Socrates in Politics
35
Perfecting himself in political intrigue and in vituperative
debating, also in caustic letter-writing; all is necessary
grist for the Bismarck mill.
¶ We come now to the year 1851.
¶ The entrance of Emperor Francis Joseph, at this time, on the
politico-military stage of Austria was followed by still another era
of political reaction; the Liberal Austrian constitution, wrested
during the riots, was revoked; as were also those Democratic
constitutions pledged for almost every German state.
¶ The Germanic Confederation, with political legitimacy vested in the
curious Frankfort Parliament, again took the field. It was an Austrian
plan to get the advantage of Prussia.
¶ "If I do not do well, you can recall me," Bismarck told William. The
King decided in his extremity to hazard the appointment of the unknown
Bismarck, as Prussian delegate to Frankfort. William remembered those
bold "White Saloon" speeches.
¶ Now get this straight: Bismarck was a land-owner of ancient days;
estates won by the sword had been in the Bismarck family for 600
years; nay, the Bismarcks traced their knighthood to the far-distant
year 1200. The force of this appeal in the blood was at once profound
and irresistible.
¶ Bismarck to the day he died was always an Alt Mark vassal to his
liege lord and master, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the King of
Prussia. So much is clear.
Bismarck was also much more than this. We repeat, he was a leader of
men. The King of Prussia could command old families in scores if not
in hundreds, to support the Ancient Regime, socially and politically,
but where find that rare man, a born leader for the cause?
¶ Duty and self-interest prompted Bismarck to hold up the royal hand,
but after all is said, the vital force of Bismarck's endorsement was
found in the man's genius for leadership. It was not so much the cause
as it was the man. For had Bismarck gone over to the other side the
history of Germany would have been vastly different.
¶ This Frankfort parliament, a hydra-headed political creation
dedicated to liberty, was in secret doing the purposes of Austrian
plutocracy and reaction; it was to be the last stand of the Old
Regime, against Democracy.
But it was necessary to move with cautious foot. The sappers were at
work under the thrones, and at any instant the mines might be touched
off.
¶ Bismarck thus, quite by accident, finds himself the representative
of William IV, in Frankfort Diet or Bundestag, the political Punch and
Judy show originally set up by Metternich, in 1815, to rule the
quarreling thirty-nine German states. Their intense individualism was
such that Metternich, who dominated at the Congress of Vienna, after
the downfall of Napoleon, did not know what was best.
All other parts of Europe, and even the islands of the seas had been
reassigned, but no human being could tell what to do with the
turbulent thirty-nine German states.
¶ "Here, then, was a mysterious 'Court of Chance,' where things
dragged on for years, a political circumlocution office, hopelessly
bound by its own interminable seals, parchments and red tape."
The secret object was to do nothing that would not favor Austria; with
the idea that, in the end, the devious course of politics would bring
Austria final control of the German lands, everywhere.
¶ It was in this absurd Parliament that Bismarck was to perfect
himself in political intrigue. Frankfort made no organic laws; these
were mysteriously settled at Vienna; the meetings of the Diet were
held in secret; at best, the voting was along lines that gave to
Austria and not to Prussia the deciding voice.
* * * * *
¶ It did not take Bismarck long to find that at Frankfort the King of
Prussia was but a cipher. Furthermore, what raised Bismarck's ire was
the impotence of the Parliament. Frankfort had been unable to put down
the blood-letting of '48, and Bismarck detested weakness of any kind,
mental, physical or spiritual.
He was, and always remained, a profound extremist; but his position
was tempered by massive common sense.
¶ The world dearly loves a flunkey--and flunkeyism was universal at
Frankfort.
The many members fluttered about in gay military dress, wore stars of
sham authority, gold crosses, medals dangling from bright ribbons.
Names prefixed by count, duke, margrave--crests on the coach door and
Latin mottoes--hyphenated family names, indicated all manner of
political marriages de convenience. Bestarred gentlemen, one and all,
if you please!
¶ Bismarck wrote home soon enough, for he was choking with anger, not
on account of the aristocratic airs of Frankfort (for Bismarck dearly
loved a title), but choking with anger because his beloved King of
Prussia was a Nobody in this crazy Parliament. "I find them a drowsy,
insipid set of creatures, only endurable when I appear among them as
so much pepper," are his sarcastic words.
* * * * *
¶ Had Bismarck not been a diplomat, he might have made his mark as a
radical writer. His letters very often show almost anarchistic
dissent. At vulgar characterization, no man could outsnarl Bismarck.
Also this Pomeranian giant's correspondence at times fairly stinks
with frightful smells. When in these black moods, he released nasty
fumes around the heads of rivals.
We are surprised, likewise, to find growing in the mire of his
thoughts, here and there, violets worthy of the poet Freiligrath. The
man's power to be poetical or insulting, as he willed, is indeed as
strange as it is rare.
¶ Bismarck's pen pictures of fellow ambassadors--how they flirted,
danced, drank to excess, their maudlin ideas of government, although
regarding themselves as veritable political seers--show the powerful
satirical and analytical side of Bismarck's brain.
And although Bismarck mocked with sardonic immensity his colleagues,
yet with an under-play worthy of the Devil, our Otto proceeded to make
these owlish and absurd gentlemen puppets in the hands of Prussia.
¶ Alas, time does not permit us to set forth the charming letters
Bismarck writes home. There is that moonlight swim in the Danube; the
interview with Metternich, the old war-horse of kings; the gypsy ball
and the weird fiddling gypsies; his visits to robber-infested parts of
Hungary, making the trip in part in a peasant's cart, "loaded pistols
in the straw at our feet, and near by a company of lanciers carrying
cocked carbines, against the imminent visits of robber bands."
He describes how he visited Ostend, going sea-bathing at that famous
resort; rambling on through Holland, smoking a long clay pipe; then on
to Sweden for the shooting; next to Russia for wild boars.
¶ His letters often have a lyrical quality, telling of waterfalls of
the Pyrenees, the fascinating fairyland of Mendelssohn, dark-eyed
Spanish beauties, open-air concerts, London garroters, old musty
houses with peculiar smells, or what you will. Bismarck dwells often
on eating and drinking; and in one letter from Paris speaks of a
dinner at which he drank St. Julien, Lafitte Branne, Mouton, Pichon,
Larose, Latour, Margaux, and Arneillac!
¶ These, and hundreds of other letters comprise charming interludes
between black moods of political intrigue, wherein he used his
vitriolic pen to lampoon his beribboned, bejeweled farce-comedy
fellow-ambassadors.
¶ "Germany is tied together with red tape," writes Bismarck at this
stage of his political apprenticeship, at Frankfort; and he hit the
nail on the head.
¶ Promise yourself a delightful month reading Bismarck's four octavo
volumes telling of his change of heart toward Austria, as shown little
by little in Frankfort dispatches, documents and proceedings,
interspersed with satirical stories in Bismarck's extremely
individualistic style. Throughout, you receive glimpses of the man's
great mind. No less an authority than the Herr Prof. von Sybel tells
us of these Bismarck writings, bearing on the formation of the German
Empire: "They possess a classic worth, unsurpassed by the best German
prose writers of any age."
36
Applying Socratic methods to game of politics; Bismarck's bold
and masterful preparations for German unity.
¶ Now then, during these years 1851-'61, Bismarck was doing two
things: Perfecting himself in the dastardly art of political intrigue;
likewise, he was going about like a modern Socrates, talking with men
of high or low degree everywhere; studying what might be called the
human nature side of the German problem of unity and nationality;
studying it, not in an aimless way, but to mould men to his own
gigantic political ends, when the right time arrived.
¶ Thus, with the stiff wind of adverse political affairs straight in
his teeth, remember that Bismarck's great strength was always his
knowledge of men.
During the years of which we now write he made it his business to
visit the various petty German courts, to gaze on princelings who
would be kings; busied himself with court gossip till he found out the
inner political jealousies.
Thus fortified, Bismarck knew the one man or woman to touch in the
various parts of Germany, to help along Prussian ambition--when the
supreme moment to strike had come at last.
¶ This supreme moment he awaited with diabolical patience through the
slow-going years.
No human being could hasten or retard Bismarck's ultimate victory; for
he remained the one truly masterful man in Europe.
He sat at gambling tables, he wheedled secrets from the prostitutes of
princes; he stood by and egged on human dog-fights; he took part in
church-rows about doctrines; he had inside glimpses of the venality of
Austrian kept-press-writers, "the scum of the earth," he calls them,
"who sell opinions as the petty merchant sells butter and eggs."
Bismarck seemed to be the only man in Europe who really was able to
grasp the solution of the German problem.
¶ Also, the granite soil of his heart is shown again and again. What a
hater he was!
For example, refusing to go to Mass for the repose of Schwarzenberg's
soul, Bismarck gave the reason: "He is the man who said: 'I will abuse
Prussia and then abolish her.'"
* * * * *
¶ You see, our Otto is one of those uncomfortable Germans who in his
own amazing personality expresses the National ideal of earnestness;
Otto is frightfully in earnest in his cups, or over his half dozen
eggs for breakfast--as you please. He frightens timid souls.
¶ His temper few men could curb, much less sit calmly by and receive
without retiring in bad order. Incident after incident at Frankfort
might be cited, but what is the use?
¶ With fiendish earnestness Bismarck plotted to break the bones of two
democratic editors whose writings threw the Prussian mastiff into
periodical black rages. Bismarck justified his cruelty by insisting
that "bounds must be set for these infamous press scribblings." He
means that attacks on the Divine-right of kings must at all hazards be
choked off. He always hated journalists, called the press "a poisoned
well," and as for himself he is on record to this effect: "I always
approached the ink-bottle with great caution."
¶ But mark this well: Our Otto, in his turn, craftily used the press
to present the smooth side of his own political intriguing; indeed he
had his very valuable Prussian press bureau; and we have authority for
the statement that the Bismarckian idea of journalism was to have
"hireling scribes well in hand, men who stabbed like masked assassins
and mined like mobs."
¶ During the decade we call Bismarck's apprenticeship, 1851-'61, he
was thus engaged: 1851, envoy at Frankfort Diet; 1852, Prussian
ambassador at Vienna, during the illness of Count Arnim; St.
Petersburg, 1859; Paris, 1862.
Thus, he had an opportunity to get acquainted with all the leading
diplomatists on the European chessboard, to study them in their own
haunts, and to perfect himself in playing with pitch without
blackening his hands.
¶ Bismarck told Francis Joseph, "I am firm to put an end to the
attacks on Prussia in the Austrian press!"
This boldness won the Emperor, and in confidence he remarked to a
friend: "Ah, that I had a man of Bismarck's audacity."
¶ Also, he told Joseph, "Prussia will never yield in the matter of the
commercial union, with Austria."
The Emperor remarked on Bismarck's youth--37 years--and was much
impressed. "Bismarck had the wisdom of a man of 70!" was Joseph's
comment.
* * * * *
¶ You begin to get a clearer idea of what this thing called patriotism
means? Nay, do not scoff at our Otto; he is only carrying on the old,
old game called reaching out after place and power; is doing exactly
what you would do yourself, if you had the will to rise to the
mountain-tops where live the Bismarcks and the Cæsars.
Mask after mask Bismarck used to cover his real intent, from 1847 to
1870, the long years he was scheming to establish a German Empire; and
he did his work well; more than that cannot be said of any man.
Therefore, his fame is secure in the Valhalla of Mankind.
* * * * *
¶ Here is an amusing bit, showing the craft and cunning of our master:
When Napoleon the Little, through his coup d'etat made himself Emperor
of France, December 2, 1851, and while Frankfort's Parliament was
trying to decide "what" to say about it, officially, a French journal
in Frankfort printed an enthusiastic endorsement of the new Emperor.
Bismarck suspected that it came straight from Prussia's hated rival.
Seeking out the proprietor of the newspaper Bismarck congratulated
him "on close relations with Napoleon." The owner, taken off his
guard, replied: "You are wrong; it came from Vienna!" This was exactly
what Bismarck wished to ascertain, and his suspicions were verified.
To make assurance doubly sure, Bismarck leaving the journalist, did a
little detective work. In the garden, from a secret place, he could
see the French minister's house. In half an hour, he spied the
journalist ringing the French minister's doorbell.
"Ah, ha!" was Bismarck's comment.
* * * * *
¶ What did this giant not do to help his beloved Prussia, and to
humiliate his detested Austria?
One day, he found a fiery anti-Prussian review in an Austrian member's
desk. He thought nothing of ransacking a desk. Richelieu had a system
of espionage unrivaled in history. Bismarck in this respect is the
Cardinal's close second. Each man regarded himself as a patriot.
Bismarck was obstinately loyal to Prussia. Her aggrandizement became
henceforth his life's passion. Nay, Bismarck did not ask that the
member be dismissed! That would be punishment too coarse. Instead,
Bismarck decided that the best revenge would be to print the address
piecemeal and thus keep the member in suspense;--something like
twisting the cords a little each day till the victim meets
strangulation in frightful form.
¶ During the eight years that Bismarck was a member of the freakish
Frankfort Diet set up by Austria to "rule" the quarreling thirty-nine
German states, Bismarck, the Prussian giant, came to see the necessity
of controlling the press.
¶ Frankfort stupidities decided Bismarck to appeal directly to the
common people (whom also he politically despised!) and hence we find
that he now meets Austria's hired journalists by urging the utmost
press-freedom. "In this," says Lowe, "Bismarck was an opportunist," as
he often was. "I learned something," he used to say when his enemies
accused him of shifting ground.
¶ Bismarck now demanded "open discussion" of German policies; saw that
hired press agents vigorously set forth the Prussian side. In this
connection it is interesting to draw a parallel between Bismarck's
ideas of journalism, in 1852, and the American conception (1915).
¶ "In the press, truth will not come to light through the mists
conjured into life by the mendacity of subsidized newspapers, until
the material wherewith to oppose all the mysteries of the Bund
(Frankfort) shall be supplied to the Prussian press, with unrestricted
liberty to use it."
¶ This idea is precisely what extremists like Roosevelt set up (1915),
battling against "trusts," endeavoring to make them audit their books
on the curbstone! So, what is new under the sun?
37
Ox-like patience of Prussian peasantry sorely tried--The
incessant call for the strong man to end political miseries.
¶ As the result of all this deep study, Bismarck came to the
conclusion that Prussia in the great moral idea of a United Germany
could win, only by fighting Austria. We might as well get at the core
of this thing, in short order. The complications are amazing; but the
more we probe into Bismarck's gigantic problem, the larger grows the
stature of our modern German giant.
¶ From this time till the hour of his death, many years later,
Bismarck remains the one great central will power of Germany, the
source of political legitimacy, dealing out with his brawny hands
favors where they would do the most good, setting men up or casting
them down; and in the end, through a series of profound political
combinations the inner currents of which to this hour no human being
has been able to chart and classify, our strong man at last is to set
up his United Germany, placing the imperial crown on William's head in
the palace of the French kings, at Versailles.
¶ Oh, how unforgivable all this is to the French. Not only that defeat
should come in '70, but that the palace of the Bourbons, costing some
$200,000,000, should be used in solemn mockery by the super-man
Bismarck, as the stage-setting whereby to complete the imperial
German holiday! Centuries must pass before this, the profound
mortification to French feelings, is forgotten. That is to say, the
worst thing you can do to a man is to hurt his pride. Had the German
Empire come to pass without wounding French pride (not to add the
French pocketbook) the French would long since have gone on their way
in peace, rejoicing in German prosperity. Why not? The French are
Christians, not the slightest doubt of that; and as Christians do not
envy the German ox, ass or maid-servant. Indeed, that is as it should
be in a Christian world.
* * * * *
¶ At home, up in Prussia, Bismarck's sullen glances surveyed Europe
afar, and in the '50's, of which we are writing, this is his problem:
He sees Germany still a mere crazy-quilt of clashing states. There are
warring ecclesiastical barons, free cities, petty princelings;
Catholic Bavaria against Protestant Prussia; nobles against the
people; the people against themselves, divided by God knows what
controversies, sane or insane; poets writing their hymns of liberty
then dying unheroically by a brickbat flung wildly in some street
brawl; jurists trying to hammer together some constitution that will
not be blown to pieces by the first explosion of gunpowder;--and all
failing! With pugnacious Prussia on the North, with rapacious Austria
on the South, with insolent Bavaria hanging off on the Southwest, and
the others fighting tooth and nail for the land, that will eventually
fall to the strongest--the German problem became an exhibition over
many years of the noblest, likewise of the darkest, passions of the
human breast.
Three dreadful wars were to be fought, 80,000 lives were to be
sacrificed, during twenty years of turbulence; and in the
blood-drenched interim various monarchs are to make a plaything of the
thirty-nine disunited German states.
¶ But the thing had to be gone through with. The historical evolution
could not be hastened, although it was often set back. Sick Germany
had many a hideous nightmare before the fever passed.
Convention after convention, diet after diet, contending monarchs
using any plea that will give the upper hand to Prussia or to Austria,
or over princes and whimsical knights, from the one who holds his
sovereignty because his ancestor had been a king's barber, to another
who in a lucky moment had found the queen's lace handkerchief, and
after that lived like a parasite on the land;--all these high
contracting parties must be sent to the dump heap and the soil
sprinkled with precious German brothers' blood, mingling freely with
vile blood, before the new political crop can grow.
¶ Between 1750 and 1870 the German problem had been settled over and
over again, but was not finally settled till by Bismarck's blood and
iron. This means in Frederick the Great's own obstinate way!
¶ We have heard from political fanatics, poets, lawyers, kings,
thieves, church-people; all manner of men and not a few women have
babbled and cackled; and there has been blood-letting, generation
after generation, all up and down the Rhine, the Main, the Spree and
the Elbe; then there would follow a lull brought about by some great
Charter of Liberty framed by the Liberals, at their latest conference;
and when it all went up in smoke, we would hear again that the
Prussian government had its own plan, which, quite naturally Austria
would never consent to advance.
¶ Indeed, the ox-like patience of the German people, with their great
moral dream of "German National faith," was strongly tried.
¶ It remained for the obstinate spirit of Frederick, through Bismarck,
to find the only way, by blood and iron. Sentimentalists should not
shed tears. It is no less an authority than Marshal Davout, the great
French soldier who had for his watchword, "The world belongs to the
obstinate."
Was not the Great Frederick, in his youth, an idealist, and did he not
write a touching essay on the evils of absolutism? But he ended by
embracing the tyranny of kings--even as you and I, if we have the
power.
* * * * *
¶ At the very outset, then, let it be made clear that it is
short-sighted to call Bismarck Prussian tyrant. What would you,
please? Cakes for the child, when the child cries? That has often been
tried, and always in vain.
Next time, the child wants two cakes instead of one. It will not do.
Frederick was dubbed the "last of the tyrants." We are sorry if this
were true.
Tyrants are exceedingly useful. Nay, we are glad to report that
Frederick is not the last.
They still exist in every family, village, city, state, and nation.
For the most part, they exercise their tyranny in petty exactions,
with no big plan such as distinguishes the dominating man from the
little fellow with the mean temper and his childish ambition to rule,
let us say, his dog or his wife.
¶ There is something pathetic in the incessant call this earth has for
a strong man. It was so in Germany, and Bismarck was that man.
Cæsar was assassinated because he was said to be a tyrant, yet after
his death for 400 years Rome sought in vain for a man strong enough to
hold the Empire from going to pieces.
¶ Is there not something puzzling in the devotion of a people to their
amiable oppressor? They may rebel against absolutism, as Bavarian
hates Prussian, but if the political despot is strong enough to win
against foreign foes, as Bismarck did at Koeniggraetz, Sedan and
Gravelotte, the people kiss the hand that smites. What greater tests
of loyalty do you ask of human nature?
¶ Before 1866, he was without doubt the "best-hated" man in Europe,
lampooned, ridiculed, even the victim of attempted assassinations.
At Frankfort mothers sang their children to sleep by the following
ditty:
Sleep, darling, sleep,
Be always gentle and good,
Or Vogel von Falkenstein will come
And carry you away in a sack;
Bismarck too will come after him,
And he eats up little children.
¶ Yet within a few years, in his character as Prussian Prime Minister,
who against the will of the people achieved the greatness of Prussia,
and thereby made possible United Germany, no adulation was too great
for our self-same Bismarck, formerly sneered at, despised, vilified,
and stoned.
So much for the value of public opinion. What then does it all mean?
Bismarck made his 30-years' battle against the people and won; and the
people, strange to say, turned a mental somersault and now saw no
inconsistency in cheering Bismarck, as liberator.
¶ How strange this sounds!
38
Here is the Man of the Hour, depicted in all his naked realism.
¶ This amazing German problem called for a wise despot, to confront
and overawe weak men, gathered in German parliaments in which there
were worlds of cackling, but no wisdom.
The curse of Germany had been too much speechmaking, too much poetry,
too much dreaming. The babble went on from 1815 to 1866, at
least--fifty years!
¶ The times called for a hard-headed, dogmatic, tyrannical man with a
plan large enough to subdue the thirty-nine warring parts, and weld
the whole into a mighty Empire.
This meant a tyrant of the massive Frederick the Great type. It called
for a man erect and proud, keen of speech, with absolute
self-confidence, who in a pinch was master at underhand dealing, and
who could deliberately use harshness and malice.
The man had to understand the delicate art of flattery, and at other
times be blustering and outspoken.
The roar of cannon should make him as cold as ice, but underneath his
frozen exterior he should have a fiery nature, full of craft and
guile, like a Gascon.
He should have a torrent of cutting words, his eyes should flash and
his blood should boil, yet he should be able to wage a secret war,
masked under compliments, or draw his dagger and strike for the heart.
He should have thousands of enemies and prevail over them all.
He should have boundless ambition; action should be the zest of his
life, and at crucial times he should display an uncontrollable temper.
He should seek the path of glory; a man of fiery enthusiasm, who never
forgives an enemy; has fits of rage; is jealous; a great swordsman,
fights duels; a master horseman, able to ride day and night without
fatigue.
He should be at once cautious and headlong, realizing that in the end
it is the bold play that wins. He should be able to live down public
utterances that would cause other men years of disgrace. He should be
able to quell a mutiny, check a mob or stamp out a rebellion. And,
above all, whether admired or detested, he should justify his career
by succeeding in what he started to do.
¶ In other words, he must be Bismarck, the greatest empire-builder
since Cæsar's day--yes, not even barring Napoleon, for Napoleon's
empire crumbled to dust, yet Bismarck's, fresh with youth, still lives
on!