The real danger of Social Demo-
cracy did not lie in its opinions, for the executive could
always ignore or crush opinions and ideas, but in the
reconstruction of society that the Socialist programme
avowedly contemplated.
cracy did not lie in its opinions, for the executive could
always ignore or crush opinions and ideas, but in the
reconstruction of society that the Socialist programme
avowedly contemplated.
Robertson - Bismarck
org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 35>>
BISMARCK
the practice. It was openly asserted by friends and foes
alike that Bismarck had done his work. The Reichstag was
the crux. The irresponsible autocracy of the Federal
Council that made policy must either work with the major-
ity in the Reichstag or make a majority for itself. The
Bismarckian system which in theory made the government
independent of party could only achieve its purpose
through the manipulation of the party vote. The per-
petual creation of King's Friends in sufficient numbers to
ensure 'the right' decision in the Lobbies was essential.
The general election of 1877 proved that under no con-
ceivable circumstance could the united Conservative
parties command the majority required, or indeed now
hope to win more than one-fourth to one-third of the
votes. The Conservatives must therefore be united with
another strong party. There were only two from which
to choose--the Liberals or the Clerical Centre. Union
with the Centre gave a working, with the Liberals a hand-
some, majority. Which therefore was to be secured?
The whole point lay in the ' securing. ' In Great Britain
under similar circumstances there would have been a
Coalition Ministry, representative of the fused parties.
But in Germany the problem for Bismarck was to get the
votes without admitting the voters to the control of policy.
Hitherto, the National Liberals had solidly supported the
government. The negotiations with Bennigsen revealed
two interesting results: National Liberal support would
be continued if the previous policy were continued, but a
change of policy meant probably a struggle with National
Liberalism. To the Liberals above all the maintenance
of Free Trade, the issues involved in the May Laws, and
ultimately parliamentary government, were the three
cardinal items.
Conservatism combined with the Centre involved
marching down the road to Canossa, and it was uncertain
that the Centre would vote for a new fiscal policy. While
Bismarck-faced this troubled political situation, accident
helped him partially to solve it. The death of Pio Nono,
and the elevation to the Pontificate of Leo xin. , created
a new situation at the Vatican. The new Pontiff could,
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 359
without damaging Papal prestige, inaugurate a more
conciliatory attitude; Bismarck without disinterring a
penitential white sheet could enter on an 'exchange of
views. ' Both sides, thoroughly tired of the struggle, in-
dicated through appropriate channels that conversations
would at any rate do no harm; and in the autumn of 1878
Bismarck sought a cure at Kissingen, which was also
recommended as the one health resort in Germany that
would help Monsignor Masella, the Papal Nuncio to
Bavaria. Nuncio and Chancellor met by an arranged
accident and exchanged views. They were really deter-
mining what they could buy or sell, and in 1878 the wares
on either side were simply brought out and handled in a
friendly manner.
More decisive for the present was the attempt (May 11)
by Hodel on the Emperor's life. The government at
once brought in a very severe bill which practically put
the Social Democrats at the mercy of the Ministry of the
Interior. For years the growing organisation of Social
Democracy had been alarming the Conservative classes.
Argument having failed, force alone remained. But the
bill was so comprehensive in its severity that it threatened
all political organisations not approved of by the govern-
ment. Despite a denunciation by Moltke of Social Demo-
cracy as the enemy of God and society, Bennigsen and
Lasker from the Liberal benches tore the measures in pieces,
and it was rejected by 251-57 votes, the Centre voting
with the Liberals. A few days later (June 2) Nobiling, a
doctor of philology, attempted to assassinate the Emperor,
and succeeded in wounding him severely. Bismarck heard
the news at Varzin. He struck his staff into the ground.
'Now,' he cried, 'we will dissolve the Reichstag. '
The dissolution was decreed promptly by the Bundesrat
(June 11), and the elections were held in all the excitement
of panic, aggravated by indignation. Liberalism was
aghast at the Chancellor's stroke: and the result bore out
their fears. They lost thirty-two seats at least, and the
united Liberal and Radical forces numbered 106 as against
176 in the old Parliament. The Centre gained a couple
of seats, but the seats lost by Liberalism went to the
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? 360
BISMARCK
Conservatives, who now disputed with the Clericals the
claim to be the strongest single party in the legislature.
The anti-Socialist law was promptly reintroduced, and
passed by 221 votes to 149. Bismarck was obliged to
accept some amendments from the National Liberals, for
without their help the measures could not become law,
and the chief concessions were two: first, the operation
of the law was limited to three years (March 31, 1881);
secondly, electoral meetings were excluded from its pro-
visions. But, as passed, the discretionary powers granted
to the government were tremendous, for it enabled the
central authorities in the States to prohibit public meetings,
dissolve political associations, suppress newspapers and
books, and decide who was or was not a Socialist, what was
or was not Socialist doctrine or objects calculated to under-
mine the State. Socialists could be banished from their
homes, and a whole district could in case of urgent danger,
decided by the authorities, be placed under a state of
minor siege.
The debates were remarkable for three utterances.
Bebel, in his attack on the bill, revealed the qualities which
in ten years were to make him the most remarkable political
character in Germany, after Bismarck himself. Richter
the Radical leader told the Reichstag that he feared
Social Democracy more under this measure than without
it. The Chancellor, after explaining that Socialism sought
a heaven in momentary and material enjoyment alone,
and confessing that if he lost his own faith in God and a
future life, he could not live a day in any peace of mind,
urged all parties to unite in making a bulwark against the
common enemy to the Empire. He also foreshadowed
the necessity of counteracting the insidious poison of these
pestilential foes by measures of social and economic benefit
to the industrial proletariat.
The Radicals and Progressives, with the left wing of the
National Liberals, gallantly fought the fight for freedom
of opinion and liberty of political utterance and association
to a finish. But the National Liberals by their action
threw the earth on their own coffin. The programme of
Social Democracy has always terrified middle-class Liberal-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 361
ism more than any other party. Chastened by the
election the Liberals were in a sad quandary. Fearing
the further loss of public support if they resisted the anti-
Socialist law, and surmising that Bismarck could throw
them over and secure the Clerical Centre, they supported
the measure, not from conviction but on calculation.
Persecution of the Socialists was a lesser evil in their eyes
than driving the Chancellor into the arms of Windthorst
and the Vatican. They therefore clung to the broad
principle of supporting the government as the sole means
of retaining their political influence. But in doing so
they sacrificed the essentials of their Liberalism, and they
virtually buried their party as an instrument of progress
and political freedom. Bismarck was quick to recognise
the weskness. He had forced them against the wall and
they had refused to fight. Another sledge-hammer blow
and they would break up. In political arithmetic that
meant that he would get half their votes without any
further concessions, and the other half would melt into
coalition with the Progressives and Radicals. When
National Liberalism had ceased to exist as a solid phalanx
the way would be open for a reactionary Conservatism.
National Liberalism was to learn the wholesome lesson
that when parties prefer tactics to principles and oppor-
tunism to convictions, the funeral service with their
antagonist as the officiating minister is at hand.
The anti-Socialist law was put into operation with
drastic severity. 'Now for the pig-sticking' (Jetzt geht
die Sauhatz- los ! ) Bismarck is reported to have remarked,
and the Prussian police got to work with energies whetted
by their failure against the Catholics. Everything that a
strong executive can do, when directed by men to whom
Social Democracy was the creed of the canaille, was done.
Berlin was placed under the minor state of siege, as were
later Hamburg, Leipzig, Stettin, and other city fly-belts
of the plague. Every club savouring of Socialism was
broken up; newspapers were prosecuted, pamphlets sup-
pressed. The police even forbade subscriptions for the
unfortunates selected for banishment from their homes.
Indeed, everything was done to provoke the broken into
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BISMARCK
violent outrage, to be used as a justification for further
severity. What the Chancellor felt about freedom of
speech was shown in his proposal, first, that two Socialist
members of the Reichstag should be delivered over to the
police because they had dared to attend the Parliament to
which they had been elected; secondly, that the Reichstag
should by law take power to limit the freedom of speech
within the House itself. Both these proposals were
rejected. Every one, except Bismarck and the Conser-
vatives, knew that the ' Muzzling Bill' (Maulkorbgesetz),
as it was speedily nicknamed, would be employed by the
governmental majority in crushing all serious criticism.
Criticism that is successful is always 'offensive' to auto-
crats and bureaucrats. It would be better to close the
Reichstag at once. Well might the most distinguished of
living German historians, Mommsen, publicly say in 1881
that 'the Prussia we had, the Germany we believed we
had, are at an end . . . the freedom of Germany will be
lost for many years to come. '
The anti-Socialist law was thrice renewed by a compliant
legislature (1881,1886, 1888), and the results were remark-
able. The Social Democratic party, thanks to wonderful
leadership and organisation, grew under persecution. In
1877 it had twelve members in the Reichstag and polled
half a million votes; in 1893 it had forty-four members
in the Reichstag and polled more than two million votes.
Twenty years later it was to be the strongest single party
(one hundred and thirteen members) in the Reichstag,
polling four and a quarter million votes, a third of the
total electorate voting, and owning no less than eighty-
six newspapers. Richter's prediction in 1878 was more
than verified in Bismarck's lifetime.
The transient victory of 1878 did not solve Bismarck's
problem. He could not reckon on an unsuccessful at-
tempt at assassination every year. The anti-Socialist law
did not give him a working governmental majority, nor
did it bring in money, and he needed the latter more than
the former. The new economic policy that began in 1879
was due to the needs of the imperial revenue. The Im-
perial government was not paying its way, and it was
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 363
confronted with a stagnant or declining revenue and ever-
increasing expenditure.
With characteristic thoroughness Bismarck planned a
complete reconstruction of the fiscal and financial prin-
ciples and machinery on which the Federal Empire had
hitherto been based, to be followed by a new departure
in the objects to which the revenue was to be devoted.
The Reform period lasted from 1879-88, and involved the
abandonment of the Free Trade principle of taxation for
revenue alone; a return to a Protective tariff, increasingly
severe in its successive emendations; a halt in the system
of direct taxation and a large substitution of indirect for
direct taxes; an attempt to establish gigantic State mono-
polies in articles of such general consumption as tobacco. ,
creating for the industrial workers compulsory insurance
by the State against accidents and sickness, and establish-
ing old-age pensions. The broad result of these nine years
of feverish effort and strenuous controversy was completely
to alter the economic and political structure of Germany. 1
The essential details and progress of this comprehensive
programme are noticed below, but it is desirable to en-
visage at the outset the problem as Bismarck evidently
saw it and the solution that he provided.
First and obviously, the provision of an automatically
expanding revenue was his main concern. The existing
system had four main defects. It kept the Imperial
government in dependence on the Reichstag. The
annual Budget was voted by the Reichstag, and the dis-
cussion enabled any strong party to hold up the imperial
authorities either by refusing a particular item or by
amending or refusing the specified appropriation. The
greater the need of the government the greater the lever-
age of the opposition. Bismarck foresaw that through
the Budget the Reichstag would in time secure by con-
tinuous flanking attacks that parliamentary control which
1 On the whole question see the Report (Pari. Papers, CD. 4530, August
1885) drawn up by Mr. Strachey, discussing the fiscal, commercial, political
and other points at great length and with elaborate wealth of detail and
statistics. The evidence for the prosperity of Germany both under a Free
Trade and a Protectionist system is impartially examined.
comprehensive legislative code
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? 364
BISMARCK
it had failed to secure by a frontal onslaught. Secondly,
the requisition that deficits must be made good by matri-
cular contribution from the federated States was very un-
popular with the contributories, and the opposition made
itself felt in the Federal Council, where the governments
could outvote Prussia and resist measures of policy that
involved further expenditure with a corresponding in-
crease in the fro rata matricular contributions to imperial
revenue from the States. Hence the control of policy was
threatened. Thirdly, an increase in direct imperial
taxation was not practical politics. The several budgets
of the federated States were dependent on direct taxation,
and it was impossible for the imperial revenue either to add
an imperial to the State tax or to remove from the State
governments their main source of income. Fourthly,
without much larger sums of money, unification and cen-
tralisation through the imperial executive would come to
a standstill. Even more pressing was the cost of defence.
Foreign policy and the general principles of the State
polity necessitated the arming of Germany to the teeth.
An expanding population automatically provided the men,
and the Empire had to pay for their equipment. The
more scientifically that an army is organised, the larger
the amount of science that it brought into armaments,
the more costly will that army be. Efficiency can only
be purchased by increasing expenditure. If the German
army was no more efficient, better equipped, and in ad-
vance of all rivals in the quality and amount of its materiel,
the basis of Bismarckian foreign policy was shattered.
'It must never be forgotten,' wrote Frederick the Great,
'that distrust is the mother of security. ' Bismarck's
system started from profound distrust and fear of foreign
States, and the assumption that distrust and fear made the
foreign policy of all other States. He studied the omens
of the international situation with the superstitious creed
of the augur, profoundly convinced that the gods were
jealous, malevolent, and implacable, and the human beings
they influenced a debased copy of the gods. If the
Socialist Democrat, according to Bismarck, interpreted
life in the terms of a carnal and fleeting hedonism (which
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 365
he did not, for he lived and throve on ideas and ideals),
Bismarck for all his belief in God, Heaven, and a Hereafter,
seems to have been convinced that the sole justification
of Heaven and an after life lay in importing as much of the
Devil and of Hell into international relations as were neces-
sary to provide a deterrent to coalitions against Germany.
The prestige of Germany depended on the universal con-
viction that Bismarck relied on force, and that the German
army could be at the gates of its foe within ten days of
a rupture. The army therefore must be provided with
strategic railways and vast stores; and on the horizon
there already grew out of the sea the little cloud that fore-
told an imperial navy no less efficient and ready. The
navy was an imperial affair. As yet it was in its cradle,
but even cradles are expensive, and those who rock them
must be paid. The most fatal disaster to be apprehended
was a limitation of German armaments imposed by a
Reichstag that refused to tax the Empire any further.
The advantages of a new, were as conspicuous as the
defects of the old, system. Bismarck saw the German
nation, in consequence of its unification, its long intel-
lectual preparation, its intoxication from victory, and its
belief in its own disciplined, intellectual, and moral
strength, growing in wealth, numbers, and solidarity.
A tariff and indirect taxation would tap the expanding
national reservoir and disguise the withdrawal of the wealth.
In his eyes the supreme advantage of indirect taxation
lay in the concealment of the tax. It would fall on the
ignorant consumer, not on the taxpayer directly mulcted
by the action of a government. A tariff was an arrange-
ment that could not be annually revised, for it would rest
on an economic code enacted for a period of years, or be
largely regulated by treaty beyond the revising power of
the legislature. Hence the revenues derived from indirect
taxation would fall into the same category as the military
Septennates, and pass from parliamentary control into
the hands of government. More than ever policy would re-
main the monopoly of the Federal Council and Prussia, and
the Reichstag be reduced to a debating society, incapable
of interfering at any point with the central springs of power.
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BISMARCK
Already in 1879 Bismarck foresaw one further marked
advantage. The existing structure of society was the core
of the Prussian system.
The real danger of Social Demo-
cracy did not lie in its opinions, for the executive could
always ignore or crush opinions and ideas, but in the
reconstruction of society that the Socialist programme
avowedly contemplated. The Bismarckian system and
the State which stood for Power could not exist on
a different stratification of society to that established in
Prussia. Social Democracy aimed at a social revolution,
the political effects of which would be simply consequential
to the economic and social redistribution. Apart, how-
ever, from Social Democracy, the existing structure was in
1878 threatened more insidiously and continuously by the
operation of social and economic changes, not confined to
Germany, though accentuated by the rapid industrial
revolution that set in after 1871. Agricultural depression,
if unchecked, meant that Germany would shortly be
dependent, like Great Britain, on imported food; but
far more serious politically was the pauperisation of
agricultural Junkertum. The squirearchy would be trans-
formed from an independent landowning and governing
class into a class no longer able to staff the army and the
civil service, but divorced from the land and driven like
the bourgeois to earn a middle-class living. Industrial-
ism, too, was throwing up a new aristocracy of brains and
money whose power rested on their capacity, their wealth,
and their potent material interests. Sooner or later they
would usurp the position occupied by the old Junkertum,
because they were quite as able, worked as hard, and com-
manded a. far greater share of the elements of material
power. It is as hard to argue with the masters of industrial,
as with the master of military, legions.
Bismarck's economic and fiscal policy from 1879to
has absorbed the analytical attention of the economist and
the political philosopher, but the major premises from
which he argued and the conclusion to which he marched
with relentless energy, derive their deepest significance
from their relation to the principles of his statecraft. For
by his policy at the critical moment of development he
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 367
gradually attracted the allegiance of the new elements
of power to the Prussianised Empire. By so doing he
saved the Bismarckian State, and he prevented all those
formidable elements from being thrown into revolt against
the existing regime. He did not love industrialism or its
works; all his sympathies were with agriculture, the
landowner and the farmer and the peasant; he did not
argue from economic science, or from any devotion to an
economic theory of freedom or otherwise. From first to
last his inspiration and his objective were purely political,
and intensely conservative. Contemporary and later critics
alike have questioned the sincerity and disputed the mean-
ing of Bismarck's' conversion' to Socialism. In reality there
was no conversion at all. Socialism as a theory of society,
or of the economic life and functions of an organised com-
munity, he never accepted nor professed to accept. His
view of the true type and character of social and economic
stratification remained constant, and it may be questioned
whether in 1879 or 1890 he had altered one hair's-breadth
of the opinions he professed in 1849. But he was a realist
and an opportunist, and he recognised that change must
continually be taking place. The function of conser-
vative statesmanship, if sincere in its allegiance to a defined
table of social values and a defined social order, must con-
tinuously incorporate the ' ponderable ' elements, created
by change, and employ them in shoring up the social
framework and preserving the type. The problem was
essentially one of political judgment, knowledge, delicacy
of method, and an elastic adaptability--a perpetual com-
promise which conceded details but never allowed funda-
mentals to be questioned or weakened. Hence his deep
contempt for the Metternich school or for the unbending
Conservatism of the Kreuzzeitung type, which would let
a conservative social order go to ruin because some
conscientious shibboleth was erected into an inflexible
principle. A Conservatism that lacked the political in-
stinct and the true political judgment was as useless and
dangerous as the Socialism of Bebel and Liebknecht. Had
Bismarck been a" conservative leader in Great Britain
between 1820 and 1850 he would have put Eldon, George
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BISMARCK
Bentinck, and Wellington in the same category as he put
Gerlach and the tribe of Senfft-Pilsachs and Blanckenburgs.
He would not have waited, like Peel, for the destruction
of the landed aristocracy and a potato famine to be con-
verted into a great betrayal and the ruin of his party.
He would have united the millowners and manufacturers
who were the backbone of Cobden's League in an
alliance with the old aristocracy, and compelled the
Whigs and the middle-class Liberals to share the fate
that he meted out to Bennigsen, Lasker, Forckenbeck,
and Stauffenberg.
Failing a coup cTEtat, which Bismarck regarded as a con-
fession of failure and stupidity, parties in the Reichstag
had to be manipulated. The autocracy was yoked to a
representative legislature and lived under a constitution.
The new policy, as Bismarck foresaw, offered unrivalled
opportunities, first, for splitting the existing party distri-
bution, and, secondly, for bargaining. The substitution of
interests for principles as the basis of parties was not the
least important result that accompanied and flowed from
the new system. 1 Bargaining over principles is always a
failure. Hence coalitions in a country where party sys-
tems rest on principles are usually failures, and always
hated by the country as a whole. But bargaining over
interests is simply an affair of political and economic
arithmetic. Conducted by a strong government with a
resolute chief it resolves itself into a simple problem of the
quantity of the article required conditioned by the price.
Bismarck, though he probably had never read an economic
text-book and could not have explained the meaning of
'final utility' or ' marginal value,' applied the principle
in the world of parliamentary politics in the same effective
way as M. Jourdain spoke prose. The final political
utility of Clericals, National Liberals, or any other group
was, in his eyes, simply the last quantity of votes that the
buyer was prepared to secure, and the seller willing to
1 Cf. Strachey's remark (Report already cited, p. 45) as an example in
1885: 'No reason can be given why spun silk should be excluded from the
blessings of protection, except the conclusive one, that they do not form a
powerful interest, and that in spun silk, as in other things, " to be weak is to be
miserable. "'
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 369
part with, at a given price. And the famous cartel which
secured him a working majority was a political coalition,
arranged precisely on the principles on which a big manu-
facturer coalesces with a group of rival but smaller firms.
Bismarck, moreover, started from two fixed points, as in-
telligible to every one as to himself--he could move the
government levers, and once he had broken with Liberal-
ism he could always rely on the Conservative vote. King
and Junkers, the social structure round the throne, and
the Federal Council and the governments would fall to
heel. They barked and bit (sometimes) and growled
perpetually, but they knew when their master meant
business.
In a word, the new policy of 1879 was a fresh mani-
festation, moulded by circumstances, of the State as the
incarnation of Power. The Alpha and Omega of Bis-
marck's ' Socialism ' were summed up in the determination
to make the Empire self-sufficing, stronger than ever, and
still more dependent on the government, still more im-
potent to place the control of policy under responsible
parliamentary institutions. Such measures were not really
Socialism, properly defined, at all--the Social Democrats
saw that from the first--except in the sense that every act
of a State is 'socialistic' It was the renaissance of the
mercantilism of the seventeenth century adapted to the
benevolent and illuminated despotism of the eighteenth
century and the conditions of a militarist State, remoulded
by the phenomena of modern industrialism. Hence its
ultimate and unequivocal challenge to the principle of
Free Trade, and the modern State built up on the prin-
ciples of which Free Trade was but one plinth in the
whole structure. Its raison d'etre and end were power,
directed by a fusion of the landowning and capitalistic
classes that dominated a social organisation of a definable
type. The so-called Socialism of Bismarck was a denial
of the postulates and economic analysis alike of Lassalle,
Marx, or Bebel. The academic Socialists of the Chair--
the Katheier Socialisten, led by Wagner, Schmoller, and
their school--wrote elaborate volumes on Bismarckian
Socialism, and read into it a mass of theory which Bismarck
B. 2 A
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BISMARCK
would have failed to understand, or dismissed as irrelevant
verbiage: so far as it had an ascertainable paternity, the
genealogy of Bismarck's Socialism can be found, not in the
writings and teaching of Karl Marx, but in the doctrines
of F. List. But the new programme was a wonderful
illustration of Bismarck's intuitive sensitiveness to change
and ideas, that he exploited for his own political purposes.
So long as Germany was rent by the Kulturkampf this
comprehensive programme could not be fairly discussed
or embodied in law. The Kulturkampf was essentially a
controversy over principles, which brought the theory and
functions of the civil power into the arena of conflict. The
Clerical Centre, as developed by Windthorst with the aid
of the Roman Curia, was first and foremost a confessional
organisation which united in a single party every class from
the princes and hierarchs of the Church to the industrial
proletariat in the great Catholic centres of industry, and
which subordinated all the separable class interests of its
members to a broad aim, the practical independence of
the Roman Church. The new economic programme in-
volved a complete breach with Liberalism and Radicalism.
It could not therefore have any chance of success unless
the Centre were rallied to the side of the government.
The Kulturkampf must therefore be ended, as a prelimi-
nary condition to the new era. Bismarck's conversations
with Masella at Kissingen cleared up the situation. The
Vatican required the repeal of the May Laws and a return
broadly to the position in 18711 Bismarck required the
Centre vote on all governmental proposals. Both sides
had a valuable article to sell; both sides were weary of
the struggle, and neither side dared openly to don the
white sheet and publicly reverse their explicit statement
of principles. Each side thoroughly distrusted the other,
and with good reason. Windthorst feared that once
Bismarck had utilised the Centre he would throw them
over and reunite with the Liberals. Bismarck, uncertain
of how far Germany would accept the new programme,
and aware that the Liberal and Protestant forces would
resent an advance to Canossa, and that repeal of the May
Laws was a damaging blow to his prestige, dared not make
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 371
the Centre master of the situation. The exchange of a
Clerical control for the National Liberals was no gain but
loss. For he wanted to be independent alike of Clericals
and Liberals, and of the two the Clericals were more
difficult to satisfy. Foreign policy entered into his cal-
culations. Ultramontanism in France and Austria was a
continuous and disturbing element in the European
situation. Bismarck had to reckon with a possible Ultra-
montane supremacy in France upsetting the results
achieved by the Dual Alliance of 1879. And there was
always Poland--the eternal Poland, Catholic and Slav
in one.
It was essentially, therefore, a case for a slow and
gradual reconciliation, every concession being decided by
the situation of the moment and paid for in advance
by positive results. Bismarck began by heartening the Con-
servatives. In 1878 Camphausen, the Liberal financial
minister, was replaced by Maybach, a Conservative; Eulen-
berg, the new Minister of the Interior, was a strenuous
Conservative; Stolberg, the new Vice-Chancellor under
the Kanzlervertreter law was not a National Liberal, but
an unbending Conservative. On July 14, 1879, Falk's
resignation was accepted. He left office with all the in-
dications of dismissal. His health had failed; and to
assist him in his recovery he was given a riband, a eulo-
gistic letter, portraits and photographs, while his place
was taken by Puttkamer, a fierce Conservative. On
May 3 the members of the Reichstag who attended the
Chancellor's parliamentary soirees, where Bismarck^ cigar
in one hand and glass in the other, arranged his parlia-
mentary plans of campaign, saw with astonishment 'the
pearl of Meppen,' 'the little Chancellor,' Windthorst,
making his bow with the air of a habitut, and witnessed the
genial cordiality with which the 'big Chancellor' wel-
comed the apparition expected by himself and no one else.
Delbriick, Camphausen, Falk had gone, and in their place
was Windthorst, polished, smiling, and epigrammatic.
'Every courtesy as far as the gallows,' Bismarck had said
thirty years before to G. von Vincke. 'Every courtesy
as far as Canossa,' was now Windthorst's silent comment.
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BISMARCK
It cannot have been a happy evening for Bismarck, though
he made his new guest taste from the huge cask of the
finest Franciscan liqueur sent him by the reconciled monks.
The fruits of the negotiations behind the scenes were
laid on the table of the Prussian Landtag in 1880 in a
governmental bill. The measure was roughly handled and
drastically amended, and in its final form only passed by
four votes (206-202), a convincing proof of the strength of
Liberal feeling and voting power. As amended, the bill
did not repeal any of the fundamentals in the May Laws,
but gave to the government a qualified discretion in the
enforcement of the penal legislation. It had been pre-
ceded by a Papal announcement (February 24) authorising
the Roman bishops in Prussia to notify ecclesiastical
appointments in their diocese to the Prussian government
for approval (Anzeigepflicht). The bill was the first step
towards a complete peace. The remaining stages were
covered in the next four years. In 1882 (May 31) Roman
priests were largely dispensed from the necessity and con-
ditions of the State examination, prescribed in the May
Laws; in 1883 (July 11) Roman bishops were released
from the obligation to notify ecclesiastical appointments to
the civil authority, which simply retained a power of veto;
in the same year the Crown Prince visited Rome and had
an audience with the Pope; in 1884 the Roman bishops
were introduced into the Prussian Council of State; in
1886 Leo xii1. was invited by Bismarck to arbitrate'on the
dispute between Germany and Spain over the Caroline
Islands, and in the same year a new law empowered the
government practically to dispense at its discretion with
the penal code set up between 1873 and 1875. On
May 23, 1887, Leo xm. was able to assure the Consistory
that the Kulturkampf was at an end, and that the Roman
Church had secured the essentials for which it had fought.
Bismarck received the Order of Christ, the first Protestant
to be given this Papal decoration, a portrait of Leo xm. ,
and a copy of the Pope's Latin poems. He did not forward
in return a bound volume of his speeches in which he had
laid it down that he would not go to Canossa either in
body or in spirit.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 373
'That journey,' as a distinguished German historian
said, 'nevertheless took place. ' The argument that
Bismarck was not beaten, and that he did not surrender,
cannot stand the test of indisputable fact. Still less
tenable is the view that Bismarck made the surrender
willingly. He was not the man, after all his stout words
and the violence of the conflict in which Protestant and
Liberal Germany had hailed him as a second Luther,
nailing 'the May Laws,' like the immortal ninety-five
theses at Wittenberg, to the Throne and Parliament of
Prussia. The attempt to enforce the omnipotence of the
Civil State had broken down; the attempt to assert civil
control over the faith, discipline, and education of the
Roman priesthood had collapsed. In 1873 Bismarck had
plainly miscalculated the resources of the foe he had chal-
lenged, and exaggerated the strength of the weapons at his
disposal. He had beaten a retreat because he could not
hold the position that he had occupied in the battle:
but he had not retreated without securing compensation
adequate to the humiliation. The Clerical vote enabled
him to carry out a policy more important in his eyes than
the principles enshrined in the May Laws, and in the criti-
cal controversy in 1887-8 over the Septennate the Centre
came to his" aid and secured the victory (see p. 451).
The Chancellor's surrender was a bitter blow to
Liberalism and Radicalism. To both parties the Clerical
Centre was, in Gambetta's phrase, the enemy, for Ultra-
montanism challenged every principle of importance in
the Liberal and Radical creed, and to them the victory of
Windthorst and the Vatican was a victory of obscurantism,
not merely in the narrow plot of theology and dogma,
but in the unlimited fields of intellectual and social life.
The far-reaching influence of the 'progress to Canossa'
between 1879 and 1887 on the German mind cannot yet
be fairly estimated, nor do they fall within the scope of
our subject, but its direct and immediate results were
obvious. It opened up an epoch of growing reaction in
home politics and administration, and the barometer of
Liberalism steadily fell. The Centre remained at a fairly
constant figure of approximately one hundred votes in
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BISMARCK
the Reichstag, and Bismarck's action made it the arbiter
of the parliamentary situation. The full effect of that
predominance was felt outside the period of Bismarck's
Chancellorship, and he left it as a dangerous inheritance to
his successors. They had to liquidate the bill incurred
between 1879 and 1887.
The smashing of Liberalism was the other conspicuous
result. Here again Bismarck reaped the direct advantage
for himself, and left the aftermath to his successors. But
when Bismarck broke the National Liberal party he left
the Empire with no buffer between the government and
Social Democracy except an uneasy marriage of con-
venience between Conservatism, which completely failed
to grow any stronger in voting power, and the Clerical
Centre--a coalition of interests, not a fusion of principles.
The inheritor of the broken Liberalism was the Socialist
Democratic party, and the growth of that party was a
fresh proof that Bismarck had miscalculated its strength,
the sources from which it drew its recruits, and the
methods by which it could be successfully combated.
The gradual degradation of the Reichstag, and with it
the deterioration of political life in Germany, began in
1879 when Bismarck for purely tactical reasons bought
the support of the Centre. That degradation was per-
haps inevitable, because the Reichstag under the Imperial
Constitution was simply a part, and not the most important
part, of the legislative machine; and no representative
body can retain its vitality, its dignity, and its self-respect
--the three qualities essential to a healthy and self-renew-
ing political life--when it is deliberately made a House of
Phrases and nothing else. But unquestionably the de-
terioration was materially hastened by Bismarck's policy.
Power and responsibility are correlatives in the life of
organised communities, and the Reichstag was steadily
deprived of the shreds of both that it once possessed.
When the generation that had produced Bennigsen,
Lasker, Forckenbeck, Miquel, and Richter had passed away,
as they practically did in Bismarck's lifetime, the ideals
and the effort to realise them which had been the life-blood
of the heroic Germany from 1848 to 1870 were no longer
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
there to inspire the new generation. An acute observer
remarked at the time when Prince Hohenlohe's Memoirs
were published, the painful disillusionment in Germany
at the revelation of the atmosphere of intrigue poisoning
the political world in which Hohenlohe had played his
part, with increasing aversion to the setting in which
he found himself. The disillusionment of the politicians
began long before 1902. The lifting of the curtain on
parliamentary history after 1879 reveals the Reichstag not
as the centre of national life where the principles of a
nation's policy are fought out in argument and open day-
light, but as the market-place where an irresponsible
government secured a more or less transient majority by
the sleepless manipulation of the leaders and the purchase
of votes by concessions to the rank and file. The real bar-
gaining took place in the Federal Council, and as to its
nature and terms our information is either non-existent
or so scanty as not even to justify the speculative hypotheses
of a Privatdozent. The function of the government was
reduced to securing a majority in the Reichstag in order
to place the legal stamp on decisions arrived at else-
where. And this function Bismarck performed with
remarkable skill, because he had an unrivalled personal
prestige, and to the end he exercised a personal hypnotism
over the men with whom he negotiated and the Germany
that they represented.
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BISMARCK
the practice. It was openly asserted by friends and foes
alike that Bismarck had done his work. The Reichstag was
the crux. The irresponsible autocracy of the Federal
Council that made policy must either work with the major-
ity in the Reichstag or make a majority for itself. The
Bismarckian system which in theory made the government
independent of party could only achieve its purpose
through the manipulation of the party vote. The per-
petual creation of King's Friends in sufficient numbers to
ensure 'the right' decision in the Lobbies was essential.
The general election of 1877 proved that under no con-
ceivable circumstance could the united Conservative
parties command the majority required, or indeed now
hope to win more than one-fourth to one-third of the
votes. The Conservatives must therefore be united with
another strong party. There were only two from which
to choose--the Liberals or the Clerical Centre. Union
with the Centre gave a working, with the Liberals a hand-
some, majority. Which therefore was to be secured?
The whole point lay in the ' securing. ' In Great Britain
under similar circumstances there would have been a
Coalition Ministry, representative of the fused parties.
But in Germany the problem for Bismarck was to get the
votes without admitting the voters to the control of policy.
Hitherto, the National Liberals had solidly supported the
government. The negotiations with Bennigsen revealed
two interesting results: National Liberal support would
be continued if the previous policy were continued, but a
change of policy meant probably a struggle with National
Liberalism. To the Liberals above all the maintenance
of Free Trade, the issues involved in the May Laws, and
ultimately parliamentary government, were the three
cardinal items.
Conservatism combined with the Centre involved
marching down the road to Canossa, and it was uncertain
that the Centre would vote for a new fiscal policy. While
Bismarck-faced this troubled political situation, accident
helped him partially to solve it. The death of Pio Nono,
and the elevation to the Pontificate of Leo xin. , created
a new situation at the Vatican. The new Pontiff could,
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 359
without damaging Papal prestige, inaugurate a more
conciliatory attitude; Bismarck without disinterring a
penitential white sheet could enter on an 'exchange of
views. ' Both sides, thoroughly tired of the struggle, in-
dicated through appropriate channels that conversations
would at any rate do no harm; and in the autumn of 1878
Bismarck sought a cure at Kissingen, which was also
recommended as the one health resort in Germany that
would help Monsignor Masella, the Papal Nuncio to
Bavaria. Nuncio and Chancellor met by an arranged
accident and exchanged views. They were really deter-
mining what they could buy or sell, and in 1878 the wares
on either side were simply brought out and handled in a
friendly manner.
More decisive for the present was the attempt (May 11)
by Hodel on the Emperor's life. The government at
once brought in a very severe bill which practically put
the Social Democrats at the mercy of the Ministry of the
Interior. For years the growing organisation of Social
Democracy had been alarming the Conservative classes.
Argument having failed, force alone remained. But the
bill was so comprehensive in its severity that it threatened
all political organisations not approved of by the govern-
ment. Despite a denunciation by Moltke of Social Demo-
cracy as the enemy of God and society, Bennigsen and
Lasker from the Liberal benches tore the measures in pieces,
and it was rejected by 251-57 votes, the Centre voting
with the Liberals. A few days later (June 2) Nobiling, a
doctor of philology, attempted to assassinate the Emperor,
and succeeded in wounding him severely. Bismarck heard
the news at Varzin. He struck his staff into the ground.
'Now,' he cried, 'we will dissolve the Reichstag. '
The dissolution was decreed promptly by the Bundesrat
(June 11), and the elections were held in all the excitement
of panic, aggravated by indignation. Liberalism was
aghast at the Chancellor's stroke: and the result bore out
their fears. They lost thirty-two seats at least, and the
united Liberal and Radical forces numbered 106 as against
176 in the old Parliament. The Centre gained a couple
of seats, but the seats lost by Liberalism went to the
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BISMARCK
Conservatives, who now disputed with the Clericals the
claim to be the strongest single party in the legislature.
The anti-Socialist law was promptly reintroduced, and
passed by 221 votes to 149. Bismarck was obliged to
accept some amendments from the National Liberals, for
without their help the measures could not become law,
and the chief concessions were two: first, the operation
of the law was limited to three years (March 31, 1881);
secondly, electoral meetings were excluded from its pro-
visions. But, as passed, the discretionary powers granted
to the government were tremendous, for it enabled the
central authorities in the States to prohibit public meetings,
dissolve political associations, suppress newspapers and
books, and decide who was or was not a Socialist, what was
or was not Socialist doctrine or objects calculated to under-
mine the State. Socialists could be banished from their
homes, and a whole district could in case of urgent danger,
decided by the authorities, be placed under a state of
minor siege.
The debates were remarkable for three utterances.
Bebel, in his attack on the bill, revealed the qualities which
in ten years were to make him the most remarkable political
character in Germany, after Bismarck himself. Richter
the Radical leader told the Reichstag that he feared
Social Democracy more under this measure than without
it. The Chancellor, after explaining that Socialism sought
a heaven in momentary and material enjoyment alone,
and confessing that if he lost his own faith in God and a
future life, he could not live a day in any peace of mind,
urged all parties to unite in making a bulwark against the
common enemy to the Empire. He also foreshadowed
the necessity of counteracting the insidious poison of these
pestilential foes by measures of social and economic benefit
to the industrial proletariat.
The Radicals and Progressives, with the left wing of the
National Liberals, gallantly fought the fight for freedom
of opinion and liberty of political utterance and association
to a finish. But the National Liberals by their action
threw the earth on their own coffin. The programme of
Social Democracy has always terrified middle-class Liberal-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 361
ism more than any other party. Chastened by the
election the Liberals were in a sad quandary. Fearing
the further loss of public support if they resisted the anti-
Socialist law, and surmising that Bismarck could throw
them over and secure the Clerical Centre, they supported
the measure, not from conviction but on calculation.
Persecution of the Socialists was a lesser evil in their eyes
than driving the Chancellor into the arms of Windthorst
and the Vatican. They therefore clung to the broad
principle of supporting the government as the sole means
of retaining their political influence. But in doing so
they sacrificed the essentials of their Liberalism, and they
virtually buried their party as an instrument of progress
and political freedom. Bismarck was quick to recognise
the weskness. He had forced them against the wall and
they had refused to fight. Another sledge-hammer blow
and they would break up. In political arithmetic that
meant that he would get half their votes without any
further concessions, and the other half would melt into
coalition with the Progressives and Radicals. When
National Liberalism had ceased to exist as a solid phalanx
the way would be open for a reactionary Conservatism.
National Liberalism was to learn the wholesome lesson
that when parties prefer tactics to principles and oppor-
tunism to convictions, the funeral service with their
antagonist as the officiating minister is at hand.
The anti-Socialist law was put into operation with
drastic severity. 'Now for the pig-sticking' (Jetzt geht
die Sauhatz- los ! ) Bismarck is reported to have remarked,
and the Prussian police got to work with energies whetted
by their failure against the Catholics. Everything that a
strong executive can do, when directed by men to whom
Social Democracy was the creed of the canaille, was done.
Berlin was placed under the minor state of siege, as were
later Hamburg, Leipzig, Stettin, and other city fly-belts
of the plague. Every club savouring of Socialism was
broken up; newspapers were prosecuted, pamphlets sup-
pressed. The police even forbade subscriptions for the
unfortunates selected for banishment from their homes.
Indeed, everything was done to provoke the broken into
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BISMARCK
violent outrage, to be used as a justification for further
severity. What the Chancellor felt about freedom of
speech was shown in his proposal, first, that two Socialist
members of the Reichstag should be delivered over to the
police because they had dared to attend the Parliament to
which they had been elected; secondly, that the Reichstag
should by law take power to limit the freedom of speech
within the House itself. Both these proposals were
rejected. Every one, except Bismarck and the Conser-
vatives, knew that the ' Muzzling Bill' (Maulkorbgesetz),
as it was speedily nicknamed, would be employed by the
governmental majority in crushing all serious criticism.
Criticism that is successful is always 'offensive' to auto-
crats and bureaucrats. It would be better to close the
Reichstag at once. Well might the most distinguished of
living German historians, Mommsen, publicly say in 1881
that 'the Prussia we had, the Germany we believed we
had, are at an end . . . the freedom of Germany will be
lost for many years to come. '
The anti-Socialist law was thrice renewed by a compliant
legislature (1881,1886, 1888), and the results were remark-
able. The Social Democratic party, thanks to wonderful
leadership and organisation, grew under persecution. In
1877 it had twelve members in the Reichstag and polled
half a million votes; in 1893 it had forty-four members
in the Reichstag and polled more than two million votes.
Twenty years later it was to be the strongest single party
(one hundred and thirteen members) in the Reichstag,
polling four and a quarter million votes, a third of the
total electorate voting, and owning no less than eighty-
six newspapers. Richter's prediction in 1878 was more
than verified in Bismarck's lifetime.
The transient victory of 1878 did not solve Bismarck's
problem. He could not reckon on an unsuccessful at-
tempt at assassination every year. The anti-Socialist law
did not give him a working governmental majority, nor
did it bring in money, and he needed the latter more than
the former. The new economic policy that began in 1879
was due to the needs of the imperial revenue. The Im-
perial government was not paying its way, and it was
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 363
confronted with a stagnant or declining revenue and ever-
increasing expenditure.
With characteristic thoroughness Bismarck planned a
complete reconstruction of the fiscal and financial prin-
ciples and machinery on which the Federal Empire had
hitherto been based, to be followed by a new departure
in the objects to which the revenue was to be devoted.
The Reform period lasted from 1879-88, and involved the
abandonment of the Free Trade principle of taxation for
revenue alone; a return to a Protective tariff, increasingly
severe in its successive emendations; a halt in the system
of direct taxation and a large substitution of indirect for
direct taxes; an attempt to establish gigantic State mono-
polies in articles of such general consumption as tobacco. ,
creating for the industrial workers compulsory insurance
by the State against accidents and sickness, and establish-
ing old-age pensions. The broad result of these nine years
of feverish effort and strenuous controversy was completely
to alter the economic and political structure of Germany. 1
The essential details and progress of this comprehensive
programme are noticed below, but it is desirable to en-
visage at the outset the problem as Bismarck evidently
saw it and the solution that he provided.
First and obviously, the provision of an automatically
expanding revenue was his main concern. The existing
system had four main defects. It kept the Imperial
government in dependence on the Reichstag. The
annual Budget was voted by the Reichstag, and the dis-
cussion enabled any strong party to hold up the imperial
authorities either by refusing a particular item or by
amending or refusing the specified appropriation. The
greater the need of the government the greater the lever-
age of the opposition. Bismarck foresaw that through
the Budget the Reichstag would in time secure by con-
tinuous flanking attacks that parliamentary control which
1 On the whole question see the Report (Pari. Papers, CD. 4530, August
1885) drawn up by Mr. Strachey, discussing the fiscal, commercial, political
and other points at great length and with elaborate wealth of detail and
statistics. The evidence for the prosperity of Germany both under a Free
Trade and a Protectionist system is impartially examined.
comprehensive legislative code
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BISMARCK
it had failed to secure by a frontal onslaught. Secondly,
the requisition that deficits must be made good by matri-
cular contribution from the federated States was very un-
popular with the contributories, and the opposition made
itself felt in the Federal Council, where the governments
could outvote Prussia and resist measures of policy that
involved further expenditure with a corresponding in-
crease in the fro rata matricular contributions to imperial
revenue from the States. Hence the control of policy was
threatened. Thirdly, an increase in direct imperial
taxation was not practical politics. The several budgets
of the federated States were dependent on direct taxation,
and it was impossible for the imperial revenue either to add
an imperial to the State tax or to remove from the State
governments their main source of income. Fourthly,
without much larger sums of money, unification and cen-
tralisation through the imperial executive would come to
a standstill. Even more pressing was the cost of defence.
Foreign policy and the general principles of the State
polity necessitated the arming of Germany to the teeth.
An expanding population automatically provided the men,
and the Empire had to pay for their equipment. The
more scientifically that an army is organised, the larger
the amount of science that it brought into armaments,
the more costly will that army be. Efficiency can only
be purchased by increasing expenditure. If the German
army was no more efficient, better equipped, and in ad-
vance of all rivals in the quality and amount of its materiel,
the basis of Bismarckian foreign policy was shattered.
'It must never be forgotten,' wrote Frederick the Great,
'that distrust is the mother of security. ' Bismarck's
system started from profound distrust and fear of foreign
States, and the assumption that distrust and fear made the
foreign policy of all other States. He studied the omens
of the international situation with the superstitious creed
of the augur, profoundly convinced that the gods were
jealous, malevolent, and implacable, and the human beings
they influenced a debased copy of the gods. If the
Socialist Democrat, according to Bismarck, interpreted
life in the terms of a carnal and fleeting hedonism (which
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 365
he did not, for he lived and throve on ideas and ideals),
Bismarck for all his belief in God, Heaven, and a Hereafter,
seems to have been convinced that the sole justification
of Heaven and an after life lay in importing as much of the
Devil and of Hell into international relations as were neces-
sary to provide a deterrent to coalitions against Germany.
The prestige of Germany depended on the universal con-
viction that Bismarck relied on force, and that the German
army could be at the gates of its foe within ten days of
a rupture. The army therefore must be provided with
strategic railways and vast stores; and on the horizon
there already grew out of the sea the little cloud that fore-
told an imperial navy no less efficient and ready. The
navy was an imperial affair. As yet it was in its cradle,
but even cradles are expensive, and those who rock them
must be paid. The most fatal disaster to be apprehended
was a limitation of German armaments imposed by a
Reichstag that refused to tax the Empire any further.
The advantages of a new, were as conspicuous as the
defects of the old, system. Bismarck saw the German
nation, in consequence of its unification, its long intel-
lectual preparation, its intoxication from victory, and its
belief in its own disciplined, intellectual, and moral
strength, growing in wealth, numbers, and solidarity.
A tariff and indirect taxation would tap the expanding
national reservoir and disguise the withdrawal of the wealth.
In his eyes the supreme advantage of indirect taxation
lay in the concealment of the tax. It would fall on the
ignorant consumer, not on the taxpayer directly mulcted
by the action of a government. A tariff was an arrange-
ment that could not be annually revised, for it would rest
on an economic code enacted for a period of years, or be
largely regulated by treaty beyond the revising power of
the legislature. Hence the revenues derived from indirect
taxation would fall into the same category as the military
Septennates, and pass from parliamentary control into
the hands of government. More than ever policy would re-
main the monopoly of the Federal Council and Prussia, and
the Reichstag be reduced to a debating society, incapable
of interfering at any point with the central springs of power.
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BISMARCK
Already in 1879 Bismarck foresaw one further marked
advantage. The existing structure of society was the core
of the Prussian system.
The real danger of Social Demo-
cracy did not lie in its opinions, for the executive could
always ignore or crush opinions and ideas, but in the
reconstruction of society that the Socialist programme
avowedly contemplated. The Bismarckian system and
the State which stood for Power could not exist on
a different stratification of society to that established in
Prussia. Social Democracy aimed at a social revolution,
the political effects of which would be simply consequential
to the economic and social redistribution. Apart, how-
ever, from Social Democracy, the existing structure was in
1878 threatened more insidiously and continuously by the
operation of social and economic changes, not confined to
Germany, though accentuated by the rapid industrial
revolution that set in after 1871. Agricultural depression,
if unchecked, meant that Germany would shortly be
dependent, like Great Britain, on imported food; but
far more serious politically was the pauperisation of
agricultural Junkertum. The squirearchy would be trans-
formed from an independent landowning and governing
class into a class no longer able to staff the army and the
civil service, but divorced from the land and driven like
the bourgeois to earn a middle-class living. Industrial-
ism, too, was throwing up a new aristocracy of brains and
money whose power rested on their capacity, their wealth,
and their potent material interests. Sooner or later they
would usurp the position occupied by the old Junkertum,
because they were quite as able, worked as hard, and com-
manded a. far greater share of the elements of material
power. It is as hard to argue with the masters of industrial,
as with the master of military, legions.
Bismarck's economic and fiscal policy from 1879to
has absorbed the analytical attention of the economist and
the political philosopher, but the major premises from
which he argued and the conclusion to which he marched
with relentless energy, derive their deepest significance
from their relation to the principles of his statecraft. For
by his policy at the critical moment of development he
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 367
gradually attracted the allegiance of the new elements
of power to the Prussianised Empire. By so doing he
saved the Bismarckian State, and he prevented all those
formidable elements from being thrown into revolt against
the existing regime. He did not love industrialism or its
works; all his sympathies were with agriculture, the
landowner and the farmer and the peasant; he did not
argue from economic science, or from any devotion to an
economic theory of freedom or otherwise. From first to
last his inspiration and his objective were purely political,
and intensely conservative. Contemporary and later critics
alike have questioned the sincerity and disputed the mean-
ing of Bismarck's' conversion' to Socialism. In reality there
was no conversion at all. Socialism as a theory of society,
or of the economic life and functions of an organised com-
munity, he never accepted nor professed to accept. His
view of the true type and character of social and economic
stratification remained constant, and it may be questioned
whether in 1879 or 1890 he had altered one hair's-breadth
of the opinions he professed in 1849. But he was a realist
and an opportunist, and he recognised that change must
continually be taking place. The function of conser-
vative statesmanship, if sincere in its allegiance to a defined
table of social values and a defined social order, must con-
tinuously incorporate the ' ponderable ' elements, created
by change, and employ them in shoring up the social
framework and preserving the type. The problem was
essentially one of political judgment, knowledge, delicacy
of method, and an elastic adaptability--a perpetual com-
promise which conceded details but never allowed funda-
mentals to be questioned or weakened. Hence his deep
contempt for the Metternich school or for the unbending
Conservatism of the Kreuzzeitung type, which would let
a conservative social order go to ruin because some
conscientious shibboleth was erected into an inflexible
principle. A Conservatism that lacked the political in-
stinct and the true political judgment was as useless and
dangerous as the Socialism of Bebel and Liebknecht. Had
Bismarck been a" conservative leader in Great Britain
between 1820 and 1850 he would have put Eldon, George
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BISMARCK
Bentinck, and Wellington in the same category as he put
Gerlach and the tribe of Senfft-Pilsachs and Blanckenburgs.
He would not have waited, like Peel, for the destruction
of the landed aristocracy and a potato famine to be con-
verted into a great betrayal and the ruin of his party.
He would have united the millowners and manufacturers
who were the backbone of Cobden's League in an
alliance with the old aristocracy, and compelled the
Whigs and the middle-class Liberals to share the fate
that he meted out to Bennigsen, Lasker, Forckenbeck,
and Stauffenberg.
Failing a coup cTEtat, which Bismarck regarded as a con-
fession of failure and stupidity, parties in the Reichstag
had to be manipulated. The autocracy was yoked to a
representative legislature and lived under a constitution.
The new policy, as Bismarck foresaw, offered unrivalled
opportunities, first, for splitting the existing party distri-
bution, and, secondly, for bargaining. The substitution of
interests for principles as the basis of parties was not the
least important result that accompanied and flowed from
the new system. 1 Bargaining over principles is always a
failure. Hence coalitions in a country where party sys-
tems rest on principles are usually failures, and always
hated by the country as a whole. But bargaining over
interests is simply an affair of political and economic
arithmetic. Conducted by a strong government with a
resolute chief it resolves itself into a simple problem of the
quantity of the article required conditioned by the price.
Bismarck, though he probably had never read an economic
text-book and could not have explained the meaning of
'final utility' or ' marginal value,' applied the principle
in the world of parliamentary politics in the same effective
way as M. Jourdain spoke prose. The final political
utility of Clericals, National Liberals, or any other group
was, in his eyes, simply the last quantity of votes that the
buyer was prepared to secure, and the seller willing to
1 Cf. Strachey's remark (Report already cited, p. 45) as an example in
1885: 'No reason can be given why spun silk should be excluded from the
blessings of protection, except the conclusive one, that they do not form a
powerful interest, and that in spun silk, as in other things, " to be weak is to be
miserable. "'
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 369
part with, at a given price. And the famous cartel which
secured him a working majority was a political coalition,
arranged precisely on the principles on which a big manu-
facturer coalesces with a group of rival but smaller firms.
Bismarck, moreover, started from two fixed points, as in-
telligible to every one as to himself--he could move the
government levers, and once he had broken with Liberal-
ism he could always rely on the Conservative vote. King
and Junkers, the social structure round the throne, and
the Federal Council and the governments would fall to
heel. They barked and bit (sometimes) and growled
perpetually, but they knew when their master meant
business.
In a word, the new policy of 1879 was a fresh mani-
festation, moulded by circumstances, of the State as the
incarnation of Power. The Alpha and Omega of Bis-
marck's ' Socialism ' were summed up in the determination
to make the Empire self-sufficing, stronger than ever, and
still more dependent on the government, still more im-
potent to place the control of policy under responsible
parliamentary institutions. Such measures were not really
Socialism, properly defined, at all--the Social Democrats
saw that from the first--except in the sense that every act
of a State is 'socialistic' It was the renaissance of the
mercantilism of the seventeenth century adapted to the
benevolent and illuminated despotism of the eighteenth
century and the conditions of a militarist State, remoulded
by the phenomena of modern industrialism. Hence its
ultimate and unequivocal challenge to the principle of
Free Trade, and the modern State built up on the prin-
ciples of which Free Trade was but one plinth in the
whole structure. Its raison d'etre and end were power,
directed by a fusion of the landowning and capitalistic
classes that dominated a social organisation of a definable
type. The so-called Socialism of Bismarck was a denial
of the postulates and economic analysis alike of Lassalle,
Marx, or Bebel. The academic Socialists of the Chair--
the Katheier Socialisten, led by Wagner, Schmoller, and
their school--wrote elaborate volumes on Bismarckian
Socialism, and read into it a mass of theory which Bismarck
B. 2 A
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BISMARCK
would have failed to understand, or dismissed as irrelevant
verbiage: so far as it had an ascertainable paternity, the
genealogy of Bismarck's Socialism can be found, not in the
writings and teaching of Karl Marx, but in the doctrines
of F. List. But the new programme was a wonderful
illustration of Bismarck's intuitive sensitiveness to change
and ideas, that he exploited for his own political purposes.
So long as Germany was rent by the Kulturkampf this
comprehensive programme could not be fairly discussed
or embodied in law. The Kulturkampf was essentially a
controversy over principles, which brought the theory and
functions of the civil power into the arena of conflict. The
Clerical Centre, as developed by Windthorst with the aid
of the Roman Curia, was first and foremost a confessional
organisation which united in a single party every class from
the princes and hierarchs of the Church to the industrial
proletariat in the great Catholic centres of industry, and
which subordinated all the separable class interests of its
members to a broad aim, the practical independence of
the Roman Church. The new economic programme in-
volved a complete breach with Liberalism and Radicalism.
It could not therefore have any chance of success unless
the Centre were rallied to the side of the government.
The Kulturkampf must therefore be ended, as a prelimi-
nary condition to the new era. Bismarck's conversations
with Masella at Kissingen cleared up the situation. The
Vatican required the repeal of the May Laws and a return
broadly to the position in 18711 Bismarck required the
Centre vote on all governmental proposals. Both sides
had a valuable article to sell; both sides were weary of
the struggle, and neither side dared openly to don the
white sheet and publicly reverse their explicit statement
of principles. Each side thoroughly distrusted the other,
and with good reason. Windthorst feared that once
Bismarck had utilised the Centre he would throw them
over and reunite with the Liberals. Bismarck, uncertain
of how far Germany would accept the new programme,
and aware that the Liberal and Protestant forces would
resent an advance to Canossa, and that repeal of the May
Laws was a damaging blow to his prestige, dared not make
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 371
the Centre master of the situation. The exchange of a
Clerical control for the National Liberals was no gain but
loss. For he wanted to be independent alike of Clericals
and Liberals, and of the two the Clericals were more
difficult to satisfy. Foreign policy entered into his cal-
culations. Ultramontanism in France and Austria was a
continuous and disturbing element in the European
situation. Bismarck had to reckon with a possible Ultra-
montane supremacy in France upsetting the results
achieved by the Dual Alliance of 1879. And there was
always Poland--the eternal Poland, Catholic and Slav
in one.
It was essentially, therefore, a case for a slow and
gradual reconciliation, every concession being decided by
the situation of the moment and paid for in advance
by positive results. Bismarck began by heartening the Con-
servatives. In 1878 Camphausen, the Liberal financial
minister, was replaced by Maybach, a Conservative; Eulen-
berg, the new Minister of the Interior, was a strenuous
Conservative; Stolberg, the new Vice-Chancellor under
the Kanzlervertreter law was not a National Liberal, but
an unbending Conservative. On July 14, 1879, Falk's
resignation was accepted. He left office with all the in-
dications of dismissal. His health had failed; and to
assist him in his recovery he was given a riband, a eulo-
gistic letter, portraits and photographs, while his place
was taken by Puttkamer, a fierce Conservative. On
May 3 the members of the Reichstag who attended the
Chancellor's parliamentary soirees, where Bismarck^ cigar
in one hand and glass in the other, arranged his parlia-
mentary plans of campaign, saw with astonishment 'the
pearl of Meppen,' 'the little Chancellor,' Windthorst,
making his bow with the air of a habitut, and witnessed the
genial cordiality with which the 'big Chancellor' wel-
comed the apparition expected by himself and no one else.
Delbriick, Camphausen, Falk had gone, and in their place
was Windthorst, polished, smiling, and epigrammatic.
'Every courtesy as far as the gallows,' Bismarck had said
thirty years before to G. von Vincke. 'Every courtesy
as far as Canossa,' was now Windthorst's silent comment.
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BISMARCK
It cannot have been a happy evening for Bismarck, though
he made his new guest taste from the huge cask of the
finest Franciscan liqueur sent him by the reconciled monks.
The fruits of the negotiations behind the scenes were
laid on the table of the Prussian Landtag in 1880 in a
governmental bill. The measure was roughly handled and
drastically amended, and in its final form only passed by
four votes (206-202), a convincing proof of the strength of
Liberal feeling and voting power. As amended, the bill
did not repeal any of the fundamentals in the May Laws,
but gave to the government a qualified discretion in the
enforcement of the penal legislation. It had been pre-
ceded by a Papal announcement (February 24) authorising
the Roman bishops in Prussia to notify ecclesiastical
appointments in their diocese to the Prussian government
for approval (Anzeigepflicht). The bill was the first step
towards a complete peace. The remaining stages were
covered in the next four years. In 1882 (May 31) Roman
priests were largely dispensed from the necessity and con-
ditions of the State examination, prescribed in the May
Laws; in 1883 (July 11) Roman bishops were released
from the obligation to notify ecclesiastical appointments to
the civil authority, which simply retained a power of veto;
in the same year the Crown Prince visited Rome and had
an audience with the Pope; in 1884 the Roman bishops
were introduced into the Prussian Council of State; in
1886 Leo xii1. was invited by Bismarck to arbitrate'on the
dispute between Germany and Spain over the Caroline
Islands, and in the same year a new law empowered the
government practically to dispense at its discretion with
the penal code set up between 1873 and 1875. On
May 23, 1887, Leo xm. was able to assure the Consistory
that the Kulturkampf was at an end, and that the Roman
Church had secured the essentials for which it had fought.
Bismarck received the Order of Christ, the first Protestant
to be given this Papal decoration, a portrait of Leo xm. ,
and a copy of the Pope's Latin poems. He did not forward
in return a bound volume of his speeches in which he had
laid it down that he would not go to Canossa either in
body or in spirit.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 373
'That journey,' as a distinguished German historian
said, 'nevertheless took place. ' The argument that
Bismarck was not beaten, and that he did not surrender,
cannot stand the test of indisputable fact. Still less
tenable is the view that Bismarck made the surrender
willingly. He was not the man, after all his stout words
and the violence of the conflict in which Protestant and
Liberal Germany had hailed him as a second Luther,
nailing 'the May Laws,' like the immortal ninety-five
theses at Wittenberg, to the Throne and Parliament of
Prussia. The attempt to enforce the omnipotence of the
Civil State had broken down; the attempt to assert civil
control over the faith, discipline, and education of the
Roman priesthood had collapsed. In 1873 Bismarck had
plainly miscalculated the resources of the foe he had chal-
lenged, and exaggerated the strength of the weapons at his
disposal. He had beaten a retreat because he could not
hold the position that he had occupied in the battle:
but he had not retreated without securing compensation
adequate to the humiliation. The Clerical vote enabled
him to carry out a policy more important in his eyes than
the principles enshrined in the May Laws, and in the criti-
cal controversy in 1887-8 over the Septennate the Centre
came to his" aid and secured the victory (see p. 451).
The Chancellor's surrender was a bitter blow to
Liberalism and Radicalism. To both parties the Clerical
Centre was, in Gambetta's phrase, the enemy, for Ultra-
montanism challenged every principle of importance in
the Liberal and Radical creed, and to them the victory of
Windthorst and the Vatican was a victory of obscurantism,
not merely in the narrow plot of theology and dogma,
but in the unlimited fields of intellectual and social life.
The far-reaching influence of the 'progress to Canossa'
between 1879 and 1887 on the German mind cannot yet
be fairly estimated, nor do they fall within the scope of
our subject, but its direct and immediate results were
obvious. It opened up an epoch of growing reaction in
home politics and administration, and the barometer of
Liberalism steadily fell. The Centre remained at a fairly
constant figure of approximately one hundred votes in
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BISMARCK
the Reichstag, and Bismarck's action made it the arbiter
of the parliamentary situation. The full effect of that
predominance was felt outside the period of Bismarck's
Chancellorship, and he left it as a dangerous inheritance to
his successors. They had to liquidate the bill incurred
between 1879 and 1887.
The smashing of Liberalism was the other conspicuous
result. Here again Bismarck reaped the direct advantage
for himself, and left the aftermath to his successors. But
when Bismarck broke the National Liberal party he left
the Empire with no buffer between the government and
Social Democracy except an uneasy marriage of con-
venience between Conservatism, which completely failed
to grow any stronger in voting power, and the Clerical
Centre--a coalition of interests, not a fusion of principles.
The inheritor of the broken Liberalism was the Socialist
Democratic party, and the growth of that party was a
fresh proof that Bismarck had miscalculated its strength,
the sources from which it drew its recruits, and the
methods by which it could be successfully combated.
The gradual degradation of the Reichstag, and with it
the deterioration of political life in Germany, began in
1879 when Bismarck for purely tactical reasons bought
the support of the Centre. That degradation was per-
haps inevitable, because the Reichstag under the Imperial
Constitution was simply a part, and not the most important
part, of the legislative machine; and no representative
body can retain its vitality, its dignity, and its self-respect
--the three qualities essential to a healthy and self-renew-
ing political life--when it is deliberately made a House of
Phrases and nothing else. But unquestionably the de-
terioration was materially hastened by Bismarck's policy.
Power and responsibility are correlatives in the life of
organised communities, and the Reichstag was steadily
deprived of the shreds of both that it once possessed.
When the generation that had produced Bennigsen,
Lasker, Forckenbeck, Miquel, and Richter had passed away,
as they practically did in Bismarck's lifetime, the ideals
and the effort to realise them which had been the life-blood
of the heroic Germany from 1848 to 1870 were no longer
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
there to inspire the new generation. An acute observer
remarked at the time when Prince Hohenlohe's Memoirs
were published, the painful disillusionment in Germany
at the revelation of the atmosphere of intrigue poisoning
the political world in which Hohenlohe had played his
part, with increasing aversion to the setting in which
he found himself. The disillusionment of the politicians
began long before 1902. The lifting of the curtain on
parliamentary history after 1879 reveals the Reichstag not
as the centre of national life where the principles of a
nation's policy are fought out in argument and open day-
light, but as the market-place where an irresponsible
government secured a more or less transient majority by
the sleepless manipulation of the leaders and the purchase
of votes by concessions to the rank and file. The real bar-
gaining took place in the Federal Council, and as to its
nature and terms our information is either non-existent
or so scanty as not even to justify the speculative hypotheses
of a Privatdozent. The function of the government was
reduced to securing a majority in the Reichstag in order
to place the legal stamp on decisions arrived at else-
where. And this function Bismarck performed with
remarkable skill, because he had an unrivalled personal
prestige, and to the end he exercised a personal hypnotism
over the men with whom he negotiated and the Germany
that they represented.
