No More Learning

For Bismarck, the problem was not how to combine a
minimum of concession to democracy with a maximum of
princely and particularist independence and autocracy,
but how to combine a maximum of concession to the
demand for self-government with the unity of an efficient
and irresponsible executive. Bismarck had here pene-
trated to an abiding reality in the German heart. If the
Germans passionately desired a share in the government
of a unified Germany, they no less passionately desired
power. The National Union and National Liberalism were
the outcome of both desires. The old system satisfied
neither. Germany was impotent in the world. It was
simply shameful, every German felt, that a great country
could not, or would not, prevent a third-rate State like
Denmark from violating its obligations, defined in the
public law of Europe, and could not protect Germans in
Holstein from illegal oppression, and the reason was that
poKcy was determined by a group of conflicting dynasties,
and power was dissipated in an antiquated and contemptible
political mechanism. Ending, not mending, that system
would alone meet the demand for power--the power of the
National State--and provide the organs of power. The
foreign observer can indeed see in the evolution of National
Liberalism the Nationalism, fierce, deep, and continuous.
It is the Liberalism or the absence of it that puzzles him.
Bennigsen's speech in 1867 on the Luxemburg question,
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BISMARCK
applauded from one end of Germany to the other, is
saturated with the doctrine of, and demand for, power,
the German National State as the expression of German
power. Yet in 1863 Bennigsen was Bismarck's most for-
midable opponent, because Bennigsen was a Liberal as
well as a Nationalist.
The explanation is really simple. National Liberalism
grew to its strength as a movement for self-government
through representative institutions, and as a national pro-
test against the inertia and apathy of the dynastic sove-
reignties that ruled Germany. Up till 1861 no German
government had evinced any sincere desire to subordinate
dynastic or particularist interests to the cause of Germany
as a whole. The homage of the dynastic and diplomatic
lip in all the Courts to the cause of Germany was copious;
but when it came to action, Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
placed Austrian, Prussian or Bavarian selfishness first, and
Germany was forgotten. Hence the Liberals were con-
vinced that, while self-government was intrinsically
desirable, a unification of Germany on a democratic basis,
that swept away the State sovereignties, alone would
provide for the realisation of what the German people
demanded--a single German State, playing its part as a
European Power in the European system. Such a State
would represent the totality of German brains, wills,
ideals, and material resources; and it would pursue a
German policy made by the German people. Nothing but
real representative institutions, with a Parliament that made
policy because it was a government-making organ, would
enable the Germans to be a single nation, with a national
will working through organs automatically effective.
Hence the stronger the Nationalist passion, the stronger
with the Liberals was the insistence on the necessity of
democratic self-government. Power through represen-
tative institutions was the complement to parliamentary
self-government as the instrument of National power.
Bismarck might have said in 1863, 'Almost thou
persuadest me to be a National Liberal. ' He did not,
however, believe, on principle, in the efficiency of consti-
tutional monarchy and responsible parliamentary govern-
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 151
ment. He was convinced that ' the English system' was
wholly inapplicable to the German character and the his-
torical conditions in which it had been developed through
many centuries. And the closer he studied Great Britain
the more strongly he inferred that parliamentary govern-
ment did not make for executive efficiency, continuity of
policy and strong administration. The correctness of this
judgment is not the question. That Bismarck thought so
there can be no doubt. Unity achieved by moral penetra-
tion and persuasion he regarded as. a pure delusion. Neither
the dynasties nor the Liberals would give him the army
that would smash Austria, nor the time, uninterrupted by
party strife, to devise a foreign policy and prepare in
secret for the day of decision. He did not doubt the-
German patriotism of the German people. He trusted it
indeed far more than he did the dynasties, as his proposal
for a National Parliament as an essential part of Federal
reform proved; but what he did doubt most gravely was
the readiness of the Sybels, the Gneists, the Twestens,
Virchows, Laskers, Dunckers, and Bennigsens to will the
means no less than the ends of national unity. They
aimed at power, but they shrank from force. They were,
in his judgment, political cowards, and therefore in his
view lacked the higher statesmanship.
The one system that would give him what he wanted
existed already in Prussia. It was being tested now, and
it was standing the test. Its retention, therefore, as the
nucleus of the new Germany was indispensable. Just as
in foreign policy Bismarck's system pivoted on an under-
standing with Russia, so in the German problem his solu-
tion pivoted on the Prussian monarchy, the irresponsible
director of the Prussian nation in arms.
The National Liberals would mutilate or destroy the
executive nucleus of a policy of power. But Bismarck was
ready now to foreshadow the lines of his own programme.
Once the Congress of Princes was killed, the publication
of the official statement of Prussian policy, already cited,
was a tactical move in the higher strategy; for Bismarck
often acted on Palmerston's dictum:'I tell ambassadors the
truth, because I know they won't believe it. ' The Prussian
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BISMARCK
memoranda of September 15 and September 22, 1863, were
the last nail in the coffin of Austrian Greater Germanism.
They were also intended to be the first in the coffin of
the National Liberals.
Bismarck's victory over William 1. when he refused the
invitation to Frankfurt, was a signal personal triumph
greater even than the ratification in 1879 of the alliance
with Austria. Of the many struggles with his sovereign,
these two in 1863 and 1879 were the most critical and de-
cisive, for in each case the central principle of his system
was in jeopardy; and in 1863 Bismarck had yet to win,
not as in 1879 simply to retain, his ascendancy. William
wished to go to Frankfurt. Heart and brain, combined
in favour of accepting the invitation. All his relatives,
male and female, urged him strongly to accept. Indeed,
how could he as the King of Prussia refuse to meet his
brother sovereigns when refusal meant personal discourtesy,
and the rejection of the unique chance of demonstrating
to the German world the unity and patriotism of the
German dynasties, and their earnest desire to make a free
gift of Federal Reform from their united prerogative.
The dynasties as the initiators and executors of Reform!
'Thirty princes,' cried William,' sending an invitation and
the courier a king! How can one refuse? ' Bismarck
guessed that William would be argued or trapped in
that tainted company into fatal concessions; his royal
honour would be pledged. A counter demonstration of
the independence of Prussia and the power of the Minister-
President was imperatively required in the summer of 1863.
He appealed to William's pride. It was for Prussia to lead,
not to follow, to impose her own, not to accept the dan-
gerous plans of others. The mediatisation of Prussia
would be the result of the Frankfort Congress, brought
about by Prussia's sovereign. But if the King went to
Frankfurt his Minister could not accept the responsi-
bility and must retire to SchOnhausen. The conflict of
wills, which lasted several days, exhausted ruler and minister.
Bismarck won. His secretary found him after the final
interview with the King, and after he had handed the
letter of refusal to the King of Saxony, alone in his room.
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 153
In reply to a question he hurled a plate and some glasses
to pieces against the wall. 'I felt,' he said to the aston-
ished subordinate, 'that I must smash something. Now
I can breathe again. '
Germany busied itself in the autumn of 1863 with
feverish activities and plans for unification. Negotiations
arising out of the abortive Congress dragged on between
Berlin, Vienna, and the German Courts. The National
Verein and the Reform Verein discussed with unabated
energy the scheme of the Congress of Princes and the
Prussian memorandum of September 22; the honesty of
the latter was contested by all reformers whether of the
Great or the Small Germany camps. The Prussian Land-
tag was dissolved; no budget had been voted, and the
'constitutional conflict' was quite unsolved; but despite
the severity of the recent Press ordinance and the electoral
efforts of the bureaucracy the Conservative party could
only increase their numbers from eleven to thirty-eight.
The new Landtag was as solidly hostile in foreign and
home policy to the government as the old, that had
rejected the Army Budget; and the unpopularity of
Bismarck was greater than ever. 'Men spat,' he said,
'on the place where I trod in the streets. '
A graver crisis than any Germany had faced since 1848
was at hand, the problem of Schleswig-Holstein entangled
in all the barbed wire of a complicated international situa-
tion. On March 30, 1863, King Frederick vn. separated
Holstein from Schleswig by granting it a separate legis-
lature, budget and army. Schleswig was subsequently to
be united by a common constitution with Denmark. This
policy, the work of an overwhelming Radical majority at
Copenhagen, angered the Duchies, which claimed to be
autonomous and inseparable, and infuriated Germany,
which saw in it the Danish determination to absorb
Schleswig in the Danish kingdom. The Federal Diet,
which was not a party to the London Convention of 1852,
that regulated the succession to the Danish throne and the
relations of the Duchies to the Danish Crown, passed a
resolution (July 9) calling on King Frederick to rescind
the ' March charter' and restore the conditions defined in
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BISMARCK
the Convention. The Danes ignored the resolution, and
the Danish General Council passed the Joint-Constitution
for Denmark and Schleswig on November 13, 1863.
Frederick vn. declined to sign the Patent, bringing the
constitution into operation, on the ground that he was a
dying man and could not fairly prejudge the action or tie
the hands of his successor in a matter of such gravity. On
November 15 Frederick died. His heir, under the Pro-
tocol of 1852, was Christian ix. of Sonderburg-Gliickstein,
who now succeeded to the Danish Crown and to the
dukedom of Schleswig and Holstein, integrally united to
Denmark under the terms of the London Convention.
Christian, threatened by the Danish ministry that refusal
to sign the Patent would cause a Danish revolution and
endanger his throne, signed the Patent (November 15).
At once the Duchies and Germany were in an uproar.
Frederick, Duke of Augustenburg, the son of the claimant
of 1852 whose claims had been ruled out by the Conven-
tion, appeared in the Duchies and. proclaimed himself at
Kiel as the lawful duke. His claim was supported with
enthusiasm by the Duchies and by all Germany. The
National Union--the organisation of Liberalism--and the
Reform Union--the organisation of the ' Great Germany'
party--combined to promote the Augustenburg claims.
The Federal Diet ordered a Federal execution, in the duke's
support, and Hanover and Saxony were commissioned to
carry it out.
All eyes were turned on Prussia. Germany would now
see whether Prussian declarations of the identity of her
interests with those of Germany were a reality or a sham;
whether the reactionary Bismarck, who had publicly laid
it down that the German people had a right to be repre-
sented in German affairs, was a hypocrite or a German
statesman. Action at once was required, and action
would reveal this Bismarck in his true colours. Bismarck
probably agreed. Action was required, and it would reveal
himself and a good many others in their true colours. The
sharper the challenge the more coolly and confidently he
braced himself to pick up the gauntlet flung in his face by
fate. He did not know what Prince Hohenlohe was writ-
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 155
ing in his diary at this time: 'Every one in Germany is
conscious of the profound significance the Schleswig-
Holstein question must have for our internal policy.
Every one knows that with that question the German
question, too, will be decided. . . . The Schleswig-Hol-
stein question is therefore to the people a question of
rights, a question of power to the governments, and a
question of existence to the Confederation, that is the
middle and petty States. ' But he would have agreed,
heart and soul, with the judgment. We may be sure also
that another conclusion was recorded with Bismarckian
satisfaction. Fortune had decided that Frederick vn.
should die three months too late for Austria. Had the
unhappy King of Denmark, who had escaped from the
deluge which now threatened to submerge his no less
unhappy successor, died in August 1863 when the Congress
of Princes was in full conclave, Francis Joseph, the kings,
and the princelets would have had such a chance as comes
to a vaulting ambition but once. Not all the king's horses
and all the king's men could have kept William x. from going
to Frankfurt, and from concurring either in compulsion on
Christian ix. to refuse his signature to the Patent or in the
adoption by the Congress of the Duke of Augustenburg,
William's relative^ a Coburg Liberal of the circle of the
Crown Prince of Prussia, as the lawful heir to the Duchies
amid the tumultuous applause of dynastic, Conservative,
Liberal, Particularist, and Ultramontane Germany, and the
probable assent of Great Britain and France--perhaps
Russia too. The Austrian programme of Federal Reform
would have slipped into existence as a by-issue in the
enthusiasm of that happy day. 'What an escape! ' as
Victor Emmanuel ejaculated, when the warning victories
of Worth and Spicheren cancelled the intention to throw
in his lot with Napoleon in. in 1870. What an escape!
Bismarck's luck became proverbial. In 1863 the stars
in their courses saw the Congress of Princes killed and
buried before they released poor Frederick vn. at the right
moment for Bismarck and the wrong one for Austria.
Whom the gods love do not die young. They live to
thank the loving gods for the gift of action in the summer
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BISMARCK
of their powers, and to meet in the golden autumn of
fame the inevitable summons with the serenity that
achievement alone can bestow.
? 2. Schleswig-Holstein, the Treaty of Vienna, and the
Convention of Gastein, 1863-1865
The labyrinth of the historical, legal, and ethical con-
troversies buried in the slag-heaps of four centuries has
resulted in a formidable library on Schleswig-Holstein.
Palmerston said with more wit than accuracy that only
three persons in Europe were completely acquainted with
the truth, the Prince Consort who was dead, a German
professor who was in a lunatic asylum, and himself--and he
had forgotten it. Bismarck justly regarded his diplomacy
and achievement in 'the Schleswig-Holstein campaign'
as perhaps his most masterly performance. Genius, mili-
tary, political, scientific, or imaginative, as the judge of
its own efforts is always instructive, though not infal-
lible. But certainly no other episode in Bismarck's career
more convincingly summarises the pith and marrow of
Bismarckian principles and methods, the union of personal
character and intellectual gifts, the fixity of aim, and the
inexhaustible opportunism of means, ending in a dramatic
and unexpected triumph than his conduct of Prussian
J)olicy from November 1863 to August 1865. Working on a
arger scale in a grander manner for greater ends, Bismarck
achieved elsewhere and later grander results. But as a
finished model of Bismarckian statecraft it was and remains
a masterpiece, and in the evolution of his career and the
perfecting of his technique the Schleswig-Holstein cam-
paign was to Bismarck what the Polish campaigns were
to Gustavus Adolphus, the Silesian wars to Frederick
the Great, and the Egyptian campaign to Napoleon--the
apprenticeship of genius in the service of its profession.
Stripped of irrelevant detail, the problem of 1863 was
comparatively simple, but it raised issues of far-reaching
consequences and a baffling complexity. The Duchies of
Schleswig and Holstein had been united since 1460 by a
personal union through the Crown of Denmark with the
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 157
Danish kingdom. . The King of Denmark was the king-
duke who united in his person the hereditary right to the
Danish Crown and the succession to the combined Duchies.
Europe and Denmark had come to regard the Duchies in
fact as an integral part of the Danish kingdom, while re-
cognising, if it was reminded, that the two provinces had
an autonomy and rights arising from an historic existence
independent of Denmark. The dukedom was, in short, a
separate principality contained and governed within a
larger whole. But the prerogative of the king-duke was
conditioned in these Duchies by his authority as duke, and
the Duchies accepted his rule as their duke, not as King of
Denmark.
Hence the system of government for Den-
mark was determined by the Crown in the Danish Riksdag,
for the Duchies by the duke in the Estates of the Provinces.
The law of Denmark would only be binding if accepted
by the Provincial Estates.
The desirability of a complete incorporation--the
abolition of the personal union and the fusion of the
Duchies with Denmark under a single ruler and a single
parliament--was obvious. But the Duchies clung to their
historic autonomy with tenacity; the law of succession to
the Danish Crown was not the same as the law of succession
to the dukedom. The underlying cause of this rooted
objection to the extinction of their autonomy was racial.
Holstein was predominantly German, Schleswig probably
(here an insoluble controversy is opened up), though not
so predominantly, Danish. To Holstein incorporation
with Denmark meant de-Germanisation and Danisation,
and, in addition, while the autonomy of Holstein was for
four centuries connected with that of its partner Schleswig
--the two together made the unity of the Duchy--Holstein
had always been part of the Holy Roman Empire of the
German nation, Schleswig had not. This historic anomaly
was confirmed in 1815. The King of Denmark, as Duke
of Schleswig-Holstein was a member of the German Con-
federation for Holstein (but not for Schleswig) over which,
therefore, the Federal Diet had a limited Federal juris-
diction. So long as the dynastic problem was not reopened,
and so long as the Nationalist principle was not inflaming
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BISMARCK
sentiment, this anomalous tangle of cross purposes and
contradictory allegiances would work, just because it was
customary. Its maintenance turned on the equipoise of
forces, balanced by the inconsistencies of tradition and
habit.
Fate and the developments in Europe after 1815 de-
stroyed the equipoise. Fate decided that the male succes-
sion in the direct line to the Crown of Denmark should
fail; the growth of the principle of nationality steadily
accentuated the ambition of the German and the Dane to
secure the Duchies for the German or the Danish race.
The incorporation of the Duchies, so long associated
with Denmark, was opposed by the German ambition to
sever them from Danish assimilation, and establish them
as an autonomous German principality under a German
duke, and weld them into the unified Germany of the
future. But the ' unredeemed Germany' was also an ' un-
redeemed Denmark. ' The dynastic problem was solved
by the Protocol of 1852. The Duke of Augustenburg, re-
garded by Germany and the Provincial Estates as the heir
de jure to the Duchies, was compelled with the other
claimants to surrender his claims in favour of Christian,
later the ixth, who was chosen by the Powers to maintain
the integrity of the Danish kingdom and continue, as Hng-
duke, the historic association of Schleswig and Holstein
with the Danish Crown. Had the European Powers been
wise, they would have repeated the lesson of Belgium in
1839: severed then and there German Holstein from
Schleswig, and incorporated the former with Germany
and the latter with Denmark. In all probability, when
Christian succeeded in 1863 the fifteen years of separation
would have habituated both Germany and Denmark to
the situation, and there would have been no further trouble.
But it was the age of Nicholas 1. , who regarded the
Schleswig-Holsteiners as rebels; and the severance of
Holstein from its legal duke (who was also the legal King
of Denmark) would have required more unity and greater
prevision in the Concert of Europe than the statesmen of
1852 were endowed with.
The maintenance of the historic integrity of the king-
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 159
dom of Denmark was deemed of the greatest importance in
the balance of European power, and the collapse of the
Revolution of 1848, with the reaction that followed, seemed
to the short-sighted diplomacy of Conservatism to destroy
the forces that had made a crisis out of Schleswig-Holstein.
The Convention of London, by placing the settlement
under the collective guarantee of the European Powers,
was held to provide an indisputable authority for its
maintenance.
But that convention, like the Treaty of Paris of 1856,
had the flaw fatal to all such solemn manifestations of the
public law and will of the Powers. It assumed that the
men and the States responsible for its maintenance would
continue to be of the same disposition as those who origin-
ally made it--a-large and historically unjustifiable assump-
tion. It had also the defect that it was imposed on the
Estates of Holstein and Schleswig, who were not parties
to it; that the German Diet was not a party to it and
retained its Federal rights in Holstein; that the son of the
Duke of Augustenburg was not a party to his father's re-
nunciation of his rights. It made no allowance for a more
Nationalist and Radical Denmark Or a more Nationalist and
Liberal Germany coming into existence; it created no
automatic and effective machinery to prevent provisions,
so solemnly defined, from being broken before the vacancy
to the Danish throne, filled by Christian's succession to
Danish Crown and the Duchies, occurred. It left Den-
mark a sovereign State, yet with a mortgage on its sove-
reignty. It provided neither for the removal of a
Nicholas 1. nor the emergence of a Bismarck.
Two conclusions are fairly clear in 1863. The Conven-
tion of London required Denmark to observe the historic
status quo in the Duchies. Dispassionate examination
cannot avoid the verdict that the acts of the Danish
government from 1852 to 1863 were a breach of the Con-
vention--certainly of its spirit, and probably of its letter.
They constituted a cumulative effort to separate the
Duchies and incorporate one of them in the kingdom, and
to present Europe with a fait accompli before the acces-
sion of Christian ix. This might have succeeded had
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? i6o
BISMARCK
Frederick vn. lived six months longer. Frederick's death
before his signature as the sovereign who was incontestably
dejure king and also dejure duke could be obtained wrecked
the attempt. Secondly, Christian ix. , the new King, had
on the day of his succession to decide at a moment's notice
either to provoke a revolution at Copenhagen or a revo-
lution at Kiel. Had he been wiser, he would have referred
the issue to the concert of the Powers signatory to the
Convention of London, and invited their decision and
their support, if need be, to carry out that decision. He
was their nominee; they were bound either to tear up
their own convention or loyally to see he did not suffer for
being the instrument of their policy. The coercion of
Copenhagen or of Kiel was the moral duty of the concert.
Christian, unhappily for himself and for Europe, did not at
once throw the responsibility on the Powers. In his
excuse it must fairly be said that the rejection by Great
Britain of Napoleon's proposal for a Congress made it very
difficult for him to do so.
It is not possible here to write the history of Europe nor
to discuss the policy of all the European States in this com-
plicated controversy. We are concerned primarily with
Bismarck and his policy. But it must not be forgotten
that the Danes and King Christian had a case, for which a
good deal can be urged. In 1852 the Concert of Europe
had decided, on broad grounds, that the integrity of the
historic kingdom of Denmark was an essential element in
the Balance of Power. The severance of the Duchies from
Denmark--apart from the juristic problem in the disputed
succession--was a grave violation of that Balance, for the
strategic position of the Duchies was of immense value.
Schleswig had a large Danish population, and there were
many Danes also in Holstein. If there was a danger that
the Germans might be oppressed by the Danes, there was
no less a danger--which events fully bore out--that the
Danes would be oppressed by the Germans. The forcible
Danisation of Holstein was less likely than the forcible
Germanisation of Schleswig. Schleswig had never beea
part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, and
the attempt to annex it to the Germany of 1863--with
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
the avowed object of Germanising it--was neither histori-
cally defensible, nor racially just, nor politically justifiable.
The claim of the Federal Diet that because it was not a
party to the Convention of 1852 it need not therefore
regard it as binding, was fairly met by the indisputable fact
that the two greatest German States in the Diet--Austria
and Prussia--were solemn parties to the Convention, and
could not therefore support the Diet's repudiation without
violating their signatures and pledges. The Germany there-
fore of the Federal Diet was a Germany minus Austria
and Prussia: a Germany, in short, which claimed to have
a more important voice in overriding the public law of
Europe, to which the two most important German States
had publicly agreed, than Europe and those two great
German States. Moreover, the Federal Act of 1815, which
defined the powers of the Diet, gave it no legal or political
right to interfere in cases of a disputed succession, to decide
questions of succession or enforce a decision, if it illegally
attempted to make one. Yet in virtually supporting the
Duke of Augustenburg the Diet was precisely doing this,
and therefore acting ultra vires. Politically, the claim that
one-third of Germany could override the rest of Germany
and all Europe was absurd.
The succession question had been settled in 1852. In
1863 there was or could be only one lawful successor to the
Danish Crown and the Duchies--Christian IX. Any denial
of this indisputable fact was a declaration that the Con-
vention was no longer binding without having obtained the
prior consent of those who made it and were responsible
for its maintenance. The Federal Diet was not a party
to the Convention, precisely because the Federal Diet was
not legally entitled to have a voice in deciding the succession
in the Duchies, and still less in the kingdom of Denmark.
The Duke of Augustenburg's claim in 1863 was a declara-
tion that the Settlement of 1852, which ruled out his
father and was accepted by him, was a wrong decision to
which he had not been a party, and was therefore not bind-
ing on him. But if the sons of fathers against whom a
decision has been given can always plead that the decision
does not affect the son, no throne in Europe would be safe
B. L
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? 162
BISMARCK
or secure. Bismarck recognised this from the first. And
the subsequent decision of the Prussian Crown lawyers
(p. 184) clearly laid it down that Christian ix. was the
de jure successor both to the Duchies and the Danish
Crown. The Prussian professors argued from the first
that because the Duke of Augustenburg ought to have been
made the heir in 1852, his son was the heir in 1863, all
law and facts notwithstanding. And the argument, that
because conceivably the Constitution of 1863 was
vires the whole Convention of 1852 became invalid, was as
good as an argument that because the Federal Diet in 1863
acted ultra vires the whole Federal Act of 1815 ceased to
be valid.
The Danes made serious mistakes from 1852-64. But
the responsibility for those mistakes was largely that of the
European Powers also. Long before the situation of 1863
arose it was the duty of the Powers in concert to tell Den-
mark that it was not strictly observing the Convention.
That duty the Powers did not perform. Because they did
not perform it, the Danes naturally inferred that the
Powers would accept the Danish policy--a policy which
had the support of probably a majority in Schleswig and a
or Danish blunders may be necessary, but that does not
involve approval of German policy and ambition--as inde-
fensible as the extreme Danish claim. The sequel proved
up to the hilt that the Powers allowed Prussia to commit
a wanton aggression, to crush Denmark, to denationalise
Schleswig, and to disregard even the scanty pledges of
justice and fair treatment laid down in the Treaty of
Prague. The Danish case against Prussia--as distinct
from Germany--is so strong as to be practically irrefutable.
The true gravity of the situation lay in the new forces
at work. Public opinion in Germany repudiated the Con-
vention of 1852. It was universally regarded as the act of
a reactionary coalition to which not even the Federal Diet,
and still less Germany, was a party. The reversal of the
decision of 1849, which had destroyed the unification of
Germany and the demand for German self-government,
carried with it the reversal of the Convention. The
Condemnation of Danish ambition
in
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT
163
1 liberation of the duchies' was a very precise item in a
far-reaching programme of Germany for the Germans.
The claims, therefore, of the young Duke of Augusten-
burg combined with a dangerous felicity the demand for
the autonomy and inseparability of Schleswig and Hol-
stein, the principle of hereditary legitimism, the rule of a
German prince, and the new Liberalism of the enlightened
dynasties; and his programme at Kiel in 1863 stood for every-
thing that Germany now passionately demanded for itself.
All this was recognised in the chancelleries of Europe.
But the newest and gravest element in the situation--the
Prussia of 1863--was wholly unappreciated in the autumn
of 1863. The Prussia of 1848 had taken a brave line in
using her leadership of the German cause in the Duchies,
and had then at the first threat of European coercion
collapsed. Here, as in other matters, the impression per-
sisted within and without Germany that Prussia was the
lath painted to look like iron. Bismarck shared the con-
tempt and the indignation. He came into office to prove
what Prussian strength could do when efficiently directed
by a diplomacy that had shed the shibboleths which had
sapped the political and moral efficiency of the kingdom.
The geographical and strategic position of the Duchies
military frontiers to east and west; they, opened a back
door by land to the capital at Berlin; and, more dangerous
still, they provided everything that sea power required for
the effective coercion of Prussia: as a bastion both on the
Baltic and the North Sea they were indispensable to Prus-
sian power and expansion. The silent chief of the General
Staff, the ' library rat,' as men called him, gnawing his way
in prolonged toil to the heart of strategy, the strategy of
the State as Power, could furnish a memorandum con-
vincing in its conciseness of the supreme strategic value of
Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia. Bismarck had studied as
hard as Moltke and with as fruitful results. Let the rat
continue to gnaw. When the time came to put in the
rat, the sharper its teeth the better. Instruction in the
truths of strategy and the inseparable union of strategy
and policy, was not needed in the Wilhelmstrasse. But it
was for Prussia unique.
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? 164
BISMARCK
was sorely needed in Downing Street and at the British
Admiralty, at the Qua: d'Orsay, in the Ball-Platz, and the
fly-blown offices of the Federal Diet.
Moreover, Bismarck foresaw the character of the coming
struggle--a real trial of strength between the diplomacy
and methods of the statecraft of power against the old
diplomacy of the State as the champion of right; between
the old system of the Concert of Europe with its' paradox'
of the Balance of Power and the revival of Prussianism
with its doctrine of force. The result must indicate
conclusively the efficacy and superiority of the Bismarckian
system; and Bismarck had this enormous advantage. He
knew the methods of his opponents, but they did not know
his. Obsessed by tradition and misled by ignorance of the
real Germany and Prussia, they were in the position of
generals fighting according to the red-tape of a conven-
tional warfare against a foe who had superior science and
used it to devise high explosives and asphyxiating gas.
The true moral of the Schleswig-Holstein campaign, in
which Europe was signally routed, is not that the state-
craft of blood and iron must always win--men drew that
false conclusion from imperfectly framed premises--but
first, that the State which stands for right (Der Staat als
Recht) in death-grips with the State which stands for
power (Der Staat als Macht) must have better brains and a
clearer mastery of realities; and secondly, it must not mix
a sham copy of its rival's methods with its own, and then
bay the moon because real force, applied by genius, beats
sham force that lets ' I dare not wait upon I would. '
When Christian's action precipitated a crisis several
insist on the withdrawal of the March Constitution as a
condition of upholding the Convention; they might have
decided that the whole situation was so completely altered
as to require a new settlement, and have severed the Duchies
from Denmark and recognised the claims of Augusten-
burg; or they might have severed Holstein from Schles-
wig; or they might have supported Christian and
Denmark at all costs. All these and other courses were
possible and arguable in November 1863. But they all
solutions were possible.
? . . . i rLi j
Powers might at once
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? THE MINISTER-PRESIDENT 165
implied that the Concert of Europe responsible for the
Convention of London would act as a concert, and would
act promptly; and that was precisely what Bismarck guessed
they would not do, or intended to prevent. Bismarck
started with Russia practically on his side--Russia that in
1852 was responsible for the coercion of Schleswig-Holstein
and the integrity of the Danish monarchy. Four against
one--Prussia against the other European Powers--in 1852
was a hopeless position; but two against three raised a
practicable issue. When it had been converted into
three against two the business would settle itself.
The two fatal blunders for the Powers to commit were,
first: to allow an isolated and excited Denmark to be en-
tangled in a war with one or more members of the Concert
of Europe which were the guarantors of the integrity of the
Danish kingdom; and, secondly, to delude Denmark into
resistance by encouraging her belief that she would have
allies in the last resort, when no ally was prepared to give
more than the ' moral' support of diplomacy. Such moral
support is generally a euphemism for truly moral cowardice
and selfishness, and always an insulting travesty of the real
strength of the moral element in human affairs. Both
these blunders were committed. And there was a third.
In diplomacy, as in war, the statesman who trifles with
time is a criminal; doubly so, if he is pitted against an ad-
versary who puts time on his side. Throughout Bismarck
reckoned that while Lord John Russell's pen would be black-
ening many sheets of paper, and Napoleon was flickering
from one Napoleonic idea to another, the Prussian army
could cover a good many miles into Holstein, and it would
not meet the British fleet at Kiel. Both King William
and Queen Victoria had consciences which made them
obstinate, but it was easier to deceive King William than
Queen Victoria, and to prove to the royal satisfaction
of Prussia that black was white. The Queen of Great
Britain had an alternative to the ministers in office, who
were also not united. King William had no alternative
to Bismarck (who had really no colleagues) but surrender
to the opposition. So manifold in Bismarck's view were
the advantages of being the Prussian minister of a Prussian
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? i66
BISMARCK
long, who governed as well as reigned. The appeal of the
Congress of London in May, 1864, to Prussian good feeling
when the Prussian army had fleshed a victorious sword on
the obstinate Danes was as helpful as an appeal to the good
feelings of a terrier with a live rabbit in its mouth. The
Congress simply enabled Great Britain and France to
desert Denmark with all the phylacteries of diplomatic
Pharisaism unsoiled: it justly incurred the impotent
contempt of Denmark and the very potent contempt of
Bismarck. Worst of all, it taught Europe that right only
differed from might in the inefficiency of its State-egoism
and selfishness. The nadir of British moral power in
Europe was foreshadowed in the action of our Foreign
Office; the bankruptcy of the Second Empire was first pro-
claimed not at Queretaro nor by the guns of Koniggratz,
but at London in 1864. For us British it is tragic that
the Power which in i860 by a single dispatch silenced
Austria and enabled Cavour to complete the work of Gari-
baldi should have denounced, defied, and deserted in 1864.