And after seven hundred years, the Bismarck psychology behind the
old Tower's superstitious appeal remains substantially the same. We
shall see at times as we sketch for you the life portrait of Otto von
Bismarck a mysterious atavism; the self-same mental astuteness that
stood his ancestors in such good stead, enabling them to frighten the
peasants into providing the corn.
¶ Yes, blood will tell--and the Bismarck blood is rare juice!