Besides, a nation which can be forced into such wars does
not possess the right constitution .
not possess the right constitution .
Robertson - Bismarck
.
.
By following the path
upon which she has entered, Germany is in danger of gradually
becoming dependent upon Austria, and in the end she may have to
pay with her blood and treasure for the Balkan policy of Vienna.
. . . Formerly the Triple Affiance existed as it does now, and its im-
portance was increased by the fact that Germany had a free hand,
directed it, and Europe. A crisis in Italy, a change of sovereign in
Austria or the like may shake its foundations so greatly that, in spite
of all written engagements, it will be impossible to maintain it. In
that case Germany's position would become extremely serious, for
in order not to become entirely isolated, she would be compelled
to follow Austria's policy in the Balkans without reserve. Germany
might get into the leading strings of another Power. . . .
These quotations might be indefinitely extended, but
the point is admirably clear; it is made still clearer by the
following comment on the Triple Alliance (Hamburger
Nachrichten, June 13, 1890):--
The Austro-Italian Affiance is not equally favourable. Between
Austria and Italy there are unadjusted differences, which are parti-
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? 478
BISMARCK
cularly to be found on the side of Italy, such as the anti-Austrian
aspiration of the Irredentists. . . . The maintenance of the present
relations between Austria and Italy must be the principal care of the
diplomatists, especially as, if Italy for some reason or other should
abandon the Triple Alliance, the Austrian army would be compelled
to protect the Dual Monarchy against Italy . . . by the detach-
ment of Italy, the Austro-German alliance would militarily lose so
much that its value would become very problematical . . . as long
as Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy are united in the Triple
Alliance, and as long as these three States may reckon on the assist-
ance of the English sea-power, the peace of Europe will not be
broken. We must take care that friendly relations between Austria
and Italy and between Italy and England shall be maintained.
Besides, we must see that the Triple Alliance is restricted to its
original scope, and that "it is not allowed to serve those special
interests which have nothing to do with it.
And again (May 18, 1892) :--
England's attitude towards the Triple Alliance depends not
upon the Heligoland Treaty, but on Italy. If England is opposed
to Germany, we can never reckon upon Italy's help.
In this connection, and also with reference to acute poli-
tical controversies at the time (1895) Bismarck said in reply
to an address :--
I wished to acquire Schleswig-Holstein, because unless we had
that province we could not hope to have a German fleet. . . . I
should consider it an exaggeration for Germany to compete with
the French or the English navy. However, we must be strong
enough on the sea to be able to deal with those second-rate powers
which we cannot get at by land.
In September 1897, Maximilian Harden reproduced in
his paper Die Zukunft, the following opinion from
Bismarck:--
I have never been in favour of a colonial policy of conquest similar
to that pursued by France. As far as one can see, the most import-
ant thing for Germany is a strong and reliable army, provided with
the best weapons. I am of Moltke's opinion, that we shall have to
fight on the continent of Europe for the possession of colonies.
And in one of the very latest of his pronouncements
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
(Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, December 8, 1897)
Bismarck said :--
Nothing could be more strongly opposed to Germany's interest
than to enter upon more or less daring and adventurous enterprises,
guided merely by the desire to have a finger in every pie, to flatter
the vanity of the nation, or to please the ambitions of those who
rule it. To carry on a policy of prestige would be more in accord-
ance with the French than the German character. In order to
acquire prestige, France has gone to Algiers, Tunis, Mexico, and
Madagascar. If Germany should ever follow a similar policy, she
would not promote any German interests, but would endanger the
welfare of the Empire and its position in Europe.
The reference to Weltpolitik and Weltmacht is un-
mistakable. Let it be simply noted that two years after
Bismarck's death Von der Goltz, who was not the victim
of journalistic Chauvinism but a scientific exponent of
policy, wrote :--
We must contradict the frequently expressed opinion that a war
between Germany and Great Britain is impossible . . . the
material basis of our power is large enough to enable us to destroy
the present superiority of Great Britain.
Von der Goltz only expressed what the advocates of
colonialism urged :--
The old century saw a German Europe. The new one shall see
a German world. . . . We do not require a fleet against France or
Russia. . . . We require a fleet only against England.
It is instructive to place such utterances beside those of
Bismarck in the Reichstag in 1885 and in 1889 (quoted on
page 420). The antithesis needs no comment. But if the
ex-Chancellor could fairly have said that the generation
which succeeded him had forgotten that Germany still
had to live in Europe with three or more neighbours, and
had disregarded his teaching, his principles, and his sense
of limits, the neo-Bismarckians could no less fairly retort
that they were only applying to new spheres the principles
and the methods that the master had taught were the only
successful and justifiable weapon of policy. Bismarckian
principles of statecraft and ends of policy cannot be limited
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? 480
BISMARCK
to a defined programme and then denounced as illegitimate,
because they are held to be equally applicable to all spheres
of action, in which the State is striving to secure the con-
ditions on which it wishes to live with its neighbours. If
Bismarck spent his years after 1890 in warning Germany
against the dangers inherent in the doctrine and policy he
had himself enforced, to that extent he did valuable ser-
vice. But the young generation of the new Germany, felt
by a true and inexorable logic which it had learned from
the ex-Chancellor that if a State's needs constitute its
rights, and if the realisation of those rights can only be
achieved by force, a world-empire could be made, and only
be made, by precisely the same methods as had made the
German Empire, and by none other. The State that is
the incarnation of Power ceases to lose its title to exist if
it places limitations on Power derived from principles
which are the negation of those on which it has been de-
liberately based. For power and force are, by implication,
like the sovereignty defined by the jurist, intrinsically illimit-
able and indivisible, and provide, if at all, their own law
and justification. Similarly in the warnings against the
peril for Germany of Austria's Balkanism, Bismarck was
largely responsible for the situation out of which Austrian
Balkanism was created. There were mainly two causes in
operation. The unification of Germany gave a tremen-
dous impetus to Nationalism, which found its expression
for South-Eastern Europe in the formula of ' The Balkans
for the Balkan peoples. ' But unless the Dual Monarchy
controlled those Balkan nationalities their nationalism was
dangerous, if not fatal, to the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
Either Austria must subordinate Balkan nationalism to
Austrianism or the nationalities would disintegrate the
Habsburg Empire in the interests of Balkan, and particularly
Slav, nationalism. The end of the Ottoman Empire in
Europe meant the beginning of a new phase of the Austrian
problem, and the most critical since the Ottoman Turk had
crossed the Danube. Secondly, when Bismarck thrust
Austria out of Germany, and also out of Italy, he made an
Austrian expansion south-eastwards inevitable. Previ-
ously to i860 Austria had always regarded the German
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 481
sphere as her chief concern. But after 1866, the diversion
of Austria was as essential to the maintenance of the
German Empire of 1871 as was the diversion of France or
of Russia. This is only another way of saying that when
Bismarck finally abandoned in 1859 tne programme of the
. Great Germany party, and adopted the programme of the
Small Germany party, he left unsolved the problem with
which Germany and Europe wrestled since the dissolution
in 1806 of the old Holy Roman Empire of the German
nation. Bismarck, as we have seen, convinced himself that
the Great Germany solution of the problem was not practi-
cable, because it was incompatible with a Prussian supre-
macy in a united Germany--and on that argument it is
difficult to prove that his judgment erred--but the solution
which he achieved left the Germany that he had made still
confronted with the original and permanent difficulties.
The Germans in Austria had a broad common interest
with the Germany from which they were excluded; and
the German Empire which shut the Austrian Germans
out could not, on any argument of policy, interest,
nationalism, or safety, remain indifferent to the destinies
of a German Austria. Bismarck created a safety valve in
the Dual Alliance, which linked the Habsburg and Hohen-
- zollern monarchies, and the divided Germans of the
Hohenzollern and Austrian empires in a united political
co-operation for common German ends. In reality, this
co-operation shelved rather than settled the problem, as the
sequel proved. The Central Europe that Bismarck created
was not purely Germanic. It rested not on German
nationalism, but on a German domination of a strategic
area. It included in its framework alien and suppressed ele-
ments alike in Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lorraine, Prussian
Poland, and Austrian Galicia. Above all, in Hungary and
the relations of the Magyars to the non-Magyar and non-
German races in the Dual Empire, it avowedly identified a
German with a Magyar domination. The inevitable result
was that the safety of the complex and ill-knit Austrian
Empire became essential to the German Empire. Ger-
many was confronted with the dilemma either of letting
Austria go her own independent way and thereby imperil-
b. 2 H
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? 482
BISMARCK
ling both the western and eastern fronts of a united
Germany, or of following Austria in a Balkan policy which
entangled Germany in vast issues, outside of, and antagon-
istic to, her own specific German interests. To Bismarck's
criticisms of German policy after 1890 there were not
lacking in his own day powerful counter-critics, such as
Holnstein, the silent Eminence grise of the Wilhelmstrasse,
who pointed out that when Bismarck agreed to compen-
sate Austria-Hungary with the occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina he laid a mortgage on Germany which she
could only repudiate by making Austria an open foe or
only redeem by supporting Austrian Balkanism to the
last reserves of the German army, if need be.
Nor were there lacking those who pointed out that
Bismarck's ' moderation ' in 1866 was the original and de-
cisive blunder. Two courses were open then, it was plainly
argued after Bismarck's fall. The first was to have given
the King and the soldiers carte blanche to roll Austria in the
dust and to reduce the Habsburg sovereigns practically to
the kingdom of Hungary, thereby making them the rulers
of a non-German State outside a Greater Germany, with
which an alliance, not an identity of interests, could have
naturally followed. The second was to have retained
German Austria, as before, in a reconstructed German
confederation, in which the north, the south, and German
Austria would have made a united but tripartite national
polity. Such a confederation, it was suggested, would
have kept all Germans in a single political organisation, so
strong that all the groupings outside it of non-German States
could not have affected either its stability or its capacity to
exist as a power in Europe. What prevented the establish-
ment of such a confederation was the refusal of Bismarck
to dissolve Prussia in Germany, no less than his deter-
mination to impose Prussianism on as much of Germany
as Prussian power could absorb and dominate. Hence
the conclusion that Bismarck's solution was responsible
for the difficulties that came to a head in 1890, and
never ceased to be a wasting mortgage on Germany after
Bismarck's fall.
Such criticism is not purely academic and dialectical;
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 483
however much it seems to ignore the practical difficulties
that its execution between 1862 and 1870 would have in-
volved. It emphasises the historic truth that the Habs-
burg dynasty has been the gravest obstacle to the rational
and natural satisfaction of German Nationalism, as well as
to the formation of a truly German Empire from the age
of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the age of
Bismarck. The mediatisation of the particularist dynasties
in Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Baden, and Bavaria
was unquestionably essential to the creation of a federal
and national German State; but the mediatisation of
the Habsburg dynasty was still more essential, and would
have facilitated and federalised a national German State
even more effectually than the reduction of the Guelph,
Wittelsbach, or Saxon princely houses. Had the Austrian-
Hungarian Empire after 1866 been cut into two parts, and
the German part (deprived of its royal ruler) been associ-
ated with a new and greater Germany, while the non-
German parts were left to find a new and independent
existence on nationalist lines, Europe after i860 might
well have had a happier fife. It could certainly not have
had a less happy one than the course of things since 1871
Srovided. Be that as it may, the full consequences of the
ismarckian solution of the German problem were only
working themselves out when Bismarck fell; nor can
Bismarck escape the full responsibility for those conse-
quences, simply because he warned his successors that
they were making mistakes. It is not always the heirs
to a great legacy who mismanage the property. More fre-
quently than is commonly supposed or admitted, the nature
of the property, the methods by which it has been acquired,
and the principles on which it has been administered prior
to the change of ownership impose obligations and involve
efforts, without which the inheritance itself must fall to
pieces. A generation which inherits what it has not made
by its own labours and self-sacrifice can be as reckless in the
ambition to spend as the heirs to a great estate, who have
been rocked, cradled, and dandled in the conviction that a
world they have not made exists for them, and not they for
the world. And in the case of Germany after 1890 the
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? 484
BISMARCK
heirs had been taught that to force, power, and reason of
State miracles were easy.
Bismarck's searchings of heart were by no means confined
to foreign policy. Earnestly meditating at Friedrichsruhe,
and convinced that the directors in the Reichskanzlerpalais
and at Imperial Headquarters were guilty of blunder after
blunder he diagnosed the causes of the mischief in two
plain conclusions--the royal autocracy and the complete
inability of a representative legislature to control policy.
The impotence of the Reichstag after 1890 was as con-
spicuous as the power of the imperial monarchy. In this
sphere, also, Bismarck pointed the moral very clearly. in
more than one trenchant statement.
Thus (December 12, 1891) :--
The most disquieting feature for me is that the Reichstag has
abdicated its position. We suffer everywhere from the bureaucracy
. . . If the authority of the Reichstag declines, the bonds which
hold Germany together are weakened.
And still more emphatically (July 24, 1892) :--
To strengthen the Reichstag the responsibility of ministers
should be increased . . . the Chancellor's post may be abused to
such an extent that he becomes a mere secretary. . . . When I
became Minister, the Crown was threatened by the people. . . .
Hence I strove to strengthen the Crown against Parliament. Per-
haps I went too far in that direction. We now require a balance of
power within Germany, and I believe that free criticism is indis-
pensable to the monarchy. . . . If Parliament becomes powerless,
becomes a mere tool in the hands of the government, we return to
the regime of absolutism.
And again, in a reply to an address (July 30, 1892):--
The basis of a constitutional monarchy is the co-operation of the
monarchical will with the convictions of the governed people. . . .
It is a dangerous experiment nowadays to strive after absolutism
in the centre of Europe . . . the wars which united Germany were
necessary . . . but Germany cannot conduct aggressive Cabinet
wars.
Besides, a nation which can be forced into such wars does
not possess the right constitution . . . in building up the Empire
some kind of dictatorship was necessary, but that cannot be con-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 485
sidered as a permanent feature. One's task can be completed only
when Germany possesses a powerful Parliament which embodies
our sense of unity.
Is this Saul among the prophets? The young German
of 1892 might pertinently ask, as he heard this passage:
who made the Reichstag impotent ? who refused to allow
ministerial responsibility to be established ? who made
'an aggressive Cabinet war' in 1864, in 1866, and in 1870,
and ' forced the nation into it' because it did not' possess
the right constitution'? What indications were there in
1889 that the empire autoritaire created by Bismarck was
intended by him to be a transient prelude to an empire
libiral? and finally, how could the Reichstag be made a
truly effective political organ, except by rewriting the
whole text of the Constitution imposed on Germany by
Bismarck in 1866-7, and again in 1871? Was Bismarck
suggesting in earnest that his whole work was to be undone
and the fabric of the Empire reconstructed from top to
bottom?
The royal absolutism drew from the seer of Friedrichs-
ruhe no less emphatic condemnation :--
Absolutism, he wrote in his Memoirs, would be the ideal form of
government for-a European State were not the King and his officials
as other men to whom it is not given to reign with superhuman
wisdom, insight, and justice. . . . If the King comes to any unfor-
tunate decisions, no one can judge whether they are due to his own
will or to the influences which various personalities of male and
female gender--aides-de-camp, courtiers, and political intriguers,
flatterers, chatterboxes, and tell-tales--may have upon the monarch.
In the last resort the royal signature covers everything: how it has
been obtained no one ever knows.
On such a matter no one could speak with more inti-
mate knowledge than Bismarck himself. Had he told
us exactly how he obtained the royal signature between
1862 and 1888 the dark places in Prussian, German,
and European history would be far less dark than they
are. Or did he mean that autocracy was only useful
when manipulated by a Bismarck?
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? 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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? 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.
upon which she has entered, Germany is in danger of gradually
becoming dependent upon Austria, and in the end she may have to
pay with her blood and treasure for the Balkan policy of Vienna.
. . . Formerly the Triple Affiance existed as it does now, and its im-
portance was increased by the fact that Germany had a free hand,
directed it, and Europe. A crisis in Italy, a change of sovereign in
Austria or the like may shake its foundations so greatly that, in spite
of all written engagements, it will be impossible to maintain it. In
that case Germany's position would become extremely serious, for
in order not to become entirely isolated, she would be compelled
to follow Austria's policy in the Balkans without reserve. Germany
might get into the leading strings of another Power. . . .
These quotations might be indefinitely extended, but
the point is admirably clear; it is made still clearer by the
following comment on the Triple Alliance (Hamburger
Nachrichten, June 13, 1890):--
The Austro-Italian Affiance is not equally favourable. Between
Austria and Italy there are unadjusted differences, which are parti-
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? 478
BISMARCK
cularly to be found on the side of Italy, such as the anti-Austrian
aspiration of the Irredentists. . . . The maintenance of the present
relations between Austria and Italy must be the principal care of the
diplomatists, especially as, if Italy for some reason or other should
abandon the Triple Alliance, the Austrian army would be compelled
to protect the Dual Monarchy against Italy . . . by the detach-
ment of Italy, the Austro-German alliance would militarily lose so
much that its value would become very problematical . . . as long
as Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy are united in the Triple
Alliance, and as long as these three States may reckon on the assist-
ance of the English sea-power, the peace of Europe will not be
broken. We must take care that friendly relations between Austria
and Italy and between Italy and England shall be maintained.
Besides, we must see that the Triple Alliance is restricted to its
original scope, and that "it is not allowed to serve those special
interests which have nothing to do with it.
And again (May 18, 1892) :--
England's attitude towards the Triple Alliance depends not
upon the Heligoland Treaty, but on Italy. If England is opposed
to Germany, we can never reckon upon Italy's help.
In this connection, and also with reference to acute poli-
tical controversies at the time (1895) Bismarck said in reply
to an address :--
I wished to acquire Schleswig-Holstein, because unless we had
that province we could not hope to have a German fleet. . . . I
should consider it an exaggeration for Germany to compete with
the French or the English navy. However, we must be strong
enough on the sea to be able to deal with those second-rate powers
which we cannot get at by land.
In September 1897, Maximilian Harden reproduced in
his paper Die Zukunft, the following opinion from
Bismarck:--
I have never been in favour of a colonial policy of conquest similar
to that pursued by France. As far as one can see, the most import-
ant thing for Germany is a strong and reliable army, provided with
the best weapons. I am of Moltke's opinion, that we shall have to
fight on the continent of Europe for the possession of colonies.
And in one of the very latest of his pronouncements
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
(Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten, December 8, 1897)
Bismarck said :--
Nothing could be more strongly opposed to Germany's interest
than to enter upon more or less daring and adventurous enterprises,
guided merely by the desire to have a finger in every pie, to flatter
the vanity of the nation, or to please the ambitions of those who
rule it. To carry on a policy of prestige would be more in accord-
ance with the French than the German character. In order to
acquire prestige, France has gone to Algiers, Tunis, Mexico, and
Madagascar. If Germany should ever follow a similar policy, she
would not promote any German interests, but would endanger the
welfare of the Empire and its position in Europe.
The reference to Weltpolitik and Weltmacht is un-
mistakable. Let it be simply noted that two years after
Bismarck's death Von der Goltz, who was not the victim
of journalistic Chauvinism but a scientific exponent of
policy, wrote :--
We must contradict the frequently expressed opinion that a war
between Germany and Great Britain is impossible . . . the
material basis of our power is large enough to enable us to destroy
the present superiority of Great Britain.
Von der Goltz only expressed what the advocates of
colonialism urged :--
The old century saw a German Europe. The new one shall see
a German world. . . . We do not require a fleet against France or
Russia. . . . We require a fleet only against England.
It is instructive to place such utterances beside those of
Bismarck in the Reichstag in 1885 and in 1889 (quoted on
page 420). The antithesis needs no comment. But if the
ex-Chancellor could fairly have said that the generation
which succeeded him had forgotten that Germany still
had to live in Europe with three or more neighbours, and
had disregarded his teaching, his principles, and his sense
of limits, the neo-Bismarckians could no less fairly retort
that they were only applying to new spheres the principles
and the methods that the master had taught were the only
successful and justifiable weapon of policy. Bismarckian
principles of statecraft and ends of policy cannot be limited
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? 480
BISMARCK
to a defined programme and then denounced as illegitimate,
because they are held to be equally applicable to all spheres
of action, in which the State is striving to secure the con-
ditions on which it wishes to live with its neighbours. If
Bismarck spent his years after 1890 in warning Germany
against the dangers inherent in the doctrine and policy he
had himself enforced, to that extent he did valuable ser-
vice. But the young generation of the new Germany, felt
by a true and inexorable logic which it had learned from
the ex-Chancellor that if a State's needs constitute its
rights, and if the realisation of those rights can only be
achieved by force, a world-empire could be made, and only
be made, by precisely the same methods as had made the
German Empire, and by none other. The State that is
the incarnation of Power ceases to lose its title to exist if
it places limitations on Power derived from principles
which are the negation of those on which it has been de-
liberately based. For power and force are, by implication,
like the sovereignty defined by the jurist, intrinsically illimit-
able and indivisible, and provide, if at all, their own law
and justification. Similarly in the warnings against the
peril for Germany of Austria's Balkanism, Bismarck was
largely responsible for the situation out of which Austrian
Balkanism was created. There were mainly two causes in
operation. The unification of Germany gave a tremen-
dous impetus to Nationalism, which found its expression
for South-Eastern Europe in the formula of ' The Balkans
for the Balkan peoples. ' But unless the Dual Monarchy
controlled those Balkan nationalities their nationalism was
dangerous, if not fatal, to the Austria-Hungarian Empire.
Either Austria must subordinate Balkan nationalism to
Austrianism or the nationalities would disintegrate the
Habsburg Empire in the interests of Balkan, and particularly
Slav, nationalism. The end of the Ottoman Empire in
Europe meant the beginning of a new phase of the Austrian
problem, and the most critical since the Ottoman Turk had
crossed the Danube. Secondly, when Bismarck thrust
Austria out of Germany, and also out of Italy, he made an
Austrian expansion south-eastwards inevitable. Previ-
ously to i860 Austria had always regarded the German
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 481
sphere as her chief concern. But after 1866, the diversion
of Austria was as essential to the maintenance of the
German Empire of 1871 as was the diversion of France or
of Russia. This is only another way of saying that when
Bismarck finally abandoned in 1859 tne programme of the
. Great Germany party, and adopted the programme of the
Small Germany party, he left unsolved the problem with
which Germany and Europe wrestled since the dissolution
in 1806 of the old Holy Roman Empire of the German
nation. Bismarck, as we have seen, convinced himself that
the Great Germany solution of the problem was not practi-
cable, because it was incompatible with a Prussian supre-
macy in a united Germany--and on that argument it is
difficult to prove that his judgment erred--but the solution
which he achieved left the Germany that he had made still
confronted with the original and permanent difficulties.
The Germans in Austria had a broad common interest
with the Germany from which they were excluded; and
the German Empire which shut the Austrian Germans
out could not, on any argument of policy, interest,
nationalism, or safety, remain indifferent to the destinies
of a German Austria. Bismarck created a safety valve in
the Dual Alliance, which linked the Habsburg and Hohen-
- zollern monarchies, and the divided Germans of the
Hohenzollern and Austrian empires in a united political
co-operation for common German ends. In reality, this
co-operation shelved rather than settled the problem, as the
sequel proved. The Central Europe that Bismarck created
was not purely Germanic. It rested not on German
nationalism, but on a German domination of a strategic
area. It included in its framework alien and suppressed ele-
ments alike in Schleswig-Holstein, Alsace-Lorraine, Prussian
Poland, and Austrian Galicia. Above all, in Hungary and
the relations of the Magyars to the non-Magyar and non-
German races in the Dual Empire, it avowedly identified a
German with a Magyar domination. The inevitable result
was that the safety of the complex and ill-knit Austrian
Empire became essential to the German Empire. Ger-
many was confronted with the dilemma either of letting
Austria go her own independent way and thereby imperil-
b. 2 H
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? 482
BISMARCK
ling both the western and eastern fronts of a united
Germany, or of following Austria in a Balkan policy which
entangled Germany in vast issues, outside of, and antagon-
istic to, her own specific German interests. To Bismarck's
criticisms of German policy after 1890 there were not
lacking in his own day powerful counter-critics, such as
Holnstein, the silent Eminence grise of the Wilhelmstrasse,
who pointed out that when Bismarck agreed to compen-
sate Austria-Hungary with the occupation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina he laid a mortgage on Germany which she
could only repudiate by making Austria an open foe or
only redeem by supporting Austrian Balkanism to the
last reserves of the German army, if need be.
Nor were there lacking those who pointed out that
Bismarck's ' moderation ' in 1866 was the original and de-
cisive blunder. Two courses were open then, it was plainly
argued after Bismarck's fall. The first was to have given
the King and the soldiers carte blanche to roll Austria in the
dust and to reduce the Habsburg sovereigns practically to
the kingdom of Hungary, thereby making them the rulers
of a non-German State outside a Greater Germany, with
which an alliance, not an identity of interests, could have
naturally followed. The second was to have retained
German Austria, as before, in a reconstructed German
confederation, in which the north, the south, and German
Austria would have made a united but tripartite national
polity. Such a confederation, it was suggested, would
have kept all Germans in a single political organisation, so
strong that all the groupings outside it of non-German States
could not have affected either its stability or its capacity to
exist as a power in Europe. What prevented the establish-
ment of such a confederation was the refusal of Bismarck
to dissolve Prussia in Germany, no less than his deter-
mination to impose Prussianism on as much of Germany
as Prussian power could absorb and dominate. Hence
the conclusion that Bismarck's solution was responsible
for the difficulties that came to a head in 1890, and
never ceased to be a wasting mortgage on Germany after
Bismarck's fall.
Such criticism is not purely academic and dialectical;
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 483
however much it seems to ignore the practical difficulties
that its execution between 1862 and 1870 would have in-
volved. It emphasises the historic truth that the Habs-
burg dynasty has been the gravest obstacle to the rational
and natural satisfaction of German Nationalism, as well as
to the formation of a truly German Empire from the age
of the Renaissance and the Reformation to the age of
Bismarck. The mediatisation of the particularist dynasties
in Hanover, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Baden, and Bavaria
was unquestionably essential to the creation of a federal
and national German State; but the mediatisation of
the Habsburg dynasty was still more essential, and would
have facilitated and federalised a national German State
even more effectually than the reduction of the Guelph,
Wittelsbach, or Saxon princely houses. Had the Austrian-
Hungarian Empire after 1866 been cut into two parts, and
the German part (deprived of its royal ruler) been associ-
ated with a new and greater Germany, while the non-
German parts were left to find a new and independent
existence on nationalist lines, Europe after i860 might
well have had a happier fife. It could certainly not have
had a less happy one than the course of things since 1871
Srovided. Be that as it may, the full consequences of the
ismarckian solution of the German problem were only
working themselves out when Bismarck fell; nor can
Bismarck escape the full responsibility for those conse-
quences, simply because he warned his successors that
they were making mistakes. It is not always the heirs
to a great legacy who mismanage the property. More fre-
quently than is commonly supposed or admitted, the nature
of the property, the methods by which it has been acquired,
and the principles on which it has been administered prior
to the change of ownership impose obligations and involve
efforts, without which the inheritance itself must fall to
pieces. A generation which inherits what it has not made
by its own labours and self-sacrifice can be as reckless in the
ambition to spend as the heirs to a great estate, who have
been rocked, cradled, and dandled in the conviction that a
world they have not made exists for them, and not they for
the world. And in the case of Germany after 1890 the
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? 484
BISMARCK
heirs had been taught that to force, power, and reason of
State miracles were easy.
Bismarck's searchings of heart were by no means confined
to foreign policy. Earnestly meditating at Friedrichsruhe,
and convinced that the directors in the Reichskanzlerpalais
and at Imperial Headquarters were guilty of blunder after
blunder he diagnosed the causes of the mischief in two
plain conclusions--the royal autocracy and the complete
inability of a representative legislature to control policy.
The impotence of the Reichstag after 1890 was as con-
spicuous as the power of the imperial monarchy. In this
sphere, also, Bismarck pointed the moral very clearly. in
more than one trenchant statement.
Thus (December 12, 1891) :--
The most disquieting feature for me is that the Reichstag has
abdicated its position. We suffer everywhere from the bureaucracy
. . . If the authority of the Reichstag declines, the bonds which
hold Germany together are weakened.
And still more emphatically (July 24, 1892) :--
To strengthen the Reichstag the responsibility of ministers
should be increased . . . the Chancellor's post may be abused to
such an extent that he becomes a mere secretary. . . . When I
became Minister, the Crown was threatened by the people. . . .
Hence I strove to strengthen the Crown against Parliament. Per-
haps I went too far in that direction. We now require a balance of
power within Germany, and I believe that free criticism is indis-
pensable to the monarchy. . . . If Parliament becomes powerless,
becomes a mere tool in the hands of the government, we return to
the regime of absolutism.
And again, in a reply to an address (July 30, 1892):--
The basis of a constitutional monarchy is the co-operation of the
monarchical will with the convictions of the governed people. . . .
It is a dangerous experiment nowadays to strive after absolutism
in the centre of Europe . . . the wars which united Germany were
necessary . . . but Germany cannot conduct aggressive Cabinet
wars.
Besides, a nation which can be forced into such wars does
not possess the right constitution . . . in building up the Empire
some kind of dictatorship was necessary, but that cannot be con-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 485
sidered as a permanent feature. One's task can be completed only
when Germany possesses a powerful Parliament which embodies
our sense of unity.
Is this Saul among the prophets? The young German
of 1892 might pertinently ask, as he heard this passage:
who made the Reichstag impotent ? who refused to allow
ministerial responsibility to be established ? who made
'an aggressive Cabinet war' in 1864, in 1866, and in 1870,
and ' forced the nation into it' because it did not' possess
the right constitution'? What indications were there in
1889 that the empire autoritaire created by Bismarck was
intended by him to be a transient prelude to an empire
libiral? and finally, how could the Reichstag be made a
truly effective political organ, except by rewriting the
whole text of the Constitution imposed on Germany by
Bismarck in 1866-7, and again in 1871? Was Bismarck
suggesting in earnest that his whole work was to be undone
and the fabric of the Empire reconstructed from top to
bottom?
The royal absolutism drew from the seer of Friedrichs-
ruhe no less emphatic condemnation :--
Absolutism, he wrote in his Memoirs, would be the ideal form of
government for-a European State were not the King and his officials
as other men to whom it is not given to reign with superhuman
wisdom, insight, and justice. . . . If the King comes to any unfor-
tunate decisions, no one can judge whether they are due to his own
will or to the influences which various personalities of male and
female gender--aides-de-camp, courtiers, and political intriguers,
flatterers, chatterboxes, and tell-tales--may have upon the monarch.
In the last resort the royal signature covers everything: how it has
been obtained no one ever knows.
On such a matter no one could speak with more inti-
mate knowledge than Bismarck himself. Had he told
us exactly how he obtained the royal signature between
1862 and 1888 the dark places in Prussian, German,
and European history would be far less dark than they
are. Or did he mean that autocracy was only useful
when manipulated by a Bismarck?
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Sir Charles Dilke, who visited Friedrichsruhe, has re-
corded :--
As Bismarck mellowed with his pipes he told me that, though he
was a high Tory, he had come to see the ills of absolutism, which
to work well required the King to be an angel. 'Now,' he said,
'kings even when good have women round them, who, even if
queens, govern them to their personal ends. '
And to Dilke he made another ' confession ' on the same
point:--
People look on me as a monarchist. Were it all to come over
again I would be republican and democrat; the rule of kings is the
rule of women; the bad women are bad and the good are worse.
Allowance must be made for the bitterness of an old man,
reflecting on the experience of a lifetime, who felt with
justice that not once, but a dozen times, when it was in his
power to have converted the Hohenzollern Crown into a
constitutional and limited monarchy, he had resolutely
fought to preserve intact the personal government and pre-
rogatives of the Prussian Crown--and the power that he
had preserved had been used to dismiss him and to reverse
his policy. The 'confession,' apart from that, has the
ring of the great Eldon's similar avowal. Unbending and
stern Tory as he had been, Eldon avowed, in the old age
that saw the triumphant passage of the Reform Act and
the renaissance of Radicalism, that had he to begin all over
again he would start as an ' Agitator. '
One other judgment of Bismarck's must find a place, in
virtue of its penetrating intuition: 'Cavour, Crispi, even
Kriiger,' he told Dilke, ' were greater than myself. I had
the State and the army behind me; these men had
nothing. ' The fact emphasised is indisputable; but had
Bismarck explained how his predecessors in Prussia no
less than himself had the State and the army behind them
and had achieved nothing, he would have destroyed the
truth of the conclusion. It was not the Prussian State nor
the Prussian army, nor even the Prussian monarchy that
made Bismarck's achievement what it was. If political
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 487
genius could be so easily resolved into the instruments that
it employs, history would shed not only its mysteries and
riddles but all its power to inspire, to enthrall, and to
instruct.
It is neither possible nor desirable here to embark further
on the controversy that has divided Germany since
Bismarck's death in 1898--the alluring question whether
his successors deliberately departed from his policy, or
whether their course from 1898 to 1914 was simply the
logical and inevitable development of Bismarck's work.
The issues raised are too complicated and too vast.
Even if the material and the perspective for framing an
impartial judgment were available, a later generation will
be able more dispassionately and with more utility to
decide; and a biographical study of statesmanship, that
already belongs to the past, is obliged to avoid the danger
of being warped by the introduction of arguments and
controversies, however fascinating, urgent, and important,
yet demonstrably irrelevant and misleading. So much will
fairly be conceded by all students whether of Bismarck him-
self alone or of German policy under Caprivi, Hohenlohe,
Bulow, and Bethmann-Hollweg. Of Bismarck the man and
the statesman it is possible to write sine ira et studio. It is
no less legitimate to conclude that with his fall from power
a clearly marked epoch was closed, and to express the con-
fident judgment that the historian of the future will see in
the year 1890 the end of a period, as unmistakably as we
can see now that with Richelieu, with Walpole, with
Frederick the Great, and with Metternich, a system, and
not merely a man, definitely ended. What the character-
istics of that system were and how inextricably they were
interwoven with the personality and principles of the man
it has been the purpose of this biographical study to set
forth. It is unnecessary to compile a laboured coda from
characteristics sufficiently emphasised in the preceding
pages. The import, even the value, of Bismarck's achieve-
ment will be very variously interpreted and judged by
different observers; nor is it possible for the critic, who
does not belong to Bismarck's race and state, completely to
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BISMARCK
assimilate the point of view with which the German mind
is saturated. By Europe outside Germany, Bismarck will
always be viewed from an angle of vision different from that
of the German. The unification of Germany, the establish-
ment of a German hegemony on the Continent, the Central
Europe, the armed peace imposed on and by Nationalism
in arms, the defeat of Liberalism and of democratic self-
government, the doctrine of the State as the representative
and incarnation of Might and Force, the principle that
policy is the expression of a national will for Power to
which all methods are legitimate, provided that they
achieve their end at a minimum of cost, the gospel that war
is an inevitable and necessary part of the struggle for exist-
ence, and that (in Moltke's famous words) the ideal of
universal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful dream,
the principle that Reason of State transcends the code of
ethics, applicable in the social intercourse of individual
with individual--all these and many other characteristics
of the Bismarckian system and the Bismarckian inter-
pretation of life and its values lie embedded in the period
of history which Bismarck made his own for the Germany
and the Europe in which he lived. 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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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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acter and spirit than to sum up an epoch in a single per-
sonality, and thereby create an age in history.
