But even his most unqualified admirers must
admit that his subsequent behaviour provided his severest
critics with material, ample and indisputable, for the
harshest interpretation of his character.
admit that his subsequent behaviour provided his severest
critics with material, ample and indisputable, for the
harshest interpretation of his character.
Robertson - Bismarck
hathitrust.
org/access_use#pd-us-google
? 482
BISMARCK
ling both the western and eastern fronts of a united
Germany, or of following Austria in a Balkan policy which
entangled Germany in vast issues, outside of, and antagon-
istic to, her own specific German interests. To Bismarck's
criticisms of German policy after 1890 there were not
lacking in his own day powerful counter-critics, such as
Holnstein, the silent Eminence grise of the Wilhelmstrasse,
who pointed out that when Bismarck agreed to compen-
sate Austria-Hungary with the occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina he laid a mortgage on Germany which she
could only repudiate by making Austria an open foe or
only redeem by supporting Austrian Balkanism to the
last reserves of the German army, if need be.
Nor were there lacking those who pointed out that
Bismarck's ' moderation ' in 1866 was the original and de-
cisive blunder. Two courses were open then, it was plainly
argued after Bismarck's fall. The first was to have given
the King and the soldiers carte blanche to roll Austria in the
dust and to reduce the Habsburg sovereigns practically to
the kingdom of Hungary, thereby making them the rulers
of a non-German State outside a Greater Germany, with
which an alliance, not an identity of interests, could have
naturally followed. The second was to have retained
German Austria, as before, in a reconstructed German
confederation, in which the north, the south, and German
Austria would have made a united but tripartite national
polity. Such a confederation, it was suggested, would
have kept all Germans in a single political organisation, so
strong that all the groupings outside it of non-German States
could not have affected either its stability or its capacity to
exist as a power in Europe. What prevented the establish-
ment of such a confederation was the refusal of Bismarck
to dissolve Prussia in Germany, no less than his deter-
mination to impose Prussianism on as much of Germany
as Prussian power could absorb and dominate. Hence
the conclusion that Bismarck's solution was responsible
for the difficulties that came to a head in 1890, and
never ceased to be a wasting mortgage on Germany after
Bismarck's fall.
Such criticism is not purely academic and dialectical;
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 483
however much it seems to ignore the practical difficulties
that its execution between 1862 and 1870 would have in-
volved. It emphasises the historic truth that the Habs-
burg dynasty has been the gravest obstacle to the rational
and natural satisfaction of German Nationalism, as well as
to the formation of a truly German Empire from the age
of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the age of
Bismarck. The mediatisation of the particularist dynasties
in Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Baden, and Bavaria
was unquestionably essential to the creation of a federal
and national German State; but the mediatisation of
the Habsburg dynasty was still more essential, and would
have facilitated and federalised a national German State
even more effectually than the reduction of the Guelph,
Wittelsbach, or Saxon princely houses. Had the Austrian-
Hungarian Empire after 1866 been cut into two parts, and
the German part (deprived of its royal ruler) been associ-
ated with a new and greater Germany, while the non-
German parts were left to find a new and independent
existence on nationalist lines, Europe after i860 might
well have had a happier fife. It could certainly not have
had a less happy one than the course of things since 1871
Srovided. Be that as it may, the full consequences of the
ismarckian solution of the German problem were only
working themselves out when Bismarck fell; nor can
Bismarck escape the full responsibility for those conse-
quences, simply because he warned his successors that
they were making mistakes. It is not always the heirs
to a great legacy who mismanage the property. More fre-
quently than is commonly supposed or admitted, the nature
of the property, the methods by which it has been acquired,
and the principles on which it has been administered prior
to the change of ownership impose obligations and involve
efforts, without which the inheritance itself must fall to
pieces. A generation which inherits what it has not made
by its own labours and self-sacrifice can be as reckless in the
ambition to spend as the heirs to a great estate, who have
been rocked, cradled, and dandled in the conviction that a
world they have not made exists for them, and not they for
the world. And in the case of Germany after 1890 the
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? 484
BISMARCK
heirs had been taught that to force, power, and reason of
State miracles were easy.
Bismarck's searchings of heart were by no means confined
to foreign policy. Earnestly meditating at Friedrichsruhe,
and convinced that the directors in the Reichskanzlerpalais
and at Imperial Headquarters were guilty of blunder after
blunder he diagnosed the causes of the mischief in two
plain conclusions--the royal autocracy and the complete
inability of a representative legislature to control policy.
The impotence of the Reichstag after 1890 was as con-
spicuous as the power of the imperial monarchy. In this
sphere, also, Bismarck pointed the moral very clearly. in
more than one trenchant statement.
Thus (December 12, 1891) :--
The most disquieting feature for me is that the Reichstag has
abdicated its position. We suffer everywhere from the bureaucracy
. . . If the authority of the Reichstag declines, the bonds which
hold Germany together are weakened.
And still more emphatically (July 24, 1892) :--
To strengthen the Reichstag the responsibility of ministers
should be increased . . . the Chancellor's post may be abused to
such an extent that he becomes a mere secretary. . . . When I
became Minister, the Crown was threatened by the people. . . .
Hence I strove to strengthen the Crown against Parliament. Per-
haps I went too far in that direction. We now require a balance of
power within Germany, and I believe that free criticism is indis-
pensable to the monarchy. . . . If Parliament becomes powerless,
becomes a mere tool in the hands of the government, we return to
the regime of absolutism.
And again, in a reply to an address (July 30, 1892):--
The basis of a constitutional monarchy is the co-operation of the
monarchical will with the convictions of the governed people. . . .
It is a dangerous experiment nowadays to strive after absolutism
in the centre of Europe . . . the wars which united Germany were
necessary . . . but Germany cannot conduct aggressive Cabinet
wars. Besides, a nation which can be forced into such wars does
not possess the right constitution . . . in building up the Empire
some kind of dictatorship was necessary, but that cannot be con-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 485
sidered as a permanent feature. One's task can be completed only
when Germany possesses a powerful Parliament which embodies
our sense of unity.
Is this Saul among the prophets? The young German
of 1892 might pertinently ask, as he heard this passage:
who made the Reichstag impotent ? who refused to allow
ministerial responsibility to be established ? who made
'an aggressive Cabinet war' in 1864, in 1866, and in 1870,
and ' forced the nation into it' because it did not' possess
the right constitution'? What indications were there in
1889 that the empire autoritaire created by Bismarck was
intended by him to be a transient prelude to an empire
libiral? and finally, how could the Reichstag be made a
truly effective political organ, except by rewriting the
whole text of the Constitution imposed on Germany by
Bismarck in 1866-7, and again in 1871? Was Bismarck
suggesting in earnest that his whole work was to be undone
and the fabric of the Empire reconstructed from top to
bottom?
The royal absolutism drew from the seer of Friedrichs-
ruhe no less emphatic condemnation :--
Absolutism, he wrote in his Memoirs, would be the ideal form of
government for-a European State were not the King and his officials
as other men to whom it is not given to reign with superhuman
wisdom, insight, and justice. . . . If the King comes to any unfor-
tunate decisions, no one can judge whether they are due to his own
will or to the influences which various personalities of male and
female gender--aides-de-camp, courtiers, and political intriguers,
flatterers, chatterboxes, and tell-tales--may have upon the monarch.
In the last resort the royal signature covers everything: how it has
been obtained no one ever knows.
On such a matter no one could speak with more inti-
mate knowledge than Bismarck himself. Had he told
us exactly how he obtained the royal signature between
1862 and 1888 the dark places in Prussian, German,
and European history would be far less dark than they
are. Or did he mean that autocracy was only useful
when manipulated by a Bismarck?
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BISMARCK
Sir Charles Dilke, who visited Friedrichsruhe, has re-
corded :--
As Bismarck mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he
was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which
to work well required the King to be an angel. 'Now,' he said,
'kings even when good have women round them, who, even if
queens, govern them to their personal ends. '
And to Dilke he made another ' confession ' on the same
point:--
People look on me as a monarchist. Were it all to come over
again I would be republican and democrat; the rule of kings is the
rule of women; the bad women are bad and the good are worse.
Allowance must be made for the bitterness of an old man,
reflecting on the experience of a lifetime, who felt with
justice that not once, but a dozen times, when it was in his
power to have converted the Hohenzollern Crown into a
constitutional and limited monarchy, he had resolutely
fought to preserve intact the personal government and pre-
rogatives of the Prussian Crown--and the power that he
had preserved had been used to dismiss him and to reverse
his policy. The 'confession,' apart from that, has the
ring of the great Eldon's similar avowal. Unbending and
stern Tory as he had been, Eldon avowed, in the old age
that saw the triumphant passage of the Reform Act and
the renaissance of Radicalism, that had he to begin all over
again he would start as an ' Agitator. '
One other judgment of Bismarck's must find a place, in
virtue of its penetrating intuition: 'Cavour, Crispi, even
Kriiger,' he told Dilke, ' were greater than myself. I had
the State and the army behind me; these men had
nothing. ' The fact emphasised is indisputable; but had
Bismarck explained how his predecessors in Prussia no
less than himself had the State and the army behind them
and had achieved nothing, he would have destroyed the
truth of the conclusion. It was not the Prussian State nor
the Prussian army, nor even the Prussian monarchy that
made Bismarck's achievement what it was. If political
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 487
genius could be so easily resolved into the instruments that
it employs, history would shed not only its mysteries and
riddles but all its power to inspire, to enthrall, and to
instruct.
It is neither possible nor desirable here to embark further
on the controversy that has divided Germany since
Bismarck's death in 1898--the alluring question whether
his successors deliberately departed from his policy, or
whether their course from 1898 to 1914 was simply the
logical and inevitable development of Bismarck's work.
The issues raised are too complicated and too vast.
Even if the material and the perspective for framing an
impartial judgment were available, a later generation will
be able more dispassionately and with more utility to
decide; and a biographical study of statesmanship, that
already belongs to the past, is obliged to avoid the danger
of being warped by the introduction of arguments and
controversies, however fascinating, urgent, and important,
yet demonstrably irrelevant and misleading. So much will
fairly be conceded by all students whether of Bismarck him-
self alone or of German policy under Caprivi, Hohenlohe,
Bulow, and Bethmann-Hollweg. Of Bismarck the man and
the statesman it is possible to write sine ira et studio. It is
no less legitimate to conclude that with his fall from power
a clearly marked epoch was closed, and to express the con-
fident judgment that the historian of the future will see in
the year 1890 the end of a period, as unmistakably as we
can see now that with Richelieu, with Walpole, with
Frederick the Great, and with Metternich, a system, and
not merely a man, definitely ended. What the character-
istics of that system were and how inextricably they were
interwoven with the personality and principles of the man
it has been the purpose of this biographical study to set
forth. It is unnecessary to compile a laboured coda from
characteristics sufficiently emphasised in the preceding
pages. The import, even the value, of Bismarck's achieve-
ment will be very variously interpreted and judged by
different observers; nor is it possible for the critic, who
does not belong to Bismarck's race and state, completely to
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? 488
BISMARCK
assimilate the point of view with which the German mind
is saturated. By Europe outside Germany, Bismarck will
always be viewed from an angle of vision different from that
of the German. The unification of Germany, the establish-
ment of a German hegemony on the Continent, the Central
Europe, the armed peace imposed on and by Nationalism
in arms, the defeat of Liberalism and of democratic self-
government, the doctrine of the State as the representative
and incarnation of Might and Force, the principle that
policy is the expression of a national will for Power to
which all methods are legitimate, provided that they
achieve their end at a minimum of cost, the gospel that war
is an inevitable and necessary part of the struggle for exist-
ence, and that (in Moltke's famous words) the ideal of
universal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream,
the principle that Reason of State transcends the code of
ethics, applicable in the social intercourse of individual
with individual--all these and many other characteristics
of the Bismarckian system and the Bismarckian inter-
pretation of life and its values lie embedded in the period
of history which Bismarck made his own for the Germany
and the Europe in which he lived. So much is or ought
to be obvious to-day. It is no less obvious that Bismarck
did not succeed in securing their universal and unques-
tioned acceptance, even in the spheres where his immediate
success was greatest. If it be granted that he imprinted
them on Germany, and thereby solved for his own genera-
tion the problem to which he devoted his life, it is clear
that he had not solved the problem for other countries
even in his own lifetime, and that he bequeathed to the
Germany that followed him in veneration to his grave
riddles, no less formidable than those which he inherited,
and constituted his life's task to settle. His own solution,
too, by 1890 had called into existence and endowed with a
fresh vitality the forces both in thought and action which
challenged imperiously the permanent truth of his teach-
ing and example. Bismarck, in brief, like other makers of
nations was either too successful or not successful enough.
Nor did he escape the peril of founding a school of disciples,
with its inevitable penalty, that the disciples either falsify
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 489
the master's precepts or are driven to employ them in de-
stroying the master's work. One conclusion, however, will
be readily accepted by all, irrespective of creed or race.
No political figure ip the "'"pfHIth fXntnry J*"""** 1 TMnTM
indelible impression of force--of that inHpfinahle and
unanalysable union of brajn, wj11f and chariirtn--i trnn
Bismarck; and the closer he is studied, and the more
remorselessly the historical microscope is applied, the
more exigent and irrefutable is the impression. It is not
easy to be moderate in estimating the sum of his positive
achievement, for the Continent of Europe was his field,
and the map and the State-system testify to what he
wrought, and how he wrought it. But it is impossible
to be moderate in the estimate of his personality. The
force in the man himself surpassed the results that he
stamped on the world. From the age of Luther onwards
no other German political figure is his equal in titanic
power. In German history Bismarck is, and is likely to
remain, unique.
It is striking that like another Prussian genius--Frederick
the Great--with whom he has so often been compared,
Bismarck only seems to have grasped at the close of his life
that with himself an epoch had ended and a new age had
begun. Prince von Btilow, who can speak with authority,
writes in his Imperial Germany :1 'It was Bismarck himself
who pointed out the new way to us by bringing our old
policy to a close. . . . It is certain that he did not foresee
the course of this new development of Germany, nor the
details of the problems of this new epoch. . . . We seek
in vain in the conclusions of his practical policy for a justi-
fication of the steps which our international problems
exacts from us. ' And in a later chapter the ex-Chancellor
relates how Bismarck was taken in his eightieth year to
see the harbour of Hamburg. 'He stopped when he set
foot on a giant steamboat, looked at the ship for a long
time, at the many steamers lying in the vicinity, at the
docks and huge cranes, at the mighty picture presented
by the harbour, and said at last: "I am stirred and moved.
Yes, this is a new age--a new world. "'
1 The edition of 1913, not the amended war edition of 1916.
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? 49o
BISMARCK
It is always difficult for a man to recognise that the age
in which he has lived has reached a terminus, and that the
forces and ideas and ambitions which have made his world
have changed their character, volume, and direction; but
when the man himself has been the most puissant expres-
sion and manipulator of those forces, ideas, and ambitions,
the difficulty very nearly becomes an impossibility. The
eight years of life that remained for Bismarck after his
dismissal were not happy, nor did they add to his fame.
Bismarck took with him to Varzin and Friedrichsruhe the
profound sympathy, no less than the unstinted homage of
the German people. The nation felt justly that the dis-
missal by a young Emperor of the servant whose loyalty to
the Crown was beyond question, and whose services to the
House of Hohenzollern were unexampled in their fidelity
and magnitude, lacked both grace and gratitude. Bismarck
was entitled, it must be frankly conceded, to be bitter and
angry.
But even his most unqualified admirers must
admit that his subsequent behaviour provided his severest
critics with material, ample and indisputable, for the
harshest interpretation of his character.
He was not helped by those about him, relatives or hench-
men. Love and loyalty forgot in the rancour of the
situation the highest duty and interest of the chief; and
Bismarck lent himself with a zeal and a readiness that
admit of no extenuation to the playing of a part wholly
unworthy of the claim that he had to the admiration and
affection of the nation and the place that he had made for
himself in his country's history. Of magnanimity, genero-
sity, reticence, charity, or self-respect he exhibited no trace,
and he seems almost to have rejoiced in exposing to the
world every unlovely frailty and defect, and to desire to
prove that he could only hate and neither forgive nor forget.
'Le roi me reverra,' he told Richter before he left Berlin;
but if he believed, as he probably did, that he was indis-
pensable and that he would be recalled on his own terms,
he did his best to break down all the bridges and to render
a return to office impossible. In this, and in this alone, he
succeeded. The Emperor, who after 1890 showed com-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 491
mendable self-restraint under intolerable provocation,
said all that needs to be said in this connection: 'It is
melancholy to think that such a man can sink so low. '
And when Prince Hohenlohe (June 22, 1892) said point-
blank, 'The only thing that people are afraid of is, that
Bismarck will return. ' 'They can make their minds easy,'
replied the Emperor with a laugh, 'he will not return. '
(Memoirs, ii. 432. )
For the first time Bismarck found himself at Varzin and
Friedrichsruhe unemployed; yet the absolute leisure for
which he had so often craved was framed in political iso-
lation, and proved to be a curse. Had he been thirty years
younger he could have flung himself, as he had often con-
templated, into the duties of a great landowner, and found
in Nature an outlet for his energies and an anodyne for the
savage pain that ceaselessly tore his heart. To many states-
men the opportunity, before the final call comes, to remake
the broken threads of intellectual interests and ambitions,
or simply to sift and test in serene reflection the criticism
of life matured by the golden sunshine of the ripening
years, has been the boon they have valued most. For them
old age, warmed by the recognition of a people's grati-
tude, has been a fruitful and satisfying climax. Through
Leisure with Dignity the men of action have often taught
their richest criticism of life. But Bismarck assuredly was
not one of these. At seventy-six he could neither resume
nor begin a contemplative and intellectual phase; and his
ebbing physical forces denied to him the power that he
demanded for the mastery of nature. To him life without
power and the contest for power lost all its savour. In his
love of Nature, with all its keen appreciation of beauty
--the dawn on dreaming woods, the blue witchery of
distant hills, sunset on lush pastures, a mighty river wave
--charmed by the earnest stars--can be detected from
his boyhood an unconscious craving to make the beauty
his own, and to bend the power it enshrined to his insur-
gent will. Nature now failed him, just because he was old
and Nature was young, and could yearly repeat the miracle
of renewing her youth. As he drove or walked on his
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? 492
BISMARCK
estates, followed by his dogs as imperious and fierce as him-
self, Nature seemed to cry at every turn the mocking truth
that no longer could he find the healing rest or the balm
that had in the past always been the prelude to a mightier
toil. In one place, and one alone,--the Reichskanzler-
palais in the Wilhelmstrasse--was the power that would
satisfy. His favourite Goethe had said so truly that no
young man can be a master. Knowledge, judgment, ex-
perience, the secrets of the Higher Command--these were
not the prerogatives of youth but of a maturity, fired in the
furnace of a life passed in great affairs. Bismarck knew
that life had made him a master. Yet away there in Berlin
the mastery was torn from him by ingrates and incom-
petents, mere novices and apprentices, compared with
himself. The laceration of his heart poured out the
pent-up passion in the revelation of State secrets and
journalist denunciation.
It is not necessary here to follow the minute record.
When Caprivi fell from power (1895), it was Prince Hohen-
lohe, not Bismarck, who succeeded to the Chancellorship.
In 1892, when Herbert Bismarck was married and his
father made a triumphal progress to Vienna, via Berlin, the
German government was driven to forbid the German
ambassador to be present at the wedding. In 1893, when
Bismarck was seriously ill, there was, however, a temporary
reconciliation with the Emperor; and in 1895 when the
Reichstag refused to associate itself by vote with the
national rejoicing to celebrate his eightieth birthday, the
Emperor visited Friedrichsruhe, and repeated the visit in
December of the same year on the eve of the celebrations
for the ' silver wedding ' of . the Empire (January 18, 1896).
Bismarck, in the autumn of 1896, repaid the homage by
publishing (October 24) the article that revealed the
'Reinsurance Treaty' of 1887 and its non-renewal in
1890. He was entitled apparently to do with impunity
what had ' justified ' the destruction of Arnim.
In 1894 he had suffered in the death of his wife (Novem-
ber 27) the personal bereavement that completed the soli-
tude of these years of unquenchable resentment. The
princess was buried at Varzin--the home that he made
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
for her, and which was in itself a record of the achieve-
ment in which she had played a share, fully known only
to Bismarck himself. Johanna von Puttkamer had been
happy in the supreme gifts of love and life to a woman--
the right to be the wife and ally of the mightiest German
of her and his century; and of that personal union both
husband and wife could have said with truth that they had
lived with distinction between the torch of marriage and
the torch of death:
yiximus insignet inter utramque facem.
Varzin never beheld its bereaved master again, though to
this day the peasantry tell how in the glades that Bismarck
planted the lonely wayfarer in the dusk has suddenly been
confronted with the familiar figure, now on horseback,
now on foot--erect and superhuman in mien and stature,
galloping or striding with the effortless majesty of power
from one beloved haunt to another--and sometimes halting
to turn on the awed spectator the penetration of eyes, once
seen in life, never to be forgotten.
The end came on July 30, 1898, at Friedrichsruhe.
Nations that have beaten out their path through toil,
failure, controversy, revolution, and civil war to the golden
summits of victorious ambitions frequently anticipate the
verdict of posterity even in the lifetime of the leader and
in all the asphyxiating and blinding atmosphere of strife.
The Germany of 1890 had already placed Bismarck along
with the other three greatest of German figures since the
Renaissance, with Luther, Frederick the Great, and Goethe,
That first division of the first class, which nations in-
tuitively limit with an unerring and jealous severity,
Germany now opened to admit the Prussian statesman.
It was aware that Bismarck, in common with the other
three, had demonstrable and conspicuous defects. Canoni-
sation, however, by a people is a more exacting inquest
than canonisation by a church, for the duty assigned to the
Devil's Advocate, who is none other than the nation itself,
covers the vast field and infinite tests of that whole nation's
endeavour. Hard as it unquestionably may be, it is easier
to be a saint and to achieve a perfection of individual char-
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BISMARCK
acter and spirit than to sum up an epoch in a single per-
sonality, and thereby create an age in history. The title
to be the maker of a nation and an epoch is, and always
will remain, different from the accepted claims that dis-
tinguish the national saint or even the national hero. In
the sanctuaries of a nation's Valhalla there will be niches
without number for the heroes and the saints, and they
will be perpetual shrines of honour, virtue, and praise;
but the corner reserved for the Makers of the Nation will
be a scanty and awful plot. The few, the very few, who
lie there, because they cannot he in any other place,
have made their grave for themselves from the blood,
dust, passions, fears, hates, and dreams of their race,
and their race cannot refuse the privilege, if privilege it
be, in justice to itself rather than to them. Truth, not
honour or reverence or praise, is the Makers' meed, and to
such no tomb and no monument can pay the tribute of the
final judgment. Over what they did, the good that they
bequeathed and the evil that they wrought, men and
women will wrangle as long as the nation that gave them
birth retains its ambitions and can keep the flame of its
conscience burning. On the hearts of all who come after
is graven a testimony which words either falsify or mar,
and from which there is and can be no appeal. Of the
Makers the nation itself is the supreme judge. Germany
or Europe may sternly reject or acclaim with enthusiasm
Bismarck the man and Bismarck's achievement, but the
Prussia and the Germany remain to which he gave himself
with a passion and a loyalty that soar beyond all the
doubts and all the praise, and the German people of the
twentieth century faced the future as his memorial.
Bismarck himself knew it and was content. 'I do not,'
he commanded when he was dying,' I do not want a lying
official epitaph. Write on my tomb,' he added, 'that I
was the faithful servant of my master, the Emperor William,
King of Prussia. ' It was the bare truth. But something
more was required, if justice was to be done. The dead
Bismarck was happy in the felicity of those who made his
grave at Friedrichsruhe. Set in the oaks and the beeches
that he loved, far from the roaring Berlin that was for Ger-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 495
many but not for him the heart of the German Empire,
was placed a simple chamber, yet massive with Prussian
strength. On the slab that marks his resting-place, beside
the grave of his wife, 'who made him what he was,' is
engraved but one word--and that is enough--' Bismarck. '
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? APPENDIX A
THE EMS DISPATCH
The texts of (a) Abeken's dispatch to Bismarck, and (b) Bismarck's
syncopated version for publication are printed in parallel columns
below. It will be observed that the. King left to Bismarck's
discretion the public communication of his message, without
sending any instructions as to the form that publication should
take, should Bismarck decide upon this step.
Abeken to Bismarck
Ems, July 13, 1870.
3'40 p. m. Bismarck's Version for Publication
His Majesty writes to me: After the news of the renuncia-
'Count Benedetti spoke to me tion of the hereditary Prince of
on the promenade, in order to Hohenzollern had been officially
demand from me, finally in a communicated to the Imperial
very importunate manner, that government of France by the
I should authorise him to tele- Royal government of Spain, the
graph at once that I bound French Ambassador further de-
myself for all future time never manded of his Majesty, the
again to give my consent if the King, at Ems, that he would
Hohenzollerns should renew authorise him to telegraph to
their candidature. I refused Paris that his Majesty, the
at last somewhat sternly, as it King, bound himself for all time
is neither right nor possible to never again to give "his consent,
undertake engagements of this should the Hohenzollerns renew
kind a tout jamais. I told him their candidature. His Majesty,
that I had as yet received no the King, thereupon decided
news, and as he was earlier in- not to receive the French Am-
formed from Paris and Madrid bassador again, and sent the
than myself, he could see clearly aide-de-camp on duty to tell
that my government had no him that his Majesty had
more interest in the matter. ' nothing further to communi-
His Majesty has since received cate to the ambassador,
a letter from Prince Charles
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? APPENDIX
497
Anthony. His Majesty, having
told Count Benedetti that he
was awaiting news from the
Prince, has decided, with refer-
ence to the above demand, on
the suggestion of Count Eulen-
berg and myself, not to receive
Count Benedetti again, but only
to let him be informed through
an aide-de-camp: 'That his
Majesty has now received from
the Prince confirmation of the
news which Benedetti had al-
ready received from Paris, and
had nothing further to say to the
ambassador. ' His Majesty leaves
it to your Excellency to decide
whether Benedetti's fresh de-
mand and its rejection should be
at once communicated to both
our ambassadors, to foreign
nations, and to the Press.
at
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? APPENDIX B
THE REINSURANCE TREATIES OF 1884 AND 1887
The nature and contents of these secret undertakings, which -form
so decisive and interesting a feature of Bismarck's policy from
1883 to his dismissal in March 1890, still remain very obscure.
The texts have never been officially or unofficially published, and
inference from scattered and contradictory statements is all that
is possible. Certain points, however, are quite clear. In 1884
Germany concluded with Russia a specific arrangement; in 1887,
presumably because the arrangement of 1884 had terminated,
Germany concluded a fresh arrangement with Russia. In 1890
the arrangement of 1887 was not renewed by Chancellor Gaprivi.
The public of Europe would probably have never known of the
existence of 'the 1887 Compact' but for Bismarck's deliberate
revelation of its existence and non-renewal in the Hambu get
NachrichUn of October 24, 1896. It is noticeable that the revela-
tion caused much excitement in Germany and a storm of indignant
criticism in Austria. It was very embarrassing to the German
government; whether it was as great a surprise to the Foreign
Office in the Ball-Platz as it obviously was to the Austrian public is
one of the points in controversy, on which precise information is
still lacking. The Austrian public mind, as a study of the Viennese
newspapers of November 1896 proves, was seriously upset, and
there was much excited comment on Bismarck's betrayal of the
Dual Alliance by the secret arrangements with Russia. But the
Austrian government maintained an official discretion and re-
served its indignation, if it felt any, for confidential communica-
tion to the Wilhelmstrasse at Berlin. Nor did the debate in the
Reichstag (November 16, 1896) add anything to our knowledge.
The official Reichsanzeiger had published (October 27) a curt note,
pronouncing the 'revelation' to be a 'violation of the most con-
fidential secrets of State which constituted a blow at the grave
interests of the Empire'; but neither the Chancellor, Prince
Hohenlohe, nor Foreign Secretary Baron Marschallv on Bieberstein,
though they spoke at considerable length in reply to the interpella-
tion of Grat Hompesch, gave any new information, except to admit
the bare fact that a compact had been made in 1887 and not re-
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? APPENDIX
499
newed in 1890. Prince Hohenlohe took refuge in the necessity of
official secrecy and reasons of State. The Foreign Secretary indeed
pointed out that a diplomacy which rested on a series of engage-
ments, possibly conflicting in their terms, was of doubtful value,
and that the worth of any single engagement was not increased by
the number of other contracts. What the precise meaning of
this cryptic utterance was, it is impossible to decide; but it clearly
was intended to convey--whether truly or not, we cannot say--
that the German Foreign Office had not docketed in its cupboard
other secret treaties of 'a reinsurance character,' together with
an assurance for the world in general and Vienna in particular,
that the German government of 1896 was, and intended to
remain, free to fulfil loyally the terms of the Dual or Triple
Alliance.
Both ministers, however, also spoke casually of 'negotiations
between 1887 and 189b. ' Negotiations with whom or for what
they did not explain, but presumably they referred to negotiations
with Russia between 1887 and 1890 for the renewal of 'the
Compact of 1887' or a similar treaty. No explanation was
offered of the reasons why Chancellor Caprivi did not renew the
Compact of 1887--e. g. was it, as Hohenlohe suggests in his Diary
(January 14, 1895, ii. 462), ' because the policy it led to was too
complicated,' or because Russia raised her terms, or because the
Emperor had embarked on a serious attempt in 1890 to bring
Great Britain into the Triple Alliance, or because ? the reinsurance'
was judged to be a betrayal of Austria? It is tempting to connect
the non-renewal in 1890 with the dismissal of Bismarck; for we
know that Bismarck's policy was regarded as a betrayal of Austria
by the Emperor and his military entourage. Another inference
is still more tempting. Hohenlohe twice (e. g. ii. 429, and 452)
succinctly states the contents of' the reinsurance' as he understood
them to be (i. e. before he became Chancellor and had free access
to confidential documents, when his silence is instructive):
'When I told him (Caprivi) that Schuvaloff had described him
as a trop honnete homme, he said that was because Bismarck had
concluded a treaty with Russia, under which we guaranteed
Russia a free hand in Bulgaria and Constantinople, while Russia
undertook to observe a neutral attitude in the Franco-GermanWar.
This treaty had lapsed when Caprivi assumed office, and he had
not renewed it, because its publication would have shattered the
Triple Alliance. I fear that Austria will not be grateful to us. '
And to the same effect (ii. 452): with the addition, 'Russia
pledged herself to remain neutral in case of a war with France,
even though Austria should lend a hand in the East-'
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? 500
BISMARCK
These passages are apparently explicit enough; in reality they
are full of difficulties. Caprivi took office in March 1890; if,
as we seem bound to assume, 'the reinsurance' was made in
November 1887, it did not lapse when Caprivi assumed office, but
ten months later. Are we to believe that 'the reinsurance'
lapsed in March 1890, i. e. that it was made in March 1887?
If so, what happened in November 1887? For if the Compact
of 1884 was renewed in the spring of 1887, what is the explanation
of the strained Russo-German relations from March to November
1887, and of the arrangement with the Tsar in that month at
Berlin ? ' The publication' would have 'shattered the Triple
Alliance' (sic)--but who was going to ' publish' it? If it was a
secret treaty, why should it be 'published'? Did Hohenlohe
intend to convey that Austria (as was probable) knew nothing
of the ' reinsurance,' but that if she learned (from Russia or whom? )
of its existence, the Triple Alliance would be shattered? Why
should 'Austria not be grateful? ' Because she had been told
(between 1890 and 1892) that she had been betrayed between
1887 and 1890, but would not be betrayed any more? And how
was ' Austria to lend a hand in the East,' detrimental to Germany?
? 482
BISMARCK
ling both the western and eastern fronts of a united
Germany, or of following Austria in a Balkan policy which
entangled Germany in vast issues, outside of, and antagon-
istic to, her own specific German interests. To Bismarck's
criticisms of German policy after 1890 there were not
lacking in his own day powerful counter-critics, such as
Holnstein, the silent Eminence grise of the Wilhelmstrasse,
who pointed out that when Bismarck agreed to compen-
sate Austria-Hungary with the occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina he laid a mortgage on Germany which she
could only repudiate by making Austria an open foe or
only redeem by supporting Austrian Balkanism to the
last reserves of the German army, if need be.
Nor were there lacking those who pointed out that
Bismarck's ' moderation ' in 1866 was the original and de-
cisive blunder. Two courses were open then, it was plainly
argued after Bismarck's fall. The first was to have given
the King and the soldiers carte blanche to roll Austria in the
dust and to reduce the Habsburg sovereigns practically to
the kingdom of Hungary, thereby making them the rulers
of a non-German State outside a Greater Germany, with
which an alliance, not an identity of interests, could have
naturally followed. The second was to have retained
German Austria, as before, in a reconstructed German
confederation, in which the north, the south, and German
Austria would have made a united but tripartite national
polity. Such a confederation, it was suggested, would
have kept all Germans in a single political organisation, so
strong that all the groupings outside it of non-German States
could not have affected either its stability or its capacity to
exist as a power in Europe. What prevented the establish-
ment of such a confederation was the refusal of Bismarck
to dissolve Prussia in Germany, no less than his deter-
mination to impose Prussianism on as much of Germany
as Prussian power could absorb and dominate. Hence
the conclusion that Bismarck's solution was responsible
for the difficulties that came to a head in 1890, and
never ceased to be a wasting mortgage on Germany after
Bismarck's fall.
Such criticism is not purely academic and dialectical;
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 483
however much it seems to ignore the practical difficulties
that its execution between 1862 and 1870 would have in-
volved. It emphasises the historic truth that the Habs-
burg dynasty has been the gravest obstacle to the rational
and natural satisfaction of German Nationalism, as well as
to the formation of a truly German Empire from the age
of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the age of
Bismarck. The mediatisation of the particularist dynasties
in Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Baden, and Bavaria
was unquestionably essential to the creation of a federal
and national German State; but the mediatisation of
the Habsburg dynasty was still more essential, and would
have facilitated and federalised a national German State
even more effectually than the reduction of the Guelph,
Wittelsbach, or Saxon princely houses. Had the Austrian-
Hungarian Empire after 1866 been cut into two parts, and
the German part (deprived of its royal ruler) been associ-
ated with a new and greater Germany, while the non-
German parts were left to find a new and independent
existence on nationalist lines, Europe after i860 might
well have had a happier fife. It could certainly not have
had a less happy one than the course of things since 1871
Srovided. Be that as it may, the full consequences of the
ismarckian solution of the German problem were only
working themselves out when Bismarck fell; nor can
Bismarck escape the full responsibility for those conse-
quences, simply because he warned his successors that
they were making mistakes. It is not always the heirs
to a great legacy who mismanage the property. More fre-
quently than is commonly supposed or admitted, the nature
of the property, the methods by which it has been acquired,
and the principles on which it has been administered prior
to the change of ownership impose obligations and involve
efforts, without which the inheritance itself must fall to
pieces. A generation which inherits what it has not made
by its own labours and self-sacrifice can be as reckless in the
ambition to spend as the heirs to a great estate, who have
been rocked, cradled, and dandled in the conviction that a
world they have not made exists for them, and not they for
the world. And in the case of Germany after 1890 the
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? 484
BISMARCK
heirs had been taught that to force, power, and reason of
State miracles were easy.
Bismarck's searchings of heart were by no means confined
to foreign policy. Earnestly meditating at Friedrichsruhe,
and convinced that the directors in the Reichskanzlerpalais
and at Imperial Headquarters were guilty of blunder after
blunder he diagnosed the causes of the mischief in two
plain conclusions--the royal autocracy and the complete
inability of a representative legislature to control policy.
The impotence of the Reichstag after 1890 was as con-
spicuous as the power of the imperial monarchy. In this
sphere, also, Bismarck pointed the moral very clearly. in
more than one trenchant statement.
Thus (December 12, 1891) :--
The most disquieting feature for me is that the Reichstag has
abdicated its position. We suffer everywhere from the bureaucracy
. . . If the authority of the Reichstag declines, the bonds which
hold Germany together are weakened.
And still more emphatically (July 24, 1892) :--
To strengthen the Reichstag the responsibility of ministers
should be increased . . . the Chancellor's post may be abused to
such an extent that he becomes a mere secretary. . . . When I
became Minister, the Crown was threatened by the people. . . .
Hence I strove to strengthen the Crown against Parliament. Per-
haps I went too far in that direction. We now require a balance of
power within Germany, and I believe that free criticism is indis-
pensable to the monarchy. . . . If Parliament becomes powerless,
becomes a mere tool in the hands of the government, we return to
the regime of absolutism.
And again, in a reply to an address (July 30, 1892):--
The basis of a constitutional monarchy is the co-operation of the
monarchical will with the convictions of the governed people. . . .
It is a dangerous experiment nowadays to strive after absolutism
in the centre of Europe . . . the wars which united Germany were
necessary . . . but Germany cannot conduct aggressive Cabinet
wars. Besides, a nation which can be forced into such wars does
not possess the right constitution . . . in building up the Empire
some kind of dictatorship was necessary, but that cannot be con-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 485
sidered as a permanent feature. One's task can be completed only
when Germany possesses a powerful Parliament which embodies
our sense of unity.
Is this Saul among the prophets? The young German
of 1892 might pertinently ask, as he heard this passage:
who made the Reichstag impotent ? who refused to allow
ministerial responsibility to be established ? who made
'an aggressive Cabinet war' in 1864, in 1866, and in 1870,
and ' forced the nation into it' because it did not' possess
the right constitution'? What indications were there in
1889 that the empire autoritaire created by Bismarck was
intended by him to be a transient prelude to an empire
libiral? and finally, how could the Reichstag be made a
truly effective political organ, except by rewriting the
whole text of the Constitution imposed on Germany by
Bismarck in 1866-7, and again in 1871? Was Bismarck
suggesting in earnest that his whole work was to be undone
and the fabric of the Empire reconstructed from top to
bottom?
The royal absolutism drew from the seer of Friedrichs-
ruhe no less emphatic condemnation :--
Absolutism, he wrote in his Memoirs, would be the ideal form of
government for-a European State were not the King and his officials
as other men to whom it is not given to reign with superhuman
wisdom, insight, and justice. . . . If the King comes to any unfor-
tunate decisions, no one can judge whether they are due to his own
will or to the influences which various personalities of male and
female gender--aides-de-camp, courtiers, and political intriguers,
flatterers, chatterboxes, and tell-tales--may have upon the monarch.
In the last resort the royal signature covers everything: how it has
been obtained no one ever knows.
On such a matter no one could speak with more inti-
mate knowledge than Bismarck himself. Had he told
us exactly how he obtained the royal signature between
1862 and 1888 the dark places in Prussian, German,
and European history would be far less dark than they
are. Or did he mean that autocracy was only useful
when manipulated by a Bismarck?
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? 486
BISMARCK
Sir Charles Dilke, who visited Friedrichsruhe, has re-
corded :--
As Bismarck mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he
was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which
to work well required the King to be an angel. 'Now,' he said,
'kings even when good have women round them, who, even if
queens, govern them to their personal ends. '
And to Dilke he made another ' confession ' on the same
point:--
People look on me as a monarchist. Were it all to come over
again I would be republican and democrat; the rule of kings is the
rule of women; the bad women are bad and the good are worse.
Allowance must be made for the bitterness of an old man,
reflecting on the experience of a lifetime, who felt with
justice that not once, but a dozen times, when it was in his
power to have converted the Hohenzollern Crown into a
constitutional and limited monarchy, he had resolutely
fought to preserve intact the personal government and pre-
rogatives of the Prussian Crown--and the power that he
had preserved had been used to dismiss him and to reverse
his policy. The 'confession,' apart from that, has the
ring of the great Eldon's similar avowal. Unbending and
stern Tory as he had been, Eldon avowed, in the old age
that saw the triumphant passage of the Reform Act and
the renaissance of Radicalism, that had he to begin all over
again he would start as an ' Agitator. '
One other judgment of Bismarck's must find a place, in
virtue of its penetrating intuition: 'Cavour, Crispi, even
Kriiger,' he told Dilke, ' were greater than myself. I had
the State and the army behind me; these men had
nothing. ' The fact emphasised is indisputable; but had
Bismarck explained how his predecessors in Prussia no
less than himself had the State and the army behind them
and had achieved nothing, he would have destroyed the
truth of the conclusion. It was not the Prussian State nor
the Prussian army, nor even the Prussian monarchy that
made Bismarck's achievement what it was. If political
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 487
genius could be so easily resolved into the instruments that
it employs, history would shed not only its mysteries and
riddles but all its power to inspire, to enthrall, and to
instruct.
It is neither possible nor desirable here to embark further
on the controversy that has divided Germany since
Bismarck's death in 1898--the alluring question whether
his successors deliberately departed from his policy, or
whether their course from 1898 to 1914 was simply the
logical and inevitable development of Bismarck's work.
The issues raised are too complicated and too vast.
Even if the material and the perspective for framing an
impartial judgment were available, a later generation will
be able more dispassionately and with more utility to
decide; and a biographical study of statesmanship, that
already belongs to the past, is obliged to avoid the danger
of being warped by the introduction of arguments and
controversies, however fascinating, urgent, and important,
yet demonstrably irrelevant and misleading. So much will
fairly be conceded by all students whether of Bismarck him-
self alone or of German policy under Caprivi, Hohenlohe,
Bulow, and Bethmann-Hollweg. Of Bismarck the man and
the statesman it is possible to write sine ira et studio. It is
no less legitimate to conclude that with his fall from power
a clearly marked epoch was closed, and to express the con-
fident judgment that the historian of the future will see in
the year 1890 the end of a period, as unmistakably as we
can see now that with Richelieu, with Walpole, with
Frederick the Great, and with Metternich, a system, and
not merely a man, definitely ended. What the character-
istics of that system were and how inextricably they were
interwoven with the personality and principles of the man
it has been the purpose of this biographical study to set
forth. It is unnecessary to compile a laboured coda from
characteristics sufficiently emphasised in the preceding
pages. The import, even the value, of Bismarck's achieve-
ment will be very variously interpreted and judged by
different observers; nor is it possible for the critic, who
does not belong to Bismarck's race and state, completely to
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? 488
BISMARCK
assimilate the point of view with which the German mind
is saturated. By Europe outside Germany, Bismarck will
always be viewed from an angle of vision different from that
of the German. The unification of Germany, the establish-
ment of a German hegemony on the Continent, the Central
Europe, the armed peace imposed on and by Nationalism
in arms, the defeat of Liberalism and of democratic self-
government, the doctrine of the State as the representative
and incarnation of Might and Force, the principle that
policy is the expression of a national will for Power to
which all methods are legitimate, provided that they
achieve their end at a minimum of cost, the gospel that war
is an inevitable and necessary part of the struggle for exist-
ence, and that (in Moltke's famous words) the ideal of
universal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream,
the principle that Reason of State transcends the code of
ethics, applicable in the social intercourse of individual
with individual--all these and many other characteristics
of the Bismarckian system and the Bismarckian inter-
pretation of life and its values lie embedded in the period
of history which Bismarck made his own for the Germany
and the Europe in which he lived. So much is or ought
to be obvious to-day. It is no less obvious that Bismarck
did not succeed in securing their universal and unques-
tioned acceptance, even in the spheres where his immediate
success was greatest. If it be granted that he imprinted
them on Germany, and thereby solved for his own genera-
tion the problem to which he devoted his life, it is clear
that he had not solved the problem for other countries
even in his own lifetime, and that he bequeathed to the
Germany that followed him in veneration to his grave
riddles, no less formidable than those which he inherited,
and constituted his life's task to settle. His own solution,
too, by 1890 had called into existence and endowed with a
fresh vitality the forces both in thought and action which
challenged imperiously the permanent truth of his teach-
ing and example. Bismarck, in brief, like other makers of
nations was either too successful or not successful enough.
Nor did he escape the peril of founding a school of disciples,
with its inevitable penalty, that the disciples either falsify
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 489
the master's precepts or are driven to employ them in de-
stroying the master's work. One conclusion, however, will
be readily accepted by all, irrespective of creed or race.
No political figure ip the "'"pfHIth fXntnry J*"""** 1 TMnTM
indelible impression of force--of that inHpfinahle and
unanalysable union of brajn, wj11f and chariirtn--i trnn
Bismarck; and the closer he is studied, and the more
remorselessly the historical microscope is applied, the
more exigent and irrefutable is the impression. It is not
easy to be moderate in estimating the sum of his positive
achievement, for the Continent of Europe was his field,
and the map and the State-system testify to what he
wrought, and how he wrought it. But it is impossible
to be moderate in the estimate of his personality. The
force in the man himself surpassed the results that he
stamped on the world. From the age of Luther onwards
no other German political figure is his equal in titanic
power. In German history Bismarck is, and is likely to
remain, unique.
It is striking that like another Prussian genius--Frederick
the Great--with whom he has so often been compared,
Bismarck only seems to have grasped at the close of his life
that with himself an epoch had ended and a new age had
begun. Prince von Btilow, who can speak with authority,
writes in his Imperial Germany :1 'It was Bismarck himself
who pointed out the new way to us by bringing our old
policy to a close. . . . It is certain that he did not foresee
the course of this new development of Germany, nor the
details of the problems of this new epoch. . . . We seek
in vain in the conclusions of his practical policy for a justi-
fication of the steps which our international problems
exacts from us. ' And in a later chapter the ex-Chancellor
relates how Bismarck was taken in his eightieth year to
see the harbour of Hamburg. 'He stopped when he set
foot on a giant steamboat, looked at the ship for a long
time, at the many steamers lying in the vicinity, at the
docks and huge cranes, at the mighty picture presented
by the harbour, and said at last: "I am stirred and moved.
Yes, this is a new age--a new world. "'
1 The edition of 1913, not the amended war edition of 1916.
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? 49o
BISMARCK
It is always difficult for a man to recognise that the age
in which he has lived has reached a terminus, and that the
forces and ideas and ambitions which have made his world
have changed their character, volume, and direction; but
when the man himself has been the most puissant expres-
sion and manipulator of those forces, ideas, and ambitions,
the difficulty very nearly becomes an impossibility. The
eight years of life that remained for Bismarck after his
dismissal were not happy, nor did they add to his fame.
Bismarck took with him to Varzin and Friedrichsruhe the
profound sympathy, no less than the unstinted homage of
the German people. The nation felt justly that the dis-
missal by a young Emperor of the servant whose loyalty to
the Crown was beyond question, and whose services to the
House of Hohenzollern were unexampled in their fidelity
and magnitude, lacked both grace and gratitude. Bismarck
was entitled, it must be frankly conceded, to be bitter and
angry.
But even his most unqualified admirers must
admit that his subsequent behaviour provided his severest
critics with material, ample and indisputable, for the
harshest interpretation of his character.
He was not helped by those about him, relatives or hench-
men. Love and loyalty forgot in the rancour of the
situation the highest duty and interest of the chief; and
Bismarck lent himself with a zeal and a readiness that
admit of no extenuation to the playing of a part wholly
unworthy of the claim that he had to the admiration and
affection of the nation and the place that he had made for
himself in his country's history. Of magnanimity, genero-
sity, reticence, charity, or self-respect he exhibited no trace,
and he seems almost to have rejoiced in exposing to the
world every unlovely frailty and defect, and to desire to
prove that he could only hate and neither forgive nor forget.
'Le roi me reverra,' he told Richter before he left Berlin;
but if he believed, as he probably did, that he was indis-
pensable and that he would be recalled on his own terms,
he did his best to break down all the bridges and to render
a return to office impossible. In this, and in this alone, he
succeeded. The Emperor, who after 1890 showed com-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 491
mendable self-restraint under intolerable provocation,
said all that needs to be said in this connection: 'It is
melancholy to think that such a man can sink so low. '
And when Prince Hohenlohe (June 22, 1892) said point-
blank, 'The only thing that people are afraid of is, that
Bismarck will return. ' 'They can make their minds easy,'
replied the Emperor with a laugh, 'he will not return. '
(Memoirs, ii. 432. )
For the first time Bismarck found himself at Varzin and
Friedrichsruhe unemployed; yet the absolute leisure for
which he had so often craved was framed in political iso-
lation, and proved to be a curse. Had he been thirty years
younger he could have flung himself, as he had often con-
templated, into the duties of a great landowner, and found
in Nature an outlet for his energies and an anodyne for the
savage pain that ceaselessly tore his heart. To many states-
men the opportunity, before the final call comes, to remake
the broken threads of intellectual interests and ambitions,
or simply to sift and test in serene reflection the criticism
of life matured by the golden sunshine of the ripening
years, has been the boon they have valued most. For them
old age, warmed by the recognition of a people's grati-
tude, has been a fruitful and satisfying climax. Through
Leisure with Dignity the men of action have often taught
their richest criticism of life. But Bismarck assuredly was
not one of these. At seventy-six he could neither resume
nor begin a contemplative and intellectual phase; and his
ebbing physical forces denied to him the power that he
demanded for the mastery of nature. To him life without
power and the contest for power lost all its savour. In his
love of Nature, with all its keen appreciation of beauty
--the dawn on dreaming woods, the blue witchery of
distant hills, sunset on lush pastures, a mighty river wave
--charmed by the earnest stars--can be detected from
his boyhood an unconscious craving to make the beauty
his own, and to bend the power it enshrined to his insur-
gent will. Nature now failed him, just because he was old
and Nature was young, and could yearly repeat the miracle
of renewing her youth. As he drove or walked on his
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BISMARCK
estates, followed by his dogs as imperious and fierce as him-
self, Nature seemed to cry at every turn the mocking truth
that no longer could he find the healing rest or the balm
that had in the past always been the prelude to a mightier
toil. In one place, and one alone,--the Reichskanzler-
palais in the Wilhelmstrasse--was the power that would
satisfy. His favourite Goethe had said so truly that no
young man can be a master. Knowledge, judgment, ex-
perience, the secrets of the Higher Command--these were
not the prerogatives of youth but of a maturity, fired in the
furnace of a life passed in great affairs. Bismarck knew
that life had made him a master. Yet away there in Berlin
the mastery was torn from him by ingrates and incom-
petents, mere novices and apprentices, compared with
himself. The laceration of his heart poured out the
pent-up passion in the revelation of State secrets and
journalist denunciation.
It is not necessary here to follow the minute record.
When Caprivi fell from power (1895), it was Prince Hohen-
lohe, not Bismarck, who succeeded to the Chancellorship.
In 1892, when Herbert Bismarck was married and his
father made a triumphal progress to Vienna, via Berlin, the
German government was driven to forbid the German
ambassador to be present at the wedding. In 1893, when
Bismarck was seriously ill, there was, however, a temporary
reconciliation with the Emperor; and in 1895 when the
Reichstag refused to associate itself by vote with the
national rejoicing to celebrate his eightieth birthday, the
Emperor visited Friedrichsruhe, and repeated the visit in
December of the same year on the eve of the celebrations
for the ' silver wedding ' of . the Empire (January 18, 1896).
Bismarck, in the autumn of 1896, repaid the homage by
publishing (October 24) the article that revealed the
'Reinsurance Treaty' of 1887 and its non-renewal in
1890. He was entitled apparently to do with impunity
what had ' justified ' the destruction of Arnim.
In 1894 he had suffered in the death of his wife (Novem-
ber 27) the personal bereavement that completed the soli-
tude of these years of unquenchable resentment. The
princess was buried at Varzin--the home that he made
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
for her, and which was in itself a record of the achieve-
ment in which she had played a share, fully known only
to Bismarck himself. Johanna von Puttkamer had been
happy in the supreme gifts of love and life to a woman--
the right to be the wife and ally of the mightiest German
of her and his century; and of that personal union both
husband and wife could have said with truth that they had
lived with distinction between the torch of marriage and
the torch of death:
yiximus insignet inter utramque facem.
Varzin never beheld its bereaved master again, though to
this day the peasantry tell how in the glades that Bismarck
planted the lonely wayfarer in the dusk has suddenly been
confronted with the familiar figure, now on horseback,
now on foot--erect and superhuman in mien and stature,
galloping or striding with the effortless majesty of power
from one beloved haunt to another--and sometimes halting
to turn on the awed spectator the penetration of eyes, once
seen in life, never to be forgotten.
The end came on July 30, 1898, at Friedrichsruhe.
Nations that have beaten out their path through toil,
failure, controversy, revolution, and civil war to the golden
summits of victorious ambitions frequently anticipate the
verdict of posterity even in the lifetime of the leader and
in all the asphyxiating and blinding atmosphere of strife.
The Germany of 1890 had already placed Bismarck along
with the other three greatest of German figures since the
Renaissance, with Luther, Frederick the Great, and Goethe,
That first division of the first class, which nations in-
tuitively limit with an unerring and jealous severity,
Germany now opened to admit the Prussian statesman.
It was aware that Bismarck, in common with the other
three, had demonstrable and conspicuous defects. Canoni-
sation, however, by a people is a more exacting inquest
than canonisation by a church, for the duty assigned to the
Devil's Advocate, who is none other than the nation itself,
covers the vast field and infinite tests of that whole nation's
endeavour. Hard as it unquestionably may be, it is easier
to be a saint and to achieve a perfection of individual char-
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BISMARCK
acter and spirit than to sum up an epoch in a single per-
sonality, and thereby create an age in history. The title
to be the maker of a nation and an epoch is, and always
will remain, different from the accepted claims that dis-
tinguish the national saint or even the national hero. In
the sanctuaries of a nation's Valhalla there will be niches
without number for the heroes and the saints, and they
will be perpetual shrines of honour, virtue, and praise;
but the corner reserved for the Makers of the Nation will
be a scanty and awful plot. The few, the very few, who
lie there, because they cannot he in any other place,
have made their grave for themselves from the blood,
dust, passions, fears, hates, and dreams of their race,
and their race cannot refuse the privilege, if privilege it
be, in justice to itself rather than to them. Truth, not
honour or reverence or praise, is the Makers' meed, and to
such no tomb and no monument can pay the tribute of the
final judgment. Over what they did, the good that they
bequeathed and the evil that they wrought, men and
women will wrangle as long as the nation that gave them
birth retains its ambitions and can keep the flame of its
conscience burning. On the hearts of all who come after
is graven a testimony which words either falsify or mar,
and from which there is and can be no appeal. Of the
Makers the nation itself is the supreme judge. Germany
or Europe may sternly reject or acclaim with enthusiasm
Bismarck the man and Bismarck's achievement, but the
Prussia and the Germany remain to which he gave himself
with a passion and a loyalty that soar beyond all the
doubts and all the praise, and the German people of the
twentieth century faced the future as his memorial.
Bismarck himself knew it and was content. 'I do not,'
he commanded when he was dying,' I do not want a lying
official epitaph. Write on my tomb,' he added, 'that I
was the faithful servant of my master, the Emperor William,
King of Prussia. ' It was the bare truth. But something
more was required, if justice was to be done. The dead
Bismarck was happy in the felicity of those who made his
grave at Friedrichsruhe. Set in the oaks and the beeches
that he loved, far from the roaring Berlin that was for Ger-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 495
many but not for him the heart of the German Empire,
was placed a simple chamber, yet massive with Prussian
strength. On the slab that marks his resting-place, beside
the grave of his wife, 'who made him what he was,' is
engraved but one word--and that is enough--' Bismarck. '
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? APPENDIX A
THE EMS DISPATCH
The texts of (a) Abeken's dispatch to Bismarck, and (b) Bismarck's
syncopated version for publication are printed in parallel columns
below. It will be observed that the. King left to Bismarck's
discretion the public communication of his message, without
sending any instructions as to the form that publication should
take, should Bismarck decide upon this step.
Abeken to Bismarck
Ems, July 13, 1870.
3'40 p. m. Bismarck's Version for Publication
His Majesty writes to me: After the news of the renuncia-
'Count Benedetti spoke to me tion of the hereditary Prince of
on the promenade, in order to Hohenzollern had been officially
demand from me, finally in a communicated to the Imperial
very importunate manner, that government of France by the
I should authorise him to tele- Royal government of Spain, the
graph at once that I bound French Ambassador further de-
myself for all future time never manded of his Majesty, the
again to give my consent if the King, at Ems, that he would
Hohenzollerns should renew authorise him to telegraph to
their candidature. I refused Paris that his Majesty, the
at last somewhat sternly, as it King, bound himself for all time
is neither right nor possible to never again to give "his consent,
undertake engagements of this should the Hohenzollerns renew
kind a tout jamais. I told him their candidature. His Majesty,
that I had as yet received no the King, thereupon decided
news, and as he was earlier in- not to receive the French Am-
formed from Paris and Madrid bassador again, and sent the
than myself, he could see clearly aide-de-camp on duty to tell
that my government had no him that his Majesty had
more interest in the matter. ' nothing further to communi-
His Majesty has since received cate to the ambassador,
a letter from Prince Charles
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? APPENDIX
497
Anthony. His Majesty, having
told Count Benedetti that he
was awaiting news from the
Prince, has decided, with refer-
ence to the above demand, on
the suggestion of Count Eulen-
berg and myself, not to receive
Count Benedetti again, but only
to let him be informed through
an aide-de-camp: 'That his
Majesty has now received from
the Prince confirmation of the
news which Benedetti had al-
ready received from Paris, and
had nothing further to say to the
ambassador. ' His Majesty leaves
it to your Excellency to decide
whether Benedetti's fresh de-
mand and its rejection should be
at once communicated to both
our ambassadors, to foreign
nations, and to the Press.
at
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? APPENDIX B
THE REINSURANCE TREATIES OF 1884 AND 1887
The nature and contents of these secret undertakings, which -form
so decisive and interesting a feature of Bismarck's policy from
1883 to his dismissal in March 1890, still remain very obscure.
The texts have never been officially or unofficially published, and
inference from scattered and contradictory statements is all that
is possible. Certain points, however, are quite clear. In 1884
Germany concluded with Russia a specific arrangement; in 1887,
presumably because the arrangement of 1884 had terminated,
Germany concluded a fresh arrangement with Russia. In 1890
the arrangement of 1887 was not renewed by Chancellor Gaprivi.
The public of Europe would probably have never known of the
existence of 'the 1887 Compact' but for Bismarck's deliberate
revelation of its existence and non-renewal in the Hambu get
NachrichUn of October 24, 1896. It is noticeable that the revela-
tion caused much excitement in Germany and a storm of indignant
criticism in Austria. It was very embarrassing to the German
government; whether it was as great a surprise to the Foreign
Office in the Ball-Platz as it obviously was to the Austrian public is
one of the points in controversy, on which precise information is
still lacking. The Austrian public mind, as a study of the Viennese
newspapers of November 1896 proves, was seriously upset, and
there was much excited comment on Bismarck's betrayal of the
Dual Alliance by the secret arrangements with Russia. But the
Austrian government maintained an official discretion and re-
served its indignation, if it felt any, for confidential communica-
tion to the Wilhelmstrasse at Berlin. Nor did the debate in the
Reichstag (November 16, 1896) add anything to our knowledge.
The official Reichsanzeiger had published (October 27) a curt note,
pronouncing the 'revelation' to be a 'violation of the most con-
fidential secrets of State which constituted a blow at the grave
interests of the Empire'; but neither the Chancellor, Prince
Hohenlohe, nor Foreign Secretary Baron Marschallv on Bieberstein,
though they spoke at considerable length in reply to the interpella-
tion of Grat Hompesch, gave any new information, except to admit
the bare fact that a compact had been made in 1887 and not re-
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? APPENDIX
499
newed in 1890. Prince Hohenlohe took refuge in the necessity of
official secrecy and reasons of State. The Foreign Secretary indeed
pointed out that a diplomacy which rested on a series of engage-
ments, possibly conflicting in their terms, was of doubtful value,
and that the worth of any single engagement was not increased by
the number of other contracts. What the precise meaning of
this cryptic utterance was, it is impossible to decide; but it clearly
was intended to convey--whether truly or not, we cannot say--
that the German Foreign Office had not docketed in its cupboard
other secret treaties of 'a reinsurance character,' together with
an assurance for the world in general and Vienna in particular,
that the German government of 1896 was, and intended to
remain, free to fulfil loyally the terms of the Dual or Triple
Alliance.
Both ministers, however, also spoke casually of 'negotiations
between 1887 and 189b. ' Negotiations with whom or for what
they did not explain, but presumably they referred to negotiations
with Russia between 1887 and 1890 for the renewal of 'the
Compact of 1887' or a similar treaty. No explanation was
offered of the reasons why Chancellor Caprivi did not renew the
Compact of 1887--e. g. was it, as Hohenlohe suggests in his Diary
(January 14, 1895, ii. 462), ' because the policy it led to was too
complicated,' or because Russia raised her terms, or because the
Emperor had embarked on a serious attempt in 1890 to bring
Great Britain into the Triple Alliance, or because ? the reinsurance'
was judged to be a betrayal of Austria? It is tempting to connect
the non-renewal in 1890 with the dismissal of Bismarck; for we
know that Bismarck's policy was regarded as a betrayal of Austria
by the Emperor and his military entourage. Another inference
is still more tempting. Hohenlohe twice (e. g. ii. 429, and 452)
succinctly states the contents of' the reinsurance' as he understood
them to be (i. e. before he became Chancellor and had free access
to confidential documents, when his silence is instructive):
'When I told him (Caprivi) that Schuvaloff had described him
as a trop honnete homme, he said that was because Bismarck had
concluded a treaty with Russia, under which we guaranteed
Russia a free hand in Bulgaria and Constantinople, while Russia
undertook to observe a neutral attitude in the Franco-GermanWar.
This treaty had lapsed when Caprivi assumed office, and he had
not renewed it, because its publication would have shattered the
Triple Alliance. I fear that Austria will not be grateful to us. '
And to the same effect (ii. 452): with the addition, 'Russia
pledged herself to remain neutral in case of a war with France,
even though Austria should lend a hand in the East-'
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? 500
BISMARCK
These passages are apparently explicit enough; in reality they
are full of difficulties. Caprivi took office in March 1890; if,
as we seem bound to assume, 'the reinsurance' was made in
November 1887, it did not lapse when Caprivi assumed office, but
ten months later. Are we to believe that 'the reinsurance'
lapsed in March 1890, i. e. that it was made in March 1887?
If so, what happened in November 1887? For if the Compact
of 1884 was renewed in the spring of 1887, what is the explanation
of the strained Russo-German relations from March to November
1887, and of the arrangement with the Tsar in that month at
Berlin ? ' The publication' would have 'shattered the Triple
Alliance' (sic)--but who was going to ' publish' it? If it was a
secret treaty, why should it be 'published'? Did Hohenlohe
intend to convey that Austria (as was probable) knew nothing
of the ' reinsurance,' but that if she learned (from Russia or whom? )
of its existence, the Triple Alliance would be shattered? Why
should 'Austria not be grateful? ' Because she had been told
(between 1890 and 1892) that she had been betrayed between
1887 and 1890, but would not be betrayed any more? And how
was ' Austria to lend a hand in the East,' detrimental to Germany?
