Bismarck Suffers a Great Shock
27
Wherein it is shown that Bismarck's protest against disrespect
for constituted authority was based on certain tragic
historical instances he would not repeat.
¶ It is freely granted that ideas of "Liberty!" that many German
patriots desired to see come to pass, in 1848, were not those of 1789;
but elements of lawlessness, of mob-rule, of marchings to "Ca Ira!" of
absurd glorification of the common man, and of snarlings at kings as
kings, were largely in the spirit laid down by Robespierre, Danton,
Marat and that crew, with their chosen gangsters of the guillotine.
Bismarck would have none of it!
True, many of the old-line excesses were no longer used for political
purposes, but Bismarck was too well-balanced, had too much common
sense, in short was too strongly aligned with landed interests to
endorse "popular" government on the old type from over the Vosges. His
protests were all in support of authority, discipline, duty, devotion
to a deliberately chosen monarch, who ruled by the will of God.
¶ In '48 the talk of the "Rights of Man" really meant the rights of
individual men--the tailor, the barber, the shoemaker--each of whom
felt that the time had now come to overturn the political system of
kings and to bring on the rule of the common people.
Old-line hatred of Napoleon had passed away. The French military
despot of the early part of the century was now figured as a "great
democrat," whose wars had "all" been in the interest of the people.
Could anything have been more absurd? The literary speculations of
Rousseau, as to the status of a new society (such, for example, as
running naked in the grove and rolling on the grass) were now replaced
by loud discussions not on the Rights of Man, as a form of idealism,
but the rights of all manner of men, each of whom felt that, under the
new dispensation, hastened if necessary by bomb, dagger and
poison-cup, the human race was to rise to nobler political ideals. It
is not difficult to see that political theories of this sort have been
indulged, in one way or other, by every generation in revolt against
the settled ways of the fathers.
¶ Let us, therefore, go back to original sources and see for ourselves
just what account the common people had given of themselves, in a
political way, in France at the time of her so-called political
millennium. We shall then be able to grasp Bismarck's position clearly
and be able at least to understand, if we do not support, his attitude
of uncompromising severity toward popular rule, as understood at this
moment in the political evolution of Germany.
* * * * *
¶ If it be a mark of progress to call God a superstitious idol and to
endeavor by the guillotine to enforce political rights, then the
precious French key to the Door of Destiny for this human race should
be duplicated and placed in the possession of nations, far and wide,
as the final expression of man's best idea of himself, his wife, his
child and his country.
This 1789-93 return to National paganism, both political and social,
is the mockery that Bismarck decided with all his almighty strength,
nay his supreme rage, to set aside; and for him Prussian Militarism,
which he so jealously set his heart on, against the rising tides of
French constitutionalism, otherwise mob-rule, was at once to prove the
sharp cure and the dreadful counter-blow.
* * * * *
¶ It was only after St. Helena that the Napoleonic legend, presenting
Napoleon as the great democrat, was brought forward, to wit, that the
Emperor's many brutal campaigns were in the interest of the "common
people" instead of gratification of his obsession for wars.
The transition came about in a simple way. The Emperor was dead and
gone; his fate on a distant black rock added romantic interest to his
lost cause; and the return of the old-line French kings after
Waterloo, under the bayonets of Britain and the Allies, had proved a
keen disappointment, politically, to France. It is conceded that
Napoleon had promised and in many cases had applied liberal principles
in his conquered domains; but now that the man was dead, agitators of
many lands, including the 39 distracted German states, began to take
literally what the Emperor had said in a sort of huge politico-military
satire, to wit, that his blood-letting was truly in the interest of
the masses.
* * * * *
¶ Hence, between 1815 and 1848, agitators of Germany began ringing the
changes on the glories of the French Revolution. True, the Emperor had
been dead some 20-odd years; a new generation found surprising merits
in his military plans, forgetful of the lure of loot that had been the
foundation of it all; yes, for one thing the hungry desire of the
landless for the lands of the Catholic church.
¶ The exaggerated fact has been falsely set forth again and again that
the French peasant of 1789 was down in the very mire of political
despond, without a sou to his name; the cock called him to work at
dawn, and all for the good of the aristocrats; he was penniless, he
was an absurd figure, he was not a man but a beast;--hence his
righteous revolt in the sacred name of Liberty.
¶ The fact is that at this time the French peasant was in no worse
condition than the working classes of other lands, including Britain,
Italy and Germany. That the Revolution first broke out in France and
not in the other countries named is to be traced to journalistic and
oratorical agitators of the ward-politician type.
¶ The special taxes of which the peasantry complained did not exceed
two per cent of the products of the soil; and it is also a fact that
France had a large and profitable foreign trade; but French political
and journalistic agitators were afield, and the plain truth is that
the landless desired to confiscate, and did confiscate, the titles of
those in possession.
No sooner was the gigantic confiscation of Catholic church lands,
amounting to about one-third of the soil of France, or two billion
five hundred million of francs in nominal value, ordered by Mirabeau,
backed up by the Revolutionary tribunals, than the supposedly
impecunious French peasants came forward and purchased to the extent
of millions of francs; and it is a fact today (1915) that one of the
secret dreads of the French peasantry is that some sensational
political change may come in the stability of the French Government, a
change that will forfeit these old land titles, based on confiscation
in Revolutionary days.
¶ The French peasantry wants no great National military hero to emerge
from the war of 1915; and it is not unthinkable that should a very
strong French general suddenly come forward, he would be removed by
assassination; a thing that has happened at least once before, in
latter-day French politics.
This confession of politico-social fears on the part of the French
peasantry explains why in France, take them as a group, the candidates
invested with the honors of the Presidency are timid men, without
ambitious political bias, and why, on the whole, the modern French
National instinct lives in dread of a military hero, who with a turn
of his wrist might on the vote of his soldiers declare himself, let us
say, Emperor.
* * * * *
¶ Loaded down with debts incurred for various reasons, the French of
1789 were on the verge of National bankruptcy.
This condition has usually been charged up against the excesses of the
French kings, such, for example, as expending some 200,000,000 francs
for pleasure-palaces, for the pretty women around Louis XIV; but this
charge will not bear the light of modern research.
It is also a fact, on the practical side, that the much-boasted
support given to America by the French in America's Revolutionary War,
in a degree helped to bankrupt the French government; but Americans
have forgotten or wink at this plain financial obligation.
¶ Also, the French Revolution had promised in its every utterance the
dawn of the political millennium, whereas instead it brought an era of
blood, idol-worship and free-love. We are not discussing here those
poetical French surveys of the Rights of Man. Every ward-politician in
Paris had the list at his tongue's end. There was some truth, much
truth, in many of these expressions, no doubt, as mere expressions of
humane sentiments. That, however, is another story.
* * * * *
¶ One has but to read the Memoirs of President Bailly of the
Revolutionary Assembly to find that mob-rule predominated from the
first day of the supposed "Dawn of the political Millennium." The mob
in the gallery hissed or applauded each speech, and deputies were
intimidated.
¶ Bismarck in his united Germany wanted no Jacobin Clubs, largely
composed of ward-politicians, and Bismarck wanted no Marat with his
vile newspaper, "Friend of the People," setting class against class.
¶ He wanted no guillotine as the German symbol of political liberty.
This political method of the guillotine was at best only a cowardly
form of assassination, ineffectual, barbarous. First one side used it,
then the other; then still another group; each set of French political
assassins prating of Liberty had recourse to the guillotine to be well
rid of rivals much as in Cæsar's time the women of Cæsar's family,
that their own might be exalted, in turn proceeded to poison
prospective collateral heirs to the Imperial throne.
* * * * *
¶ Bismarck knew all about this dirty French mess, parading itself as
the "voice of the people." He was a strong man himself and he was
guilty of gross ambitions in his rise to power, but on the whole
Bismarck stood for self-possession and for manly audacity, certainly
not the French Revolution type of audacity. It is a fact that
Bismarck, as a human being, was a vast egotist, and had his own,
ofttimes unscrupulous, way of gaining his ends, but his conception of
Militarism, the force he did eventually use, was at bottom a virtuous
effort to support, liberate and unify the Fatherland, not drag it into
the mire of idolatry and bestiality.
* * * * *
¶ We shall frequently say harsh things about Bismarck, in this book;
we do not wish to follow French methods and endeavor to make an
impossible hero of a man of clay. Bismarck, as a man and in the
methods of his rise to great glory, had his gross faults, and we
fearlessly point them out.
¶ But here are some of the facts that Bismarck can never stand accused
of, in the light of this much-boasted French political "Millennium" of
1789-93, and here, likewise we find the real reasons why he did
struggle with all his might against a reluctant people to enforce
Militarism throughout the jealous clashing 39 German states; and if
Bismarck's exercise of the strong hand, in the bosom of the German
family was a fault, then at least it did not include these French
conditions, set up to cause the world to gasp in admiration.
¶ The bull-necked Danton, the Parisian ward-heeler, in control of
public opinion, came on with his guillotine; and closed the city's
gates against any man that had a dollar to pay his debts or buy a
dinner.
¶ The so-called "will of the people" was in short a spurious affair,
unnaturally created by a political morphine that gave glorious dreams;
and this wretched drug was supplied by the mob-leaders.
All the blood-letting was represented as a harmless affair, tending
toward liberty and equality; all the confiscations of church-lands and
redistribution among the peasants was declared a "great" political
triumph.
Throughout even the loneliest country districts the word was passed
that the political millennium was about to break.
¶ The King was represented as a "monster fattening on crime." His wife
was called an Austrian "panthress," and vile pamphlets were secretly
passed around reflecting on her character. God was represented as
judging the King, and the guillotine was awaiting Louis, by Heaven's
decree.
¶ The 26,000 priests who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the
monstrous political farce were visited with all manner of
persecutions; one section of Revolutionary opinion decreed that death
was the just due of all offending pastors.
¶ The assertion of kept-historians that there was "political
justification" is at once spurious and an insult to common sense.
¶ In justice to the better French element it is granted freely that
the dreadful September massacres did not express the real beliefs of
the great decent body of the French people; but the Nation was dragged
through the mire and the Nation has for years been endeavoring to
explain this political Millennium of riots, murders, midnight
assassinations, despoilings of land titles.
* * * * *
¶ Bismarck would have drained the poison cup rather than stand for
such French Constitutional nonsense in his beloved Germany, the
Germany of his dreams, the Germany for which he labored so many years,
the Germany which he would save from itself, so to speak.
He purposed to build up German political opinion, not through
blatherskite ward-heelers, in Berlin, Frankfort or Hamburg, but by a
manly appeal to German common sense and German sense of respect for
authority; and if Bismarck overworked his idea of Divine-right of
kings, then at least this may be said: that he issued no appeal to the
German people "Who Laughs on Friday, Weeps on Sunday!" (The massacres
had come between!) And as to Danton, who glories in being the
immediate instigator of the massacres we have these, Danton's own
words: "It was I who caused them. Rivers of blood had to flow between
me and our enemies!" Finally, after these rivers of blood, the word
was passed, "That the entire Nation will hasten to adopt this
(guillotine) most-necessary means of public salvation."
28
Viewing at closer range the work of the legislators of the
great republic of liberty and equality; these facts Bismarck
well knew, explaining his belief in militarism.
¶ After reading five hundred pamphlets on the Revolution (as she
testified at her trial) Charlotte Corday struck down Marat with a
dagger; and her act has been generally condoned by men with a sense of
fair-play. It was indeed a bloody murder; but when a mad-dog is
running wild, a beast fattening on human blood, one passion feeds on
another--and Corday is no exception. (Henderson, Symbol and Satire of
the French Revolution).
Heroine or monster, take your choice; at least in her time such was
the frenzy of the alleged political Millennium that Marat was soon
worshipped as a martyr. This atrocious political quack, with all his
daggers and his blackjacks, was likened to Jesus Christ; and among the
sentiments of the hour we read, "A perfidious hand has snatched him
away from his beloved people"; "To the immortal glory of Marat, the
people's friend"; "Unable to corrupt me, they have assassinated me!"
"Marat, rare and sublime soul, we will imitate thee; we swear it on
thy bloody corpse."
Such are some of the expressions of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity
that followers of French Constitutionalism had years later decreed to
re-enact in Germany; but Bismarck stood as a master with a rod of iron
to lay over the backs of fanatical German Radicals, who would come on
with their drunken calls of "Liberty!"
* * * * *
¶ All this, however, is only the mild opening chapter of this much
glorified French Constitutionalism. The French prisons soon held about
all there was of French intelligence and moderation; the brains, the
blood and the beauty. It is not necessary to mention names.
If you wish to become hysterical, read your fill of this drunken era
of French Constitutionalism.
At the height of the Terror, there were 8,000 political prisoners in
French dungeons; and the mobs still came on with their cries for fresh
blood. One day, this expression was made: "The town of Lyons shall be
destroyed; the name Lyons shall be effaced," etc. All this meant that
Lyons, weary of blood, had decided on raising an army to beat back the
sons of spurious liberty.
* * * * *
¶ Any man who, in the Terror, dared disagree with the mob-rulers was
called a "conspirator." In a letter from Herbois, we find this plain
evidence of political lunacy masquerading as inspiration: "There are
60,000 individuals here who will never make good republicans; we must
have them sent away. I have new measures in mind, weighty and
effectual,* * * Heads, more heads, heads every day! * * * How you
would have enjoyed seeing National justice meted out to two hundred
and nine rogues. What cement for the Republic! I say fete, yes,
citizen president, fete is the right word. The guillotining and
fusillading are not going badly!"
* * * * *
¶ The Queen, now in her dungeon, was treated with wretched dishonor.
Even the petty expenses of bread and salt were begrudged: 15 francs a
day for food; three francs and 18 sous for trimming a skirt, 18 sous
for a ribbon and shoe-strings; three francs for a tooth wash;--all
this was kept track of. Yet in years gone by France had allowed her
four million francs of pin money, and the royal allowance was
twenty-five millions of francs per annum.
¶ "Through a small window in her cell comes the light of day. * * *
She is accused of being a leech, a scourge, a harpy and a free-lover;
she is condemned to death."
* * * * *
¶ The political assassins, known as the Mountain, and that known as
the Girondists, now began destroying each other; every patriotic
action of the Girondists was set forth as having been instigated by
love of vulgar applause. After some days, the Jacobin Club petitioned
for freer trials, less hindered by legal formalities.
¶ "Long live the Republic!" was the cry. "Perish all traitors!"
Executions continued, day by day.
¶ The poor king was long since dead and gone, yet his memory was
detested.
On a certain day of horrors, the tombs of his ancestors were broken
open by the mob, and the bones scattered. One corpse (or what remained
of it) was stood up against a wall and the beard hacked off by a
patriot of the new Regime.
* * * * *
¶ All authority was now overthrown; and as one writer adds, "the most
daring enterprise of the Revolution remains to be chronicled: the
storming of Heaven!" (Henderson.)
¶ The leaders decided next to attack God on His throne; God was
officially declared a superstitious myth.
The altars of France were hurled over; the Christian era was abolished
by political decree; the Sabbath day was officially proclaimed done
away with; Christ was to be henceforth banished, officially; churches
closed, pagan rites substituted.
* * * * *
¶ Bismarck, the thinker, Bismarck, the builder, with his dream of
political responsibility, of vested Authority, stood for no such facts
in his protests against the rising tide of Radicalism, in the German
states.
He knew his history too well; he knew the satire of the French
Revolution, the folly of meeting it in any way except by the sword.
¶ Yes, Bismarck believed strongly in what has since been called
Militarism; but his idea was that power was needed for the liberation
and the unification of his country; and he hated French
Constitutionalism and fought by fair means and by foul all efforts to
warp upon Germans the political ideals of the French Revolution. So
you must here and now make up your mind whether or not Bismarck was a
great statesman or a great fool.
* * * * *
¶ The French Convention, weary of blood-letting, began maundering in
the psychology of religion.
It was officially set forth by one of the Deputies that, after all,
the idea was to invent some new form of religion, without which the
proposed political Millennium had fallen short.
Marat was turned to, that choice spirit of the height of the era;
though in his tomb, he was called upon in this strange language,
despite his bringing in the Terror:
¶ "O, heart of Jesus, O heart of Marat, you have an equal right to our
homage!"
¶ A New Era was now decreed, taken in the main from the paganism of
early France. The four seasons were symbolized by the hunt of the man
for his mate: he is afield in Autumn, on horseback; in Winter, he
first finds his new mate; in the Spring, the maid watches her sheep
feeding on the hills; and in Summertime, the man is seen leading his
mate to a couch, his arms already around her waist.
¶ One of the leading symbols was Reason, presented as a lady petting a
lion; saints' days were replaced by days for animals, one for the cat,
the dog, the sheep, and what you will; but no longer St. John's, St.
James, St. Louis.
Certain other days, dedicated to the "Spirit of the Revolution," were
termed "Sans culotte," or without trousers, to wit, the French version
of that great idol of the American yellow editor, who cries for
justice in behalf of the man with the seat out of his trousers.
¶ On a certain day, the Cathedral of Notre Dame was used as a
background for the great French political drama; a mountain was
erected, a figure known as Truth was present. The Goddess Reason was
also carried to the Tuileries; and later as a report written at the
time says, "The President of the Convention gave the Goddess a
fraternal kiss, whereupon his secretaries asked and obtained a similar
privilege."
¶ At Rochefort the orator of the hour began, "Citizens, there is no
future life!"
¶ The images of saints were replaced by men of the stripe of Marat,
Brutus and other tyrants.
¶Also, an ass was dressed in pontifical robes at a sort of National
fete, and a few days later at a public masquerade, the President
replying to praises of the New Era explained himself as follows: "In
one single instant you make vanish into nothingness the errors of
eighteen centuries"; by which he meant to honor the paganism of the
new French political Millennium.
* * * * *
¶ Now comes that dangerous man, king of political charlatans,
Robespierre, who offers a private religion of his own.
¶ The queer thing about this Robespierre, the new dictator, is his
belief that he and he alone is the fountain of all political virtues.
One must be willing to sacrifice brothers, mother, sister, father to
the guillotine--for the good of one's country.
The Robespierre idea is that the supreme duty of a Nation is to
repress "crime," as well as to uphold "virtue" and "crime" consists
largely in not agreeing with the great central authority. He has had
many followers since that day.
¶ Robespierre was really a great man gone wrong; he had in many
respects a brilliant mind; he was a profound orator; a born leader;
but he was unsound at the core, like a rotten apple; taught bloodshed
and violence, as expressions of National honor.
¶ In one picture of the hour, he is represented as the Sun, rising
over the Mountain, and Giving Light to the Universe.
* * * * *
¶ The day dawns when Robespierre has his old friend and rival Danton
on the scaffold. This was to be expected. Then followed many
executions of Dantonists.
¶ Robespierre now came on with his "new" religion; he boldly announced
a Supreme Being and belief in immortality!
¶ He applied the torch to the wooden images set up by his political
predecessors. He made a speech that is unintelligible, all wind, sound
and bombast, but was cheered to the echo.
* * * * *
¶ Are you not growing weary of all these absurdities? Perhaps you
think the details taken from the records of Bloomingdale Asylum?
No; French Constitutionalism of 1789-93, the sort that the Radicals
of Germany had in mind, (with some variations), and often extolled in
fiery speeches of the German Liberal party that Bismarck decided to
crush down, with a rod of iron. True, the old offensive historical
details were kept out of sight and were not fresh in men's
minds;--except reading men and thinking men, like Bismarck; men bold
enough to stand out against mob-violence, called by whatever soft name
you please.
¶ A French cartoon of the Robespierre Regime made at the time by an
admirer shows the earth around the guillotine heaped with heads, and
at last the over-weary executioner, failing to find further victims,
decides to execute himself! He is therefore seen lying under the axe,
his head rolling on the floor.
¶ Robespierre in the end went the way of all the other political
fanatics; the day came when he was spat upon, struck, beaten by mobs,
pricked with knives.
According to his own theory, he needed no trial (said his new rivals
and enemies in their lust for power), for he has by his acts shown
himself to be an enemy of his country.
They carried him down the great staircase; he fought back savagely,
like the frightful animal that he was.
¶ Eighty-two of his followers died that day, on the guillotine.
¶ "Long live the Republic! Long live Liberty!" was the loud cry of the
rabble.
* * * * *
¶ Such is some of the work of the great legislators of the Republic of
Equality as set forth by the various authors of the new French
"political Millennium," during those terrible years 1789-93; we have
seen their ideas on a grand scale; and it is for you to judge whether
in setting himself squarely in favor of Discipline and respect for
constituted Authority, as exemplified by the line of Prussian kings,
and the Prussian system of education, Bismarck was to show himself a
man or a mouse.
¶ Bismarck, who was a deep reader on politics, knew well the frightful
excesses of French mob-rule. He may also have recognized certain
general excellent principles, but he would have nothing to do with
the fungous growth. And as we follow his career, we see the virtue in
his strong reliance on Militarism, as an arm to keep in check the
turbulent German masses, also, later, this same Militarism to be used
to do battle for the German Empire.
* * * * *
¶ For many years, all manner of rosy democratic plans had been voiced
by the Liberals.
The thing had been done to death. Every manner of political Utopia had
been planned by theorists, but Bismarck met them all with his ironical
speeches, and bided his time.
¶ Bismarck's idea was that the only hope for German unity came through
accepting the King of Prussia as ordained of heaven.
In his arguments, he ignored the masses, the villagers, the workers,
the busy-bees, the regard for individual rights.
His whole programme seemed to the masses to be anti-Christ in
conception, that is to say, it harked back to political paganism.
¶ It is very difficult for an American to comprehend this Prussian
conception of Divine-right, as a political principle--but it should
not be difficult from the point of human experience. Bismarck had no
illusions concerning the power of the average man, and he held that
the phrase "the people" was used by every political quack in Europe
for any one of a thousand selfish motives.
Bismarck had absolutely no faith in the power of the average man to
govern himself--much less to govern others!--or faith in the average
man doing anything above the average, outside his own small trade or
craft.
* * * * *
¶ Americans are accustomed to make much of an alleged saying of
Lincoln: "No man is good enough to govern another without that man's
consent." It is all a beautiful dream, false in theory and false in
fact, belied by every record since the Lord drove Adam and Eve out of
the Garden of Eden.
Beginning with that stupendous episode, certain it is that this act
of government was not carried out with, but against the will of the
ruled; and the point at issue was not the supreme goodness of the
ruler, but the power to station an angel with a flaming sword at the
gates, toward which Adam ever after looked backward with longing
eyes--but looked in vain!
¶ In the innumerable dynasties of Babylon, Nineveh, Egypt, Greece,
Arabia, Armenia, what man ruled who did not force his leadership?
It is not in the nature of human beings to accept new ideas without
hostile objection.
This holds true also in the evolution of governments, for all life is
founded on struggle, and the man who would rule must force his
leadership or remain unknown.
¶ Lincoln is absolutely in error, and his much-quoted words are folly.
It is not a question of goodness, or badness, or fitness, on part of
the man who has the ambition to rule, but it is very much a question
of his courage, his craft or his cunning in compelling others to do
his bidding.
Julius Cæsar was not selected to rule, but he selected himself; and so
did Charlemagne, and Bismarck--and so Lincoln, himself.
¶ If some concession to the democratic system is sought on the ground
that the voice of the people loudly "called" Lincoln, then it is to be
set up that Lincoln on his part was one of the shrewdest political
log-rollers this nation has ever seen; and if he did not originate the
canvass that busies itself kissing the babies, congratulating the
wives and shaking hands with the farmers, then at least Lincoln was an
apt pupil.
It is inconceivable that, without his own high ambition, his long and
painstaking endeavors to trim sail to every favoring gale (for example
his shifting positions on the slavery question), he would have been
nominated for President of these United States.
* * * * *
¶ It is an amiable conceit of human nature, looking backward, to
profess to see what it blindly ignored, looking forward; and go to any
penitentiary in America, ask the convicts, and you will find that,
according to the stories, there are no guilty men behind the bars;
invariably a peculiar complication of circumstances enabled the guilty
man to escape, and justice was thereupon avenged by a human sacrifice;
likewise in the United States Senate or in the House of
Representatives, ask whom you please, "How came you to hold your
seat?" and you will find no ambitious man. Some were forced to stand
against their protests; others were away traveling when word was
received, by telegraph, "You have been elected!" Still others appealed
to the nominating committee, "For the love of God desist!"--but in
vain.
Thus, without raising a finger to direct the movement of events, our
leaders were selected by an omnipotent democracy to occupy the seats
of the mighty.
¶ Truly, no man is good enough to rule another without that other
man's consent! Recast in terms of human experience, it would mean that
we would go unruled; for no man yet has willingly selected his ruler,
but has had dominion over him thrust upon him--even as Bismarck
expressed his right to rule, backed by blood and iron.
Such is human nature since the world began; otherwise why was Christ,
the gentlest ruler of all time, brought to the tree; Socrates forced
to drink the hemlock by the very wise justice of his day; and Columbus
called a madman because he wished to rule men's minds with a new
truth, showing clearly that the world is not square or flat, but round
like a ball?
¶ Bismarck had the real clue--and forced his purpose through the power
of his commanding personality.
29
In spite of the dyke-captain's denunciation of French
Constitutionalism, King Fr: Wm. IV marches with the Democrats!
¶ The uprising of '48 was primarily a students' demonstration; the
hot-bloods of the universities, aided by various political
enthusiasts, were intent on doing something--and doing it right away.
There had been a preliminary meeting at Heidelberg, and this led to
the Frankfort Convention; 600 disputatious delegates were going to
build a liberal German constitution--at last!
¶ Thus, between 1815 and 1848 German Unity had been stimulated by a
dozen causes, religious, commercial, literary, social--but the
political lagged, for the fact is that about the last thing a man
learns is to govern himself.
There was a rising sense of National faith, as predicted by Arndt, the
poet of German brotherhood; also the call of blood, based on language;
likewise a deep yearning, as yet unsatisfied, for a constitutional
form of government, as against the warring, insolent 39 states.
¶ By 1848 there were Constitutions in 23 of the states; many of these
documents illiberal to be sure; but nevertheless a step in
representative government.
¶ But the Germans are a peculiar people. They wish to refer everything
to ultimate philosophical causes; hence the fruitless debates of the
Frankfort Convention, in which all manner of prospective Constitutions
were tried by the formal rules of philosophy and ethics. Such
questions as "What is a Federal state?" were angrily debated, and the
changes rung on "federation of states."
* * * * *
¶ After worlds of talking, unseen hands decided to offer to some
powerful prince the German crown. How is that for democrats? William
IV was the man selected.
¶ Prodded by Bismarck, who was always explosive and satirical about
democratic crowns, William spunkily refused to "pick a crown out of
the gutter!" His dignity, as a Hohenzollern was offended; but Bismarck
was playing for larger stakes. William now went about canvassing the
German princes for a crown; twenty-eight replied, one way or another;
others, sticking to selfish interests, made no acknowledgment.
¶ Now Bismarck, bellowing like a mastiff, set up the cry that if
William accepted that democratic crown out of the Frankfort gutter,
Prussia would become involved in civil war. And it was a fact! The
old-line Prussian military aristocracy wanted no "democratic gold,
from the gutter, melted down with their old aristocratic gold of
Frederick the Great"--and as a matter of fact, could you blame them?
Were you there, at the time, and of the land-holding privileged class,
you too would have been up in arms.
¶ Get this straight: William's idea of "United Germany" simply meant
that there should be a United Germany compounded of the thirty-nine
clashing states, provided William's beloved Prussia and not the
detested Austria could front the movement.
¶ Despite all the noble souls who write poetry on brotherhood (and
Germany has her patriots, God knows!), the irony of fate is such that
all human alignments of a political nature must at some stage be
spattered with mud.
¶ You see, henceforth for a quarter of a century, the realization of
this much-prized but elusive and seemingly impossible Unity was to
become more and more a game of politics in which the stakes were
kingdoms, principalities, riches and honors unnumbered. In all
card-games the result is not known till the last card is played; and
in the present case the game was to be protracted twenty-four years.
Chips were flung about in huge stacks, now piled on the Austrian side,
now on the Prussian; and finally, it was to break up in a fight, in
which Prussia had to tip over the table, violently seize the spoils,
batter heads right and left, and beat off rival players with
needle-guns.
¶ Come, come, there is no need of claiming too much for human nature.
The grand prize was to be gained, ultimately, by seizure! Even the
sober, common-sense William I, to whom it finally fell to be crowned
German Emperor, saw the true situation early, after the
church-building William IV had been gathered to his fathers. You will
hear more of that as we go along.
When all intriguing, all card-stacking, all smiling, all smooth
speeches no longer serve to conceal the real end of this amazing game
of international politics, as between Prussia and Austria, then the
thing to do is to bring on "blood and iron." The very human end that
Bismarck always had in mind was German liberation and Unity, by
driving the Nation's enemies beyond the borders.
¶ The best title to lands, the surest, the most incontrovertible--let
purists and pietists rage as they may--is the sharp edge of the sword.
We shall see all that more clearly as the bloody years go by.
* * * * *
¶ In the critical year '48, democratic mobs chased that old aristocrat
and king-maker Metternich out of Vienna. Hungary, Bohemia and other
intervening principalities went mad with excitement about "Liberty!"
South Germany was in a turmoil.
William IV had again practically promised a Constitution, and had
ordered the troops from Berlin; he placed a sign on his castle
"National Property." At this time the king let slip these fateful
words, "Prussia is to be dissolved in Germany!" Bismarck, pained
beyond expression, sent a letter to the King, full of expressions of
loyalty. The King kept the letter on his desk all summer.
¶ The giant continued to protest. He now first used a subsidized
press, called well-known men to write for the "North Prussian
Gazette."
For all this, he was dubbed "Junker," "Hot Head," "Reactionary," but
he thundered away like a battleship in action.
* * * * *
¶ The King was in the hands of the Liberals. Bismarck regarded this as
a frightful situation. Bismarck, of the Old Regime, stood by the
landlords and the titled folk. He had prodigious pride of station,
hated to see the King make a fool of himself about paper
Constitutions.
¶ In Berlin, along in March, there were amazing scenes. The democrats
were crazy for blood; William shrank with horror against fighting his
beloved Berliners. But this son, the future William I, who twenty-four
years later was to gain the imperial German crown, was not so
squeamish. The young prince gained the popular title "Cartridge-box
prince," equivalent to saying that he was willing to blaze away at
"beloved Berliners," or at any other citizens insane with political
excitements hazardous to "Divine-right."
¶ It is true that on March 18th this romantic William IV did indeed
enter into negotiations with the insurgents; and--think of the
mortification to one of Bismarck's upper-class leanings!--did indeed
do no less than wrap the German tricolor around his body and heading a
democratic procession march around the streets, even going so far as
to make a foolish speech in which he extolled the glories of the
German democratic revolution.
¶ Here we might as well close the book, were it not for Bismarck. The
surly dog of a king's man flatly refused to vote "Aye!" in the Diet,
where the hot-heads were intent on passing resolutions "commending the
King for his loyalty to democratic principles," in marching 'round
town with the mob. Bismarck for the time being stood like a great
mastiff at bay before wolves.
His terrific speech upholding royal prerogative made his early and
sudden fame.
* * * * *
¶ It is a fact that with all their political ambitions, and their
solemn belief that Germany's political future was an open book, the
Radicals in Prussia never guessed the way events were to turn out; nor
for that matter the Radicals never desired the conquest of Germany by
Prussia; therefore the subsequent astonishing rise of German
Imperialism through Prussian domination, would have proved a most
surprising revelation had the patriots of 1806 to 1848 returned from
the other world, say in 1870, to view Prussia's rise to glory.
* * * * *
¶ The political uprisings of 1848 had parallels in Italy, France,
Spain, and Germany; and the excesses cleared the way for wiser action,
in years to come.
¶ "The frenzy was a sort of tottering bridge between the French
1789-93 idea of democracy (that has to do with bloodshed and violence)
and the purified conception expressed in modern constitutional
democracy."
¶ The German democratic uprisings of 1820, '30 and '48 were planned to
win a certain type of civil liberty. They failed. The question was
"equality," as well as popular "machinery" of representation. How was
it to be brought about? Modern "parliamentarism" had not as yet been
involved.
¶ The patriots of '48 had their Jacobin clubs in mild imitation of the
French Revolution. Baden alone had 400, with a membership of 20,000.
"Every tavern and brewery, (Dahlinger, German Revolution of '49, p.
33), became a seat of democratic propaganda."
See, there stands the mighty Hecker,
A feather in his hat,
There stands the friend of the people,
Yearning for the tyrants' blood;
Big boots with thick soles,
Sword and pistol by his side.
¶ Copied from French models was the word "Citizen." We hear of Citizen
Brentano, Citizen Franz Sigel, Citizen Ostenhaus, Citizen
Schimmelpfennig; some of these leaders were extremely radical; but
Brentano endeavored to keep the Revolution from becoming a record of
lawlessness after the French Revolution type. (Dahlinger, p. 100).
We cannot go into the various battles fought and lost. Many of the
leaders were exiled, others shot. The patriots were as a rule young
collegians, ambitious to rise in life, but sincerely holding to
modified conceptions of French Constitutionalism. There were a large
number of journalists in the thick of the struggle, also professors in
high schools. These chosen leaders, by various oratorical tricks, drew
political and social malcontents from every walk of life.
¶ In the end, Prussian troops put down the patriots.
* * * * *
¶ In '48, all kings were under suspicion; it made no difference
whether the king was a good king or a bad king; a king was a king, and
all kings were bad.
The younger generation, especially became morbid over the word
"Liberty!" What it really meant, in '48, was that human nature should
restrain itself, in order that all men might, immediately, enter into
so-called God-given political rights.
The situation was somewhat analogous to that created after the Civil
War, in the United States. Certain political fanatics, weeping over
the Negroes, now demanded universal suffrage, literally, for the
slaves, and in secret saw that by controlling the South, a "Black
Republic" might be set up, side by side with our "White Republic."
¶ Fraternity and equality--that was the cry in '48--glossed over by
politico-religious glamour, expressed in the idea that men "ought" do
thus and so, and therefore "a people's king" was in order. The people
were to crown themselves.
For a thousand years the accepted political doctrine had been that
kings held office by Divine-right, but now orators of the day
harangued mobs proclaiming the literal belief that the voice of the
people is the voice of God.
While, thus, the new apostles ridiculed the old idea of Divine-right,
as attached to the acts of monarch, leaders of the people saw no
inconsistency in asserting attributes of political divinity in the
doings of the common people. Thus, a species of nebulous
politico-religious humanism was pictured as the highest expression of
political philosophy.
The individual wished to come into his own and the quicker the better.
Reformers shocked landed proprietors, titled folk and office-holders
under kings, by demanding unconditional surrender of the machinery of
government; zealots urged revolts against all manner of constituted
authority. The point was to gain for the barber, the tailor, the
shoemaker and the blacksmith more life, more political experience,
more freedom of choice--and right on the next tick of the clock!
¶ There is this about it: that the Frankfort Convention offered to
William IV the "People's Crown" as a direct symbol of belief in
political idealism, not necessarily, however, the political idealism
that tolerates a king but instead uses him as a popular signboard.
The Convention held that German unity "ought by right" to be
established; therefore "once the grand Idea was set afloat" the cause
"must by moral right come to pass."
¶ Probably never before in the world was there formulated an outright,
widespread expression of greater political idealism by men who called
themselves patriots. There is a noble side to the sentiment,
heightened the more as we realize the inevitable delusion of it all,
translated into terms of human selfishness.
Germany, so the zealots proclaimed, should by blood and language be
united; and in this respect orators of the hour were correct.
Germany had a manifest destiny, the speakers continued, but in this
respect they were guided by faith rather than by experience. At least,
the momentary end of "manifest destiny" was clearly the political
function; to be one and united.
¶ So far good.
* * * * *
¶ Then why "should not" this noble German Idea be "accepted"? The word
Idea was usually presented with a capital letter, in form of
personification, so real had the thing become to German political
orators.
Certainly every German was ready to testify that National Unity had
been the one political dream of generations past and gone.
Had not the old wandering minstrels sung of the Fatherland, alas, too
long delayed by miserable human selfishness! German bull-headedness
insisted on insularity, on individualism, on particularism, on
standing each petty monarch in his corner, with farce-comedy courtiers
bowing and scraping while the rights of the peasant were forgotten.
Assuredly, the day had come for this folly to cease. Then in Heaven's
name, why not a United Germany--here and now?
* * * * *
¶ The petty passions of rival princes acted as a bar to the acceptance
of the glorious National Idea, spelled with the big "I."
Intense particularisms preferred loyalty to local princes, fashions,
customs, dialects rather than to lose the old ways in the larger life
of the German Nation.
¶ But Bismarck did not lose heart.