No More Learning

His whole system was challenged. As Minister-President
he was to be reduced to a position of equality with col-
leagues placed in complete independence in their relations
with himself and with the Crown; a policy in home
affairs was to be carried out through the ministers of the
Interior and Finance which reversed all his principles; as
Chancellor he was expected to carry out a foreign policy
in flat contradiction to his convictions and ideas. The
close connection between home and foreign policy--the
keystone of his system and his success--was to be snapped;
alike in the Prussian Landtag and the Imperial Reichstag
he would speak without any control over parties or any
security that the votes would not be influenced by Imperial
intrigues or ministerial pressure, unfavourable to himself.
In the daily intercourse with the representatives of foreign
governments he could no longer invite their confidence
or express his own. Moltke had resigned his post as Chief
of the General Staff. The new chief, Waldersee, in
Bismarck's judgment was a second-rate soldier and an in-
triguing politician in the hands of a 'military ring' bent
on controlling the civil authority. In a word, the Chan-
cellor and Minister-President would have lost all his rights
to co-ordinate strategy and policy. The Emperor, he
told more than one confidant, ' now wishes to reign alone
--to be his own Chancellor and Minister-President. '
It was impossible that Bismarck could accept after twenty-
seven years of power a position that was a personal humilia-
tion, a reversal of his policy, and a reduction to impotence.
'I cannot serve,' he said, ' on my knees' (Ich kann nicht
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 473
mit Proskynesis dienert). The final touch was given on
March 14. Windthorst who wished to consult the Chan-
cellor about the forthcoming session was received 'in
audience' by Bismarck. What passed between them--
whether Bismarck suggested a coalition between the shat-
tered Conservatives and the Clericals, cemented by a final
repeal of the May Laws--is uncertain and matters little.
'1 come,' Windthorst observed,' from the political death-
bed of a great man. ' The next day the Emperor in person
demanded an explanation of what had passed, and Bismarck
was dragged from his sleep to wait upon the unexpected
visitor. 'It was all that Bismarck could do,' the Emperor
subsequently related, 'to refrain from throwing the ink-
pot at my head. ' Bismarck was no less certain that the
Emperor lost his temper even more completely than he
did himself. He refused to give the information de-
manded. The discussions with Windthorst or other
leaders of parties were personal and confidential, and could
not be controlled by the Crown, not even if the Crown
commanded. According to one source, Bismarck drawing
himself up to his full height asserted that he had received
Windthorst as a gentleman had the right to receive his
friends in his own house, and then he added that 'the
orders of the Sovereign stopped at the door of the Princess's
drawing-room. ' The phrase may be an invention, but it
exactly expressed Bismarck's attitude. The memorable
conversation was not one between Minister and Emperor,
but between the Prussian Junker of Sch8nhausen, Varzin,
and Friedrichsruhe, and the Elector of Brandenburg whom
the Junker had made German Emperor.
Repeatedly pressed, Bismarck at last submitted his
resignation. On March 20 the official Gazette announced
that the Emperor had been graciously pleased to accept
with profound regret the Chancellor's request to be
relieved of his offices, and in return for his ' imperishable
services' conferred upon him the title of Duke of Lauen-
burg and Colonel-General, with the rank of Field-Marshal
in the army. Punch, in one of the most famous of its
famous cartoons which, curiously enough, delighted both
Bismarck and William n. , summed up the event with
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? 474
BISMARCK
unerring felicity. 'The Pilot' who had steered the ship
through so many storms and so many shoals,' was dropped. '
The Emperor henceforward intended to be Captain and
Pilot in one.
Official Berlin heard the news, expected for so many
months, with a sigh of profound relief :1 but to Germany
and the German nation the Emperor's dismissal of the
man who summed up German power and represented the
Empire in the Councils of the world--the greatest German
political figure since the Middle Ages--rwas received with
consternation and genuine sorrow. The old Emperor
was dead; Moltke in his ninetieth year was no longer the
brain of the German army; and now Bismarck had gone,
removed neither by death nor incapacitated by sickness.
The German nation knew that in the political sphere there
was no one in experience, strength of character, prestige,
or intellect fit to tie the latchet of Bismarck's shoe. With
March 20, 1890, the heroic age had indeed ended.
Bismarck refused the title of Duke of Lauenburg. '1
prefer,' he said, ' to bear for the future the name and the
title that J have borne up till now. ' He paid a final call
on Moltke and on the Empress Frederick. Prince Hohen-
lohe tells us that 'when the Empress asked whether she
could do anything for him he merely said: "I ask only
for sympathy! "' In the evening of March 28, a carriage
drove up to the Royal Mausoleum at Charlottenburg
where the Emperor William 1. was buried; a tall figure
alighted, with some roses in his hand, and paced in the
dusk through the garden in solitary silence, then entered
the Mausoleum and laid the roses on the Emperor's tomb.
A long pause followed. The figure slowly left the sanctuary
and drove away. It was Bismarck. He had come to say
. farewell to the dead master whom he had served. From
that master's grandson he would not accept a dukedom;
1 'Each separate personality,' riote6 Hohenlohe on June 18, 1890,'is now
conscious of his own value. Formerly the individual was oppressed and restricted
by the dominant influence of Prince Bismarck, but now they have all swelled
out like sponges placed in water. This has its advantages but also its dangers.
There is no unity of will. ' On March 24, 1890, he had written: 'Stosch told
me much about his quarrel with Bismarck and was as chirpy as a wren that he
could now speak openly and that the great man was no longer to be teared.
This comfortable feeling is-universal here (in Berlin). '
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 475
for his imperial honours he cared nothing. But for
William 1. he had the silence of memories that lay too deep
for words or tears, memories and a handful of roses.
Next day, March 29, accompanied by his wife and his
son Count Herbert, who had resigned with him, he left
Berlin. Ambassadors, ministers, generals, and an enor-
mous crowd, were at the station. Every one was aware
that one personage was wanting--the Emperor--and
nobody missed him, least of all the ex-Chancellor. Could
William n. have been on the platform he would have
learned from the homage of the people that emperors
might come and go, but for Germany, indeed for Europe,
there was only one Bismarck, and there never could be
another.
If there could be any doubt that a fundamental differ-
ence of opinion on the principles, methods, and objects
of foreign policy was the main, though not the sole, cause
of the quarrel between Emperor and Chancellor the criti-
cisms, denunciations, and warnings of Bismarck from the
date of his dismissal practically till his last illness would
convince the most obstinate sceptic. Sometimes made
through interviews to journalists, carefully selected for the
purpose, occasionally expressed in public replies to the ad-
dresses of ardent admirers or powerful organisations, but
for the most part worked up in newspaper articles by ' in-
spired' pens from material supplied by Bismarck in his
solitude at Friedrichsruhe--these utterances constitute a
'Bismarck literature ' in themselves. They merit and repay
a close study; and German industry has facilitated in the
volumes of Penzler and Hofmann their examination and
collation. Every one in Germany was aware that in the
columns of the Leipziger Neueste Nachrickten, the Miin-
chener Neueste Nachrichten, and especially the Hamburger
Nachrichten (under the able editorship of Julius Hart-
meyer) the ex-Chancellor was speaking to the Germany that
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? 476
BISMARCK
did not cease to regard him as the supreme oracle on all
the affairs of Europe and of life. Veneration, gratitude,
and affection heightened the homage to the fallen Titan
in his lonely and morose grandeur.
The range of subjects is amazingly wide, and the treat-
ment is rich in autobiographic reminiscences, in valuable
additions to our historical knowledge, and in the matured
criticism stamped with the unmistakable flavour and
quality that personality tempered in the strife of a life-
time with great men and greater issues alone can impart--
that specific flavour and quality which have given to
Bismarck's letters and speeches a unique place in German
literature. In many respects indeed the more weighty
items in this remarkable collection strike a truer note and
convey a more convincing sincerity than the Memoirs
which, under pressure, Bismarck wrote late in life, and the
value of which is somewhat impaired by faulty arrangement,
omissions, contradictions, and, too often, slipshod displace-
ment of dates and facts. From Penzler's and Hofmann's
collections of Bismarckiana after March 1890, judiciously
winnowed and critically pieced together, might easily be
constructed a Testament Politique, picturing the statesman
in his final stage, and epitomising the marrow and blood of
his statecraft. Some day the scholar, it is hoped, will be
found to confer the boon.
It is often asserted that Bismarck's judgments were in-
spired simply by hostility to his successors in the Wilhelm-
strasse, and that this unquestionable jealousy and hatred
deprive his criticisms of all weight. It would be truer to
say that Bismarck was defending and explaining the prin-
ciples of his policy from 1871 onwards, and that he viewed
with profound misgiving the development of German
policy under the' New Course ' conducted by the Emperor
and his advisers or instruments. He was deliberately pro-
viding a parallel and a contrast which is deeply instructive
for the last decade of the nineteenth century. For ex-
ample, shortly after his dismissal, the Hamburger Nach-
richten (April 26, 1890) wrote :--
Austria cannot hope to obtain Germany's support for promoting
her ambitious plans in the Balkan peninsula. These Austrian
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
plans have never been encouraged by Germany as long as Germany's
foreign policy was directed by Prince Bismarck. . . . Least of all
is it Germany's business to support Austria's ambitions in the
Balkans.
And again (September 29, 1890):--
In the past, when the relations between Germany and Austria
and between Germany and Russia were discussed, there were two
points of danger: firstly, that German policy--or what would be
worse, the German army--should be placed at the disposal of
purely Austrian interests in the Balkans against Russia; secondly,
that Germany's relations with Russia should be endangered and
brought to the breaking-point. . . . The Austro-German alliance
does not demand that Germany should support Austria's Balkan
interests against Russia. It only demands that Germany should
assist Austria if her territories should be attacked by Russia.
And again (January 24, 1892) --
The Austro-German alliance of 1879 contemplated only mutual
defence against a possible attack. Hence Germany always pointed
out in Vienna that the Austro-German affiance protected only the
Dual Monarchy itself, but not its Balkan policy. With regard to
the Balkans, Germany had unceasingly advised Austria to find pro-
tection by means of a separate treaty with the States interested in
the Balkans, such-as England and Italy. . . . By following the path
upon which she has entered, Germany is in danger of gradually
becoming dependent upon Austria, and in the end she may have to
pay with her blood and treasure for the Balkan policy of Vienna.
. . . Formerly the Triple Affiance existed as it does now, and its im-
portance was increased by the fact that Germany had a free hand,
directed it, and Europe. A crisis in Italy, a change of sovereign in
Austria or the like may shake its foundations so greatly that, in spite
of all written engagements, it will be impossible to maintain it. In
that case Germany's position would become extremely serious, for
in order not to become entirely isolated, she would be compelled
to follow Austria's policy in the Balkans without reserve. Germany
might get into the leading strings of another Power. . . .
These quotations might be indefinitely extended, but
the point is admirably clear; it is made still clearer by the
following comment on the Triple Alliance (Hamburger
Nachrichten, June 13, 1890):--
The Austro-Italian Affiance is not equally favourable. Between
Austria and Italy there are unadjusted differences, which are parti-
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? 478
BISMARCK
cularly to be found on the side of Italy, such as the anti-Austrian
aspiration of the Irredentists. . . . The maintenance of the present
relations between Austria and Italy must be the principal care of the
diplomatists, especially as, if Italy for some reason or other should
abandon the Triple Alliance, the Austrian army would be compelled
to protect the Dual Monarchy against Italy . . . by the detach-
ment of Italy, the Austro-German alliance would militarily lose so
much that its value would become very problematical . . . as long
as Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy are united in the Triple
Alliance, and as long as these three States may reckon on the assist-
ance of the English sea-power, the peace of Europe will not be
broken. We must take care that friendly relations between Austria
and Italy and between Italy and England shall be maintained.
Besides, we must see that the Triple Alliance is restricted to its
original scope, and that "it is not allowed to serve those special
interests which have nothing to do with it.
And again (May 18, 1892) :--
England's attitude towards the Triple Alliance depends not
upon the Heligoland Treaty, but on Italy. If England is opposed
to Germany, we can never reckon upon Italy's help.
In this connection, and also with reference to acute poli-
tical controversies at the time (1895) Bismarck said in reply
to an address :--
I wished to acquire Schleswig-Holstein, because unless we had
that province we could not hope to have a German fleet. . . . I
should consider it an exaggeration for Germany to compete with
the French or the English navy. However, we must be strong
enough on the sea to be able to deal with those second-rate powers
which we cannot get at by land.
In September 1897, Maximilian Harden reproduced in
his paper Die Zukunft, the following opinion from
Bismarck:--
I have never been in favour of a colonial policy of conquest similar
to that pursued by France. As far as one can see, the most import-
ant thing for Germany is a strong and reliable army, provided with
the best weapons. I am of Moltke's opinion, that we shall have to
fight on the continent of Europe for the possession of colonies.
And in one of the very latest of his pronouncements
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
(Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, December 8, 1897)
Bismarck said :--
Nothing could be more strongly opposed to Germany's interest
than to enter upon more or less daring and adventurous enterprises,
guided merely by the desire to have a finger in every pie, to flatter
the vanity of the nation, or to please the ambitions of those who
rule it. To carry on a policy of prestige would be more in accord-
ance with the French than the German character. In order to
acquire prestige, France has gone to Algiers, Tunis, Mexico, and
Madagascar. If Germany should ever follow a similar policy, she
would not promote any German interests, but would endanger the
welfare of the Empire and its position in Europe.
The reference to Weltpolitik and Weltmacht is un-
mistakable. Let it be simply noted that two years after
Bismarck's death Von der Goltz, who was not the victim
of journalistic Chauvinism but a scientific exponent of
policy, wrote :--
We must contradict the frequently expressed opinion that a war
between Germany and Great Britain is impossible . . . the
material basis of our power is large enough to enable us to destroy
the present superiority of Great Britain.
Von der Goltz only expressed what the advocates of
colonialism urged :--
The old century saw a German Europe. The new one shall see
a German world. . . . We do not require a fleet against France or
Russia. . . . We require a fleet only against England.
It is instructive to place such utterances beside those of
Bismarck in the Reichstag in 1885 and in 1889 (quoted on
page 420). The antithesis needs no comment.
But if the
ex-Chancellor could fairly have said that the generation
which succeeded him had forgotten that Germany still
had to live in Europe with three or more neighbours, and
had disregarded his teaching, his principles, and his sense
of limits, the neo-Bismarckians could no less fairly retort
that they were only applying to new spheres the principles
and the methods that the master had taught were the only
successful and justifiable weapon of policy. Bismarckian
principles of statecraft and ends of policy cannot be limited
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? 480
BISMARCK
to a defined programme and then denounced as illegitimate,
because they are held to be equally applicable to all spheres
of action, in which the State is striving to secure the con-
ditions on which it wishes to live with its neighbours. If
Bismarck spent his years after 1890 in warning Germany
against the dangers inherent in the doctrine and policy he
had himself enforced, to that extent he did valuable ser-
vice. But the young generation of the new Germany, felt
by a true and inexorable logic which it had learned from
the ex-Chancellor that if a State's needs constitute its
rights, and if the realisation of those rights can only be
achieved by force, a world-empire could be made, and only
be made, by precisely the same methods as had made the
German Empire, and by none other. The State that is
the incarnation of Power ceases to lose its title to exist if
it places limitations on Power derived from principles
which are the negation of those on which it has been de-
liberately based. For power and force are, by implication,
like the sovereignty defined by the jurist, intrinsically illimit-
able and indivisible, and provide, if at all, their own law
and justification. Similarly in the warnings against the
peril for Germany of Austria's Balkanism, Bismarck was
largely responsible for the situation out of which Austrian
Balkanism was created. There were mainly two causes in
operation. The unification of Germany gave a tremen-
dous impetus to Nationalism, which found its expression
for South-Eastern Europe in the formula of ' The Balkans
for the Balkan peoples. ' But unless the Dual Monarchy
controlled those Balkan nationalities their nationalism was
dangerous, if not fatal, to the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
Either Austria must subordinate Balkan nationalism to
Austrianism or the nationalities would disintegrate the
Habsburg Empire in the interests of Balkan, and particularly
Slav, nationalism. The end of the Ottoman Empire in
Europe meant the beginning of a new phase of the Austrian
problem, and the most critical since the Ottoman Turk had
crossed the Danube. Secondly, when Bismarck thrust
Austria out of Germany, and also out of Italy, he made an
Austrian expansion south-eastwards inevitable. Previ-
ously to i860 Austria had always regarded the German
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 481
sphere as her chief concern. But after 1866, the diversion
of Austria was as essential to the maintenance of the
German Empire of 1871 as was the diversion of France or
of Russia. This is only another way of saying that when
Bismarck finally abandoned in 1859 tne programme of the
. Great Germany party, and adopted the programme of the
Small Germany party, he left unsolved the problem with
which Germany and Europe wrestled since the dissolution
in 1806 of the old Holy Roman Empire of the German
nation. Bismarck, as we have seen, convinced himself that
the Great Germany solution of the problem was not practi-
cable, because it was incompatible with a Prussian supre-
macy in a united Germany--and on that argument it is
difficult to prove that his judgment erred--but the solution
which he achieved left the Germany that he had made still
confronted with the original and permanent difficulties.
The Germans in Austria had a broad common interest
with the Germany from which they were excluded; and
the German Empire which shut the Austrian Germans
out could not, on any argument of policy, interest,
nationalism, or safety, remain indifferent to the destinies
of a German Austria. Bismarck created a safety valve in
the Dual Alliance, which linked the Habsburg and Hohen-
- zollern monarchies, and the divided Germans of the
Hohenzollern and Austrian empires in a united political
co-operation for common German ends. In reality, this
co-operation shelved rather than settled the problem, as the
sequel proved. The Central Europe that Bismarck created
was not purely Germanic. It rested not on German
nationalism, but on a German domination of a strategic
area. It included in its framework alien and suppressed ele-
ments alike in Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lorraine, Prussian
Poland, and Austrian Galicia. Above all, in Hungary and
the relations of the Magyars to the non-Magyar and non-
German races in the Dual Empire, it avowedly identified a
German with a Magyar domination. The inevitable result
was that the safety of the complex and ill-knit Austrian
Empire became essential to the German Empire. Ger-
many was confronted with the dilemma either of letting
Austria go her own independent way and thereby imperil-
b. 2 H
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? 482
BISMARCK
ling both the western and eastern fronts of a united
Germany, or of following Austria in a Balkan policy which
entangled Germany in vast issues, outside of, and antagon-
istic to, her own specific German interests. To Bismarck's
criticisms of German policy after 1890 there were not
lacking in his own day powerful counter-critics, such as
Holnstein, the silent Eminence grise of the Wilhelmstrasse,
who pointed out that when Bismarck agreed to compen-
sate Austria-Hungary with the occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina he laid a mortgage on Germany which she
could only repudiate by making Austria an open foe or
only redeem by supporting Austrian Balkanism to the
last reserves of the German army, if need be.
Nor were there lacking those who pointed out that
Bismarck's ' moderation ' in 1866 was the original and de-
cisive blunder. Two courses were open then, it was plainly
argued after Bismarck's fall. The first was to have given
the King and the soldiers carte blanche to roll Austria in the
dust and to reduce the Habsburg sovereigns practically to
the kingdom of Hungary, thereby making them the rulers
of a non-German State outside a Greater Germany, with
which an alliance, not an identity of interests, could have
naturally followed. The second was to have retained
German Austria, as before, in a reconstructed German
confederation, in which the north, the south, and German
Austria would have made a united but tripartite national
polity. Such a confederation, it was suggested, would
have kept all Germans in a single political organisation, so
strong that all the groupings outside it of non-German States
could not have affected either its stability or its capacity to
exist as a power in Europe. What prevented the establish-
ment of such a confederation was the refusal of Bismarck
to dissolve Prussia in Germany, no less than his deter-
mination to impose Prussianism on as much of Germany
as Prussian power could absorb and dominate. Hence
the conclusion that Bismarck's solution was responsible
for the difficulties that came to a head in 1890, and
never ceased to be a wasting mortgage on Germany after
Bismarck's fall.
Such criticism is not purely academic and dialectical;
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 483
however much it seems to ignore the practical difficulties
that its execution between 1862 and 1870 would have in-
volved. It emphasises the historic truth that the Habs-
burg dynasty has been the gravest obstacle to the rational
and natural satisfaction of German Nationalism, as well as
to the formation of a truly German Empire from the age
of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the age of
Bismarck. The mediatisation of the particularist dynasties
in Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Baden, and Bavaria
was unquestionably essential to the creation of a federal
and national German State; but the mediatisation of
the Habsburg dynasty was still more essential, and would
have facilitated and federalised a national German State
even more effectually than the reduction of the Guelph,
Wittelsbach, or Saxon princely houses. Had the Austrian-
Hungarian Empire after 1866 been cut into two parts, and
the German part (deprived of its royal ruler) been associ-
ated with a new and greater Germany, while the non-
German parts were left to find a new and independent
existence on nationalist lines, Europe after i860 might
well have had a happier fife. It could certainly not have
had a less happy one than the course of things since 1871
Srovided. Be that as it may, the full consequences of the
ismarckian solution of the German problem were only
working themselves out when Bismarck fell; nor can
Bismarck escape the full responsibility for those conse-
quences, simply because he warned his successors that
they were making mistakes. It is not always the heirs
to a great legacy who mismanage the property. More fre-
quently than is commonly supposed or admitted, the nature
of the property, the methods by which it has been acquired,
and the principles on which it has been administered prior
to the change of ownership impose obligations and involve
efforts, without which the inheritance itself must fall to
pieces. A generation which inherits what it has not made
by its own labours and self-sacrifice can be as reckless in the
ambition to spend as the heirs to a great estate, who have
been rocked, cradled, and dandled in the conviction that a
world they have not made exists for them, and not they for
the world. And in the case of Germany after 1890 the
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? 484
BISMARCK
heirs had been taught that to force, power, and reason of
State miracles were easy.
Bismarck's searchings of heart were by no means confined
to foreign policy. Earnestly meditating at Friedrichsruhe,
and convinced that the directors in the Reichskanzlerpalais
and at Imperial Headquarters were guilty of blunder after
blunder he diagnosed the causes of the mischief in two
plain conclusions--the royal autocracy and the complete
inability of a representative legislature to control policy.
The impotence of the Reichstag after 1890 was as con-
spicuous as the power of the imperial monarchy. In this
sphere, also, Bismarck pointed the moral very clearly. in
more than one trenchant statement.
Thus (December 12, 1891) :--
The most disquieting feature for me is that the Reichstag has
abdicated its position. We suffer everywhere from the bureaucracy
. . . If the authority of the Reichstag declines, the bonds which
hold Germany together are weakened.
And still more emphatically (July 24, 1892) :--
To strengthen the Reichstag the responsibility of ministers
should be increased . . . the Chancellor's post may be abused to
such an extent that he becomes a mere secretary. . . . When I
became Minister, the Crown was threatened by the people. . . .
Hence I strove to strengthen the Crown against Parliament. Per-
haps I went too far in that direction. We now require a balance of
power within Germany, and I believe that free criticism is indis-
pensable to the monarchy. . . . If Parliament becomes powerless,
becomes a mere tool in the hands of the government, we return to
the regime of absolutism.
And again, in a reply to an address (July 30, 1892):--
The basis of a constitutional monarchy is the co-operation of the
monarchical will with the convictions of the governed people. . . .
It is a dangerous experiment nowadays to strive after absolutism
in the centre of Europe . . . the wars which united Germany were
necessary . . . but Germany cannot conduct aggressive Cabinet
wars. Besides, a nation which can be forced into such wars does
not possess the right constitution . . . in building up the Empire
some kind of dictatorship was necessary, but that cannot be con-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 485
sidered as a permanent feature. One's task can be completed only
when Germany possesses a powerful Parliament which embodies
our sense of unity.
Is this Saul among the prophets? The young German
of 1892 might pertinently ask, as he heard this passage:
who made the Reichstag impotent ? who refused to allow
ministerial responsibility to be established ? who made
'an aggressive Cabinet war' in 1864, in 1866, and in 1870,
and ' forced the nation into it' because it did not' possess
the right constitution'? What indications were there in
1889 that the empire autoritaire created by Bismarck was
intended by him to be a transient prelude to an empire
libiral? and finally, how could the Reichstag be made a
truly effective political organ, except by rewriting the
whole text of the Constitution imposed on Germany by
Bismarck in 1866-7, and again in 1871? Was Bismarck
suggesting in earnest that his whole work was to be undone
and the fabric of the Empire reconstructed from top to
bottom?
The royal absolutism drew from the seer of Friedrichs-
ruhe no less emphatic condemnation :--
Absolutism, he wrote in his Memoirs, would be the ideal form of
government for-a European State were not the King and his officials
as other men to whom it is not given to reign with superhuman
wisdom, insight, and justice. . . . If the King comes to any unfor-
tunate decisions, no one can judge whether they are due to his own
will or to the influences which various personalities of male and
female gender--aides-de-camp, courtiers, and political intriguers,
flatterers, chatterboxes, and tell-tales--may have upon the monarch.
In the last resort the royal signature covers everything: how it has
been obtained no one ever knows.
On such a matter no one could speak with more inti-
mate knowledge than Bismarck himself. Had he told
us exactly how he obtained the royal signature between
1862 and 1888 the dark places in Prussian, German,
and European history would be far less dark than they
are. Or did he mean that autocracy was only useful
when manipulated by a Bismarck?
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BISMARCK
Sir Charles Dilke, who visited Friedrichsruhe, has re-
corded :--
As Bismarck mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he
was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which
to work well required the King to be an angel. 'Now,' he said,
'kings even when good have women round them, who, even if
queens, govern them to their personal ends. '
And to Dilke he made another ' confession ' on the same
point:--
People look on me as a monarchist. Were it all to come over
again I would be republican and democrat; the rule of kings is the
rule of women; the bad women are bad and the good are worse.
Allowance must be made for the bitterness of an old man,
reflecting on the experience of a lifetime, who felt with
justice that not once, but a dozen times, when it was in his
power to have converted the Hohenzollern Crown into a
constitutional and limited monarchy, he had resolutely
fought to preserve intact the personal government and pre-
rogatives of the Prussian Crown--and the power that he
had preserved had been used to dismiss him and to reverse
his policy. The 'confession,' apart from that, has the
ring of the great Eldon's similar avowal. Unbending and
stern Tory as he had been, Eldon avowed, in the old age
that saw the triumphant passage of the Reform Act and
the renaissance of Radicalism, that had he to begin all over
again he would start as an ' Agitator. '
One other judgment of Bismarck's must find a place, in
virtue of its penetrating intuition: 'Cavour, Crispi, even
Kriiger,' he told Dilke, ' were greater than myself. I had
the State and the army behind me; these men had
nothing. ' The fact emphasised is indisputable; but had
Bismarck explained how his predecessors in Prussia no
less than himself had the State and the army behind them
and had achieved nothing, he would have destroyed the
truth of the conclusion. It was not the Prussian State nor
the Prussian army, nor even the Prussian monarchy that
made Bismarck's achievement what it was. If political
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 487
genius could be so easily resolved into the instruments that
it employs, history would shed not only its mysteries and
riddles but all its power to inspire, to enthrall, and to
instruct.
It is neither possible nor desirable here to embark further
on the controversy that has divided Germany since
Bismarck's death in 1898--the alluring question whether
his successors deliberately departed from his policy, or
whether their course from 1898 to 1914 was simply the
logical and inevitable development of Bismarck's work.
The issues raised are too complicated and too vast.
Even if the material and the perspective for framing an
impartial judgment were available, a later generation will
be able more dispassionately and with more utility to
decide; and a biographical study of statesmanship, that
already belongs to the past, is obliged to avoid the danger
of being warped by the introduction of arguments and
controversies, however fascinating, urgent, and important,
yet demonstrably irrelevant and misleading. So much will
fairly be conceded by all students whether of Bismarck him-
self alone or of German policy under Caprivi, Hohenlohe,
Bulow, and Bethmann-Hollweg. Of Bismarck the man and
the statesman it is possible to write sine ira et studio. It is
no less legitimate to conclude that with his fall from power
a clearly marked epoch was closed, and to express the con-
fident judgment that the historian of the future will see in
the year 1890 the end of a period, as unmistakably as we
can see now that with Richelieu, with Walpole, with
Frederick the Great, and with Metternich, a system, and
not merely a man, definitely ended. What the character-
istics of that system were and how inextricably they were
interwoven with the personality and principles of the man
it has been the purpose of this biographical study to set
forth. It is unnecessary to compile a laboured coda from
characteristics sufficiently emphasised in the preceding
pages. The import, even the value, of Bismarck's achieve-
ment will be very variously interpreted and judged by
different observers; nor is it possible for the critic, who
does not belong to Bismarck's race and state, completely to
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BISMARCK
assimilate the point of view with which the German mind
is saturated. By Europe outside Germany, Bismarck will
always be viewed from an angle of vision different from that
of the German. The unification of Germany, the establish-
ment of a German hegemony on the Continent, the Central
Europe, the armed peace imposed on and by Nationalism
in arms, the defeat of Liberalism and of democratic self-
government, the doctrine of the State as the representative
and incarnation of Might and Force, the principle that
policy is the expression of a national will for Power to
which all methods are legitimate, provided that they
achieve their end at a minimum of cost, the gospel that war
is an inevitable and necessary part of the struggle for exist-
ence, and that (in Moltke's famous words) the ideal of
universal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream,
the principle that Reason of State transcends the code of
ethics, applicable in the social intercourse of individual
with individual--all these and many other characteristics
of the Bismarckian system and the Bismarckian inter-
pretation of life and its values lie embedded in the period
of history which Bismarck made his own for the Germany
and the Europe in which he lived.