A volume could be compiled from the
passages in the Chancellor's speeches devoted to denun-
ciations of the party spirit, the decay of patriotism, and the
wrecking character of the parties represented in the Reichs-
tag.
passages in the Chancellor's speeches devoted to denun-
ciations of the party spirit, the decay of patriotism, and the
wrecking character of the parties represented in the Reichs-
tag.
Robertson - Bismarck
The Empire, the System, and the Chancellor, 1871-1878
The seven months from July 1870 to January 1871 regis-
tered five events of capital importance: the Declaration of
Papal Infallibility (July 18), the virtual establishment of the
Third Republic in France (September 4), the unification
of Italy by the entry of the Italian troops into Rome
(September 20), the fall of the Temporal Power of the
Papacy, and the establishment of the unified German
Empire (January 18, 1871). Of these five the two most
momentous in their wide-world significance were the
Declaration of Papal Infallibility and the abolition of the
Temporal Power of the Papacy.
With January 18, 1871, secular Europe entered on the
age of Bismarck. 'Germany in the Age of Bismarck ' was
transformed into 'Europe in the Age of Bismarck,' the
Imperial Chancellor of the new German Empire. From
1871 to 1890 Bismarck was the transcendent figure in Euro-
pean politics, with an influence akin to, but far surpassing,
the ascendency of Metternich from 1815 to 1848. Metter-
nich had equals and rivals who contested his supremacy
and defeated his policy--Castlereagh, Canning, Palmerston,
Nicholas 1. Bismarck did not meet a British Canning nor
a Russian Nicholas. Lord Odo Russell (Lord Ampthill),
who weighed his words, wrote from Berlin in 1880: 'At
St. Petersburg Bismarck's word is gospel, as well as at Paris
and Rome, where his sayings inspire respect, and his silences
apprehension. ' And Lord Odo might have said the same
with equal truth of Vienna, Madrid, and Constantinople.
In 1872 Lord Odo had informed our Foreign Office that
Bismarck's policy was 'the supremacy of Germany in
B. T
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BISMARCK
Europe and of the German race in the world. ' When
Bismarck fell in 1890 the author and upholder of a definite
political system ended his career. Every one asked the
question: Could the system continue without a Bismarck?
Was a new system about to take its place, and, if so, what?
Two broad conditions after 1871 materially assisted
Bismarck's policy and German supremacy--the weakness
and disorganisation of most of the European States, and
the character of the Germany of which he was the Chan-
cellor. Although her recovery from the collapse of 1870
was astonishingly rapid, France had not securely found her-
self when Bismarck fell; and her internal history during
his chancellorship is a chronicle of crises, from the struggle
with the Commune to the suicide of Boulanger on the
grave of his mistress at Brussels (1891). These were sur-
mounted, it is true, but with great difficulty. The Dual
Empire of Austria-Hungary was a continuous prey to the
complications that had produced the Compromise of 1867,
and the consequences of that very provisional settlement.
Russia was swayed successively by the ideas underlying the
reform policy of Alexander n. , a reversion to the absolutism
of Nicholas 1. , Pan-Slavism, the rise of Nihilism, and the
conflicting claims of the Near and the Far East. The
closer that Russian policy, within or without the Empire,
in this epoch is studied, the stronger stands out the lack
of continuity and of insight, due to undeveloped resources,
administrative disorganisation, internal and immature fer-
mentation, and contradictory conceptions and indecision in
the successive directors of the autocracy. Italy, ambitious
to be a Great Power at a stroke, but forgetting that though
salvation could not come without unification, it would not
come by unification alone, wrestled ceaselessly with
poverty, and the terrible consequences, moral, political,
and intellectual, of three centuries of denationalisation and
misgovernment. And Italy suffered more than any other
European State from the inevitable opposition that the
Quirinal found in the Vatican.
Yet Italy, like France, was slowly finding herself, as she
groped her way through the valleys of disillusionment and
indecision. Spain was in no position to mark out an
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
independent orbit of policy, and the gravitation of Madrid
to the German system, which would have been accelerated
had Leopold of Hohenzollern crossed the Pyrenees in 1870,
was steadily accentuated between 1870 and 1890. The
Ottoman Empire and the Balkans were the Ottoman
Empire and the Balkans, and they provided in the evolution
of things many opportunities that Bismarck seized with a
cautious but relentless grip.
The one exception to the continental States was Great
Britain. Men of British speech analysing their politics
with a microscope, and forgetting the telescope and per-
spective so essential to sane and long views, are prone to
discover in these twenty years of British development
from 1870 to 1890 either nothing but the repellent scuffle
of parochial parties or an expansion of imperialism in
which the insular record is an irritating blot. The critical
function of history, however, like the critical function of
literature, is not summed up in the scheduling and auditing
of mistakes. Mistakes there were in plenty, but the connec-
tion between the external' expansion of England ' and the
internal development was intimate, vital, and decisive.
The Empire that was being expanded and consolidated
after 1870 rested securely, but not without many violent
controversies, within and without the island, on responsible
representative self-government for the heart of the system:
and from that heart it could radiate in time slowly and
surely to every part. It might well have been otherwise.
There were not lacking influential voices within, respond-
ing to the powerful influences without, that demanded a
different course leading to a very different result. Great
Britain did not altogether escape the hypnotism of Bis-
marckian Europe. But the broad fact remains that she
deliberately continued to toil up the steep and stony stairs
of representative self-government. Though she did not
recognise the full significance at the time, Great Britain
preserved and strengthened a polity, an ideal, and an
Imperial State that were the antithesis in every respect
of the German Empire. They were also the negation of
the ultimate efficacy and value of German principles.
Great Britain in the nineteenth, thus accomplished a
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BISMARCK
work no less momentous than her achievement in the
seventeenth, century. From 1603 to 1688 she cut herself
adrift from the tremendous swing of tendencies on the
Continent. From 1870 onwards she refused to surrender
or betray the principles which had given her a unique
position. The implicit antagonism of the "British State
to the monarchies of the Continent runs like a red thread
through the diplomacy of Bismarck. Bismarck recognised
the danger, but failed to exorcise or destroy it.
In comparison with Russia, France, Italy, Austria-
Hungary, and Spain, and despite the severity of her in-
ternal struggles, Germany revealed a continuity of foreign
policy clean-cut and self-conscious alike in principles and
methods, together with an executive and an administrative
stability, which contributed enormously to the riveting
of a German supremacy on the Continent. The con-
tinuity and stability were not wholly due to Bismarck.
The military, which preceded the political, ascendency of
Prussia was laid on the granite, hewn and dressed by the
German mind and German science. Bismarck had for
his instrument in completing the political supremacy,
which came last, a nation convinced that national like
individual success must be won by sacrifice and self-
discipline. We may both detest and admire the achieve-
ment of Germany, but it is only ignorance that fails to
recognise the solidity of work on which German ascend-
ency was based, and the futility of impeaching it except
by a superiority in toil, concentrated purpose, and sacrifice.
In 1871 the grand lines of German unification and a new
State-system, adjusted to the supremacy of a German
Central Europe, were roughly made, but the mould required
to be filled and adapted to use. Time and peace were the
two essential requirements, which the Chancellor must
provide. Foreign policy could provide peace--home
policy must see that the time was fully employed. When
Bismarck described himself as a Friedensfanatiker--a
fanatic for peace--he was not so far wrong. But it was
not peace in and for itself that Bismarck valued; it was
peace imposed by the armed strength of the Empire, a peace
by which Germany would develop every quality and char-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 293
acteristic that established the State as Power, carrying out
a policy the criterion of which was superiority in force.
Between 1870 and 1890 Bismarck was not converted to the
beauty and rationality of pacificism. Quite the contrary.
The last of his great speeches, February 6, 1888, was a pas-
sionate plea for an invincible German army as the arbiter
in international disputes; his theory of international
relations assumed that fear, greed, and jealousy were the
main motives of international life, and that a sharp sword
was the true weapon of policy; and the whole argument
was a coda built up from the leading themes that his state-
craft had continuously exemplified since 1862.
Bismarck returned to Berlin on March 9, and took part
on June 16 in the triumphal entry of the victorious army.
Between March 7 and May 10 the Chancellor's main task
had been to translate the Preliminaries of Versailles into
the definitive Treaty of Frankfurt. On March 21 the
Emperor had opened in state the first Reichstag of United
Germany, to which the new Constitution was submitted.
Bismarck might affect indifference whether the titles of
Empire (Reich) or League {Bund) was to be assigned to the
new polity, but at Versailles he had correctly maintained
that the imperial title ' made for unity and centralisation,'
and that' in" the term Praesidium lay an abstraction, in the
word "Emperor" a powerful coercive force'--and the
sequel proved that he was right. Exception was taken in
debate, more particularly to four points: the concessions
to Bavaria emphasized by the militarists; the virtual veto
vested in Prussia (objected to by the Southern States), since
rejection by fourteen votes of the Federal Council vetoed all
changes in the Constitution, and Prussia had seventeen votes
out of a total of fifty-eight; the futility of the new Com-
mittee of the Bundesrat on Foreign Affairs (from which
Prussia was excluded); and the requirement that for any
but a 'defensive war' the consent of the Federal Council
must be added to the imperial declaration. The reply to
these criticisms was given in the Reichstag; the concessions
to Bavaria rested on a treaty ratified by Bavaria, and it was
too late at this stage to impugn its validity or its terms;
the military convention was more formal than real, since
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BISMARCK
the Bavarian army would be organised in peace on the
Prussian model and would pass under the imperial
supreme command in war; the Foreign Affairs Committee
was a decorative luxury (as a matter of fact it has only met
four times, in 1875,1879, 1900, and 1910, and its influence
on foreign policy has been absolutely nit); the negative
veto of Prussia was an inevitable tribute to her complete
predominance in Germany, based on her contribution to
the Empire of from one-half to two-thirds of the total
wealth, area, and population; and finally, it was argued
with delightful naivete and prescience that Germany
would never wage an 'offensive' war, since the Foreign
Office would always see to it that a war was, in name at
least, 'defensive. '
The incorporation of Alsace and Lorraine provided an
interesting problem. The anti-German feeling of the
population foreshadowed years of hostility and alienation;
for, whatever ardent German historians and publicists
wrote about the essentially German character of the
annexed provinces, no one in Germany was ignorant that
a plebiscite would have resulted in an oveiwhelrning
majority against the forcible dismemberment from France
and annexation to Germany. 'French we are,' said the
Alsatians and Lorrainers in the Assembly of Bordeaux,
'and French we will remain. ' Treitschke spoke for
German Nationalism when he asserted that' we Germans
know better what is good for Alsace than the unhappy
people themselves . . . we will give them back their
identity against their will . . . we invoke the men of the
past against the present. ' But how was incorporation to
be carried out? Annexation to Prussia would have stirred
fierce jealousy, and would have planted Prussia on the
flank of Bavaria, Wiirttemberg, and Baden. Annexation
to any others of the federated States was open to grave
and obvious objections. The military chiefs and Bismarck
were united in fearing the tenderer heart of the south in
dealing with ' the unhappy people. ' It was dangerous to
split the annexed provinces and divide them amongst the
frontier States which might subsequently compete in the
severity of their coercion or the lenity of their humanity.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 295
The method of 'giving the Alsatians back their lost
identity' was therefore found in constituting the two
provinces an Imperial Territory (Reichsland), placed, until
January I, 1874, under an administrative dictatorship,
confided to the Emperor, whose legislative power was to
be exercised with the assent of the Federal Council. At
that date the Lorrainers and Alsatians were to receive
such a degree of 'forced freedom' as they merited or
circumstances justified.
This solution of the problem satisfied Bismarck, for it
was practically his own. Alsace and Lorraine under Prus-
sian administration were safe, and the treatment meted
out would be more a matter of policy than of justice, or
the ' English cant term ' of ' humanity ' and ' civilisation. '
The Reichsland would be a convenient whipping-boy for
the future delinquencies of France. The strategic value of
the annexation justified a multitude of administrative sins to
come. The Prussian staff accordingly set to work at once
to construct strategic railways and fortifications based on
Metz; -it contemplated a future invasion, pivoting on
the fortress won by Bazaine's military incompetence and
political treachery; and Metz as the crow flies is only one
hundred and sixty miles from Paris. The retention of an
unwilling Alsace and Lorraine was an irrefragable argu-
ment for keeping the new Empire armed to the teeth.
The use that Bismarck made of a French war of revenge
after 1871 is one of the most instructive episodes in his
policy; for when French feeling flagged, if German
policy required it, he invariably lashed French patriotism
into frontier incidents by a dose of severity to the
Reichsland.
Most Germans in 1871 undoubtedly believed that a few
years of German rule would make Alsace and Lorraine as con-
tented as Bavaria. The widespread belief in the magic of
their culture was so strong that, when the magic completely
failed, they could only explain the failure by the assump-
tion that the Latin, like the Polish race, was cursed with
a treble dose of original sin. If it be true that anything
can be done with bayonets except to sit on them, it is no
less true that the forcible imposition of an alien civilisation,
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BISMARCK
even if it be superior, can never succeed when the subjects
of the imposition can immunise themselves by anti-toxins
from an antagonistic and living civilisation at their doors.
The extirpation of France might in time have enabled a
purely German Alsace and Lorraine to grow up, as the
extirpation of Russian and Austrian Poland might have
Germanised the province of Posen. The magic of German
culture in Alsace and Lorraine was defeated by the
counter-magic from across the frontiers of a France that
after 1871 renewed the genius of the French mind in a
marvellous renaissance. Germany was placed in a dis-
agreeable dilemma. Justice to the annexed simply widened
the door by which French influence entered; injustice
strengthened the hold of the old allegiance.
Bismarck, probably, never entertained the illusions of
many of his nobler compatriots. He had not annexed
Alsace and Lorraine to convert good Frenchmen into bad
Germans. He accepted the historic argument of an
'unredeemed Germany' because it was a force in Ger-
many that it was dangerous to ignore and useful to exploit.
Alsace and Lorraine were essential to complete the
unified Germany that was to make a Central Europe the
throne of German hegemony. Without Alsace and Lor-
raine the Rhine was not secure, nor was France reduced to
the subordination that German Centralism required. The
stubbornness of Alsace and Lorraine probably did not
surprise him; it certainly neither weakened nor strength-
ened his reasons for the policy he subsequently pursued.
Just as Prussian Poland was an absolute necessity to the
position of Germany in the east, so Alsace and Lorraine
were a consummation of Germany's position in the west.
And if the inhabitants of- both territories were so stiff-
necked as to refuse to recognise that Germany's necessities
were Germany's law of existence and justification, so much
the worse for them. The State that was Power could not,
without denying the validity of its own title-deeds, admit
the validity of the title-deeds pleaded by Alsatian or Pole.
Might preceded right, and national safety outweighed all
sentiment. 'You are not a people,' Bismarck told the
Polish deputies to the Reichstag of 1871, 'you do not
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 297
represent a people; you have not got a people behind you;
you have nothing behind you but your illusions and
fictions. ' The same reply was in substance given to the
Danes in Schleswig as to the Alsatians and Lorrainers. 1
The force of nationality was in Bismarck's eyes' an illusion
and a fiction' unless it was backed by a material power
strong enough to enforce its claims. German Nationalism
had produced 1848 and *i 870. French Nationalism had
failed to save Alsace, and would no less fail to recover it.
Another remark of Bismarck's (April 19) in the consti-
tutional debates summed up a very significant view: 'I
see,' he said,' in the Federal Council (Bundesrat) a kind of
palladium for our future, a grand guarantee for the future
of Germany. Do not touch it. ' The Reichstag was not
allowed to 'touch it. ' And the Imperial Constitution,
ratified by the Reichstag, was simply a replica of the Consti-
modifications as were required to admit the south, practi-
cally on the same terms that the Northern States had
accepted in 1867. With that constitution before us, and
Bismarck's continuous refusal to admit the slightest modi-
fication that would facilitate ministerial responsibility, it
is astonishing to read, on Lord Odo Russell's authority,
that ' on more than one occasion Prince Bismarck com-
plained (to the British ambassador) of his imperial master
for resisting the introduction of a system of administration
under a responsible Premier, as in England, which he,
Prince Bismarck, considered the best method of developing
the education of the Germans, and teaching them the art
of self-government. '--(Life of Lord Granville, ii. 113. )
There is no reason to suppose that Lord Odo believed
what Bismarck said, but the mendacity of the confession
is very characteristic. When, in 1877, Bismarck had an
opportunity of introducing 'a system of administration
1 The clause in the Treaty of Prague (October 5,1866) which provided that
'the populations of the districts of the north of Schleswig shall be reunited to
Denmark, if they express the desire by a free vote,' was not carried out between
1867 and 1879, and m 1*79 ** was expunged, with the consent of Austria,
from the Treaty. It had served its purpose in 1866--to deceive Napoleon and
Europe. Prussia had never intended to put it into execution, and Denmark
was not able to compel her. The rest of Europe, not being a party to the
Treaty, could only note this violation of a solemn pledge.
tution of the North
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BISMARCK
under a responsible Premier, as in England,' he showed
what he really thought of such a system. And the elaborate
argument in the Memoirs is the best refutation by Bismarck
himself of this amazing utterance to Lord Ampthill.
The results of the general election for the Reichstag
conclusively revealed the distribution of political opinion
with which Bismarck had to reckon in the next eight years.
The National Liberals, numbering 114 out of 382 members,
were the strongest party; Conservatives of various shades
made another hundred votes; a new party--the Centre
leadership of Windthorst, could reckon on sixty votes; the
remaining hundred members were divided between the
old Progressive Radical Party (Forts chritts-Partei), the
South GermanPopular Tarty (Deutsche Folks-Partei), under
the leadership of Richter, and the handful of Guelphs, Poles,
and Social Democrats (2). The inveterate tendency of
German parties to split up and re-label their organisations
makes the history of parties very confusing. This was
partly due to the political impotence of the Reichstag as
a government-making organ; partly to the continuance of
the deep-grained Particularism which gave to local claims
a paramount importance; partly to the inexperience of the
German nation in political self-government which always
fosters a group-system as distinct from a party-system;
and partly to the impact of new categories of thought in
collision with the old traditions and names.
From 1871 to his fall Bismarck was confronted in the
Reichstag with opposition and criticism, always strong
and often bitter.
A volume could be compiled from the
passages in the Chancellor's speeches devoted to denun-
ciations of the party spirit, the decay of patriotism, and the
wrecking character of the parties represented in the Reichs-
tag. The Chancellor was never weary of dilating on his
own freedom from party partisanship, his single-minded
fidelity to one principle--the welfare and interest of a
unified Germany--and his unbroken record of party pre-
judice subordinated to the public good. Bismarck's
tenacity of purpose is beyond challenge; but, dispassion-
ately considered, his claim amounts to nothing more than
-formed from the Catholics
under the
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 299
a sincere conviction that the policy and measures he advo-
cated were, and that the policy and measures of his
opponents were not, identical with the best interests of
Germany and Prussia as he conceived them. For much
of the bitterness in debate Bismarck was himself respon-
sible. He said of Windthorst that his oratory was not
oil but vitriol on an open wound; but as a debater his own
vivid phrase could work like a fret-saw on raw flesh, and he
was a master of the provocative lash and the studied insult.
Above all, he lacked the sense of gratitude. 'You know,'
he confessed to his wife, ' that my capacity for recognising
services is not very large ' (November 17, 1870). It was
painfully true. Colleagues, such as Delbruck, Biilow,
Camphausen, Stephan, Falk, to whom he owed an un-
stinted devotion to duty; opponents such as Bennigsen,
Miquel, Lasker, Forckenbeck, Richter, Windthorst, and
Bebel, to whose criticism many of the Chancellor's most
celebrated legislative achievements owed a large portion of
their success, were usually dismissed, not with faint praise,
but an ugly reminder of their weakest points. Bismarck
could be guilty of incredible pettiness and vindictiveness. 1
And outside the Reichstag the journalist hacks were in the
pay of the Chancery Press Bureau to import, at command,
into the discussion of home or foreign politics the temper,
tone, and insinuations of the gutter and the blackmailer.
It is impossible to acquit the Imperial Chancellor of
frequently having poisoned the wells on the purity of
which the dignity and decency of public life in Germany
depended.
Bismarck's theory of government through, and not by,
a Parliament was really very simple. It was based on the
Prussian tradition in which he was born and bred. The
initiative in legislation, as in policy and administration, was
the prerogative of the Crown. The King in Prussia
weighed the needs of his country and devised appropriate
remedies, with the advice of ministers responsible solely to
himself. In the Empire, the functions of the Prussian
1 Witness, for example, the disgraceful refusal of the Chancellor in 1884 to
communicate a message of condolence from Congress to the Reichstag on the
death of Lasker at New York, on the ground that the dead Liberal leader had
criticised Bismarck and the Bismarckian system in a hostile spirit.
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BISMARCK
Crown were allotted to the Federal Council, which was a
syndicate of the federated governments. The Federal
Chancellor, who was also Minister-President of Prussia,
controlled the Prussian vote, and cast it in accordance with
Prussia's interpretation of her interests. The decisions
of the Council therefore represented the final harmony
of the federated governments and the Prussian Crown;
in a word, the Federal Council was an imperial mechanism
exercising an independent initiative corresponding to the
authority of the Prussian King in Prussia. The Reichstag
as a legislative organ could amend or reject the proposals
emanating from this federalised prerogative; but it could
not compel the acceptance of an alternative proposal, nor
could it in any way touch the independence of the govern-
ments composing the Council (which rested on the treaties
antecedent to the Constitution) nor the position of the
Federal Chancellor (appointed by the Emperor); still less
could it impair the prerogative and power of the Emperor
as King of Prussia. Prussia, very nearly two-thirds of
Germany, was beyond the competence of the Reichstag
altogetherT-^ixcept by imperial legislation, to which the
Federal Council (controlled by Prussia) was a necessary
party. A resolution of the Reichstag, even if unanimous,
had as little influence on the royal prerogative and policy
in Prussia as tickling the dome of St. Paul's would have
on the Dean and Chapter.
In practice Bismarck argued that the government had a
right to the support of the Reichstag. The Imperial
Parliament was representative of all Germany, i. e. it mir-
rored the needs which it was the duty of the government
to consider in deciding its measures. But it was for the
Reichstag to follow the government, not for the govern-
ment to follow the Reichstag. Criticism in the Reichstag
should therefore be limited to criticism of detail, and
amendment should be devoted to improving measures by
practical suggestions, and not extended to disputing prin-
ciples or opposing ends. Opposition to principles or ends
Bismarck denounced as proof of a party spirit, hostile to
the Empire. The monopoly of disinterested patriotism
was vested in the government, i. e. himself. The charge
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
of unpatriotic conduct can be dismissed as ungenerous and
ridiculous. From Bennigsen to Bebel the party leaders
were as stout Germans as Bismarck or Moltke. And they
proved it by the ungrudging enthusiasm with which as
representatives of the nation they shouldered the tremen-
dous sacrifice that universal military service from 1871
imposed on every German. A close study of the pro-
grammes issued by the various German parties between
1871 and 1890--documentary evidence that fills several
closely printed volumes--reveals a remarkable devotion in
every class to the fundamental postulates of German unity
and solidarity. The Federal Council and Bismarck him-
self could rely--as the general elections in 1878 and 1887
conclusively proved--on the patriotism of the whole popu-
lation. But the fierce and prolonged controversies from
1871 onwards also showed conclusively that what Bismarck
denounced as partisan parochialism or the relics of Parti-
cularism was in reality an opposed conception of the kind
of Germany, the type of German citizenship, and the char-
acter of political rights and freedom held by German party
leaders as earnest and sincere as himself. Bismarck desired
to make a Germany closely resembling the Prussia that
obeyed its sovereign; his opponents desired to liberalise
Prussia. And as soon as any party attempted to touch
the structure of society in Prussia, or the independence of
the Imperial Executive from parliamentary control, it
found itself in danger of being crushed as 'hostile to the
Empire' (Reichsfeindlich).
Moreover, the Chancellor's increasing egoism and self-
will more and more regarded criticism as a personal matter,
which affected his honour. His position and character
made this inevitable. Every one knew that, in fact, the
government was Bismarck, and Bismarck was the govern-
ment. But the sinister chapter of prosecutions for
'Bismarck-defamation' (Bismarckbeleidigung) is more dis-
creditable to the Chancellor than to the prosecuted. And
down to 1880 far the bitterest attacks apart from the
Kulturkampf (discussed in the next section), came from
the extreme right, his old allies, the Junkers of the
Kreuzzeitung and the Agrarian League.
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BISMARCK
In 1871 it was clear that an alliance with the National
Liberals was essential, not merely because they were the
strongest party, but because they were the one party ready
to work with Bismarck in making the formal unity of the
new Empire a working and living reality. The ability,
knowledge, and enthusiasm of the serried ranks that
followed Bennigsen made their co-operation indispensable.
From 1871 to 1878 Bismarck therefore worked through the
National Liberals, aided by one-half of the Conservatives
--the Free Conservatives, who supported the government
on principle--and the varying support of the Prussian and
South German Radical parties. By this coalition the
Chancellor had a good working majority with which the
Centre, the. Poles, the Guelphs, and other odds and ends
could be decisively beaten. But the alliance was from
the first a precarious mariage de convenanee. Bismarck was
not, and never desired to be, a National Liberal. But so
long as the National Liberal crew were content to man the
ship of State and to work at improving the engines, while
the Chancellor stood on the bridge and directed the navi-
gation, it was the most effective way for steering through
the uncharted home waters.
The progress was rapid, allowing for the complexity of
the difficulties. A common imperial currency was estab-
lished (1871); an Imperial Bank was set up (1873), and
the Banking Law revised and placed on a common statu-
tory basis for the whole Empire; the organisation of the
Imperial Post Office was reformed and extended by
Stephan with great success; an Imperial Railway Office to
co-ordinate the working of the railways (1873) was set up;
an elaborate code of Trade Law (Gnoerbeordnung) was
enacted in 1870, as was also a new code of civil and criminal
procedure; the criminal law was codified (1877), and a
supreme Court of Appeal for the whole Empire established
at Leipzig; a civil code (Burgerliches Gesetzbuch) was taken
in hand, and when it finally came into force in 1900 was
a monument of scientific jurisprudence of which its
authors had every reason to be proud. In 1874 the system
of military jurisprudence and of procedure in the military
courts was also codified.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
The driving force in these measures was National Liberal-
ism, though their success was partly due to the zeal and
efficiency of the civil service. The result was to give
Germany, what she had never had even in the palmiest days
of the mediaeval Empire and the mighty Hohenstaufen,
a uniform system of law, currency, communications, and
military defence, crowned by a single imperial ruler, con-
trolling a highly educated and organised civil service, and
governing a nation represented by universal manhood
suffrage in a unitary Reichstag. The cumulative effect of
the devoted toil, mainly in the Committees of the Reichs-
tag, on the conception and manifestation of the State as
Power cannot be exaggerated, and can be traced in the
debates, and in the speculative treatment of political
philosophy by the universities and the professoriate. The
theory of the State laid down in such works as Treitschke's
Politik is simply an exposition in a philosophical form of
the facts that Treitschke had lived through and saw
developing fresh activities all round him--an exposition
erected into a system of thought by deducing from the
facts principles held to be inherent in the successive mani-
festations of spirit through the realities of Germany's
political life. Treitschke and his school did not anticipate
Bismarck and Bismarckianism. They harmonised the
practical policy of the Chancellor with a philosophical
explanation drawn from that policy and fitted together to
justify and rationalise the experience of the 'average
sensual German '--and from the acts of Bismarck and the
Bismarckian State they built up a creed, treated as a series
of principles of an universal validity.
The formative influence of this unifying organisation of
a common purpose and a nation's power--intellectual,
moral, economic--on Bismarck's conception of Central
Europe and a system of international State relations for
the Continent, can be traced in many directions in his
foreign policy. The whole conception of centralism,
based on Berlin, acquired a new content and outlook with
the increasing organisation of German Power. If any
man had reason to be grateful to the National Liberals
that man was Bismarck, for the result of their efforts was
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BISMARCK
to place in the Chancellor's hands a unity of authority and
force, over which the Reichstag had little or no control.
Without the National Liberals the Empire could neither
have been made nor developed, nor could Prussian Parti-
cularism, the Centre, and Social Democracy have been
kept in check.
In the alliance of the National Liberals with the govern-
ment there were frequently difficulties and hitches.
Bismarck's scheme for acquiring all the railways for the
Imperial State was decisively defeated. The establish-
ment of the Supreme Court at Leipzig, and not in the
capital, was against his wishes, and was a deliberate step to
remove the highest judicial authority from the pressure of
the government. It is one of the few clear instances when
the Federal Council defeated the Chancellor. The pro-
posal in 1874 permanently to establish the strength of the
army and to remove from supervision the annual financial
votes was defeated in the Reichstag on the ground that it
seriously diminished the right of the legislature annually
to determine the Budget. The Emperor could not under-
stand why the army should not be made as independent
of the Parliament as the judiciary, but the Reichstag
saw that if it surrendered its power to determine the
number of men required and the cost of maintaining them,
it might as well take a permanent holiday. It looked as if
the constitutional conflict of 1862 was to be revived, and
that in the middle of the Kulturkampf--for the General
Staff with Moltke at their head were furious at the rebuff
and very insistent. Bennigsen and the National Liberals
saved the situation by a compromise, which granted the
government's demands for seven years, when the system
would come up for a fresh revision. Thus originated the
'Septennates. ' As a matter of fact, the government won.
The septennial revisions provided full-dress debates and
much criticism from the Left. But to all intents the
Reichstag might have agreed in 1874 to a permanent
establishment. The relics of right reserved in the com-
promise adopted only revealed more tellingly the naked
impotence of the Reichstag to bring either the strength,
or the cost, or the character of the army under national
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
control. Gneist, who had been one of the constitutional
opposition in 1862, now calmly admitted that 'annual
revision of the Army Budget was incompatible with the
principles of conscription. ' But had Bennigsen and his
colleagues fought the issue to the bitter end Germany
would have had a more violent constitutional controversy
than Prussia had faced in 1862, one which might in 1874
have shattered the fabric of imperial unity. It was the
votes of National Liberalism that defeated the Centre, the
Progressives, and the Radicals. The party that in 1862
had fought the Crown and failed, now aided the Crown
and disarmed itself.
The National Liberals were in more ways than one
steadily building the tomb of their once powerful party.
The strength they thrust into Bismarck's hands was before
long to be used to destroy them. Bismarck chafed under
the alliance; but the Conservatives raged. The military
chiefs who looked to E. von Manteuffel, the Court Liberals
who clustered round the Crown Prince, and regarded
General von Stosch as a substitute for Bismarck, derided the
Chancellor's failures to coerce the Reichstag. The powerful
agrarians from the centre and east of Prussia, to whom the
Empire was only useful if it meant a Prussianised Empire
with themselves in command, regarded Bismarck as a rene-
gade who betrayed the interest of the governing class by
truckling to middle-class Liberals. Roon had a hard time
between his devotion to the old friend, his own dislike of
this 'truckling to' parliamentarism, and the anger of the
Conservative party with which he sympathised. When the
Prussian government so far forgot itself as to introduce into
the system of local government in Prussia the principles of
representation, and to lay profane hands on the sacred
right of Junkertum to govern the country districts, the
Upper Chamber of the Landtag threw the measure out.
The Crown accepted the challenge. Opposition from the
Conservatives to the will of the sovereign was an intoler-
able defiance, and the creation of peers to ensure the passing
of the measure brought the ' rebels' to heel. The Em-
peror was very angry and spoke plainly. But the ' rebels,'
unable to touch the sovereign, and smarting under the
b. u
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BISMARCK
prerogative that they professed to regard a< the one sound
institution of the State, turned on the Chancellor. The
Kulturkampf gave them their chance, and a solemn pro-
nunciamento--the Declaranten as they called themselves--
signed by names such as Gerlach, Senfft-Pilsach, Kleist-
Retzow and Blanckenburg, the men and the friends with
whom Bismarck had grown up at SchSnhausen, Kniephof,
and Varzin, declared their public reprobation of the Chan-
cellor's policy, and publicly withdrew their support from the
government of which he was the chief. The quarrel was
embittered by Lasker's exposure of corruption in railway
concessions in which blue-blooded Junkers were involved,
and which led to the resignation of Graf Itzenplitz, the
Minister of Commerce. The 'Arnim process' was also
provoking a violent controversy in the press. The Conser-
vative party split up, and the press of the Reichsglocke and
the Kreuzzeitung rang with the recriminations of the old
Conservatives, the 'monarchical-national' party, 'the
Free' Conservatives, and 'the German' Conservatives.
Bismarck himself hit out freely in debate, and his henchmen
replied with scurrility to scurrility under his inspiration.
The unsavoury episode, however, only emphasised the
Chancellor's unique position. The Emperor had further
signalised his appreciation of unique services by the gift in
1871 to the new Prince of a princely estate--Friedrichsruhe
--in the duchy of Lauenburg, near Hamburg; and the
development of this noble demesne, together with the
management of Varzin, was a fresh interest to the Chan-
cellor worn out by the labours of the nine preceding years.
The only peace that he loved, the peace of a vast country-
side, studded with oak and beech, and fretted with clear
streams, by whose pastures the cattle browsed, and where
the smoke, din, and pettiness of the crowded dirty town,
the hollow shams and splendour of courts and princes, and
the prison-house of parliament and politicians, could be
forgotten--that peace he found at Varzin and at Friedrichs-
ruhe. 'When my political acts have long been forgotten,'
he said, pointing to an avenue he had planted,' these trees
will be here to tell the world that I once existed. '
Nature was not cursed with ingratitude or jealousy: she
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 307
was lavish of her bounty to all who would toil with her--
and she was free. No devilish diplomatists could wash
the blue from the sky, falsify the inspiration of the dawn,
or rob the night of its stars. Bismarck went back and slept
in the room at SchOnhausen where he had slept as a boy
and dreamed of his life to come. SchSnhausen--Kniephof
--Varzin--Friedrichsruhe, to what an avenue of acts
planted by himself and now attaining their maturity and
splendour in the passage of the relentless years, did not
these homes of Bismarck bear witness. Varzin, in parti-
cular, was associated with his wife; they had made it
together in the period that preceded and followed the
triumphs of the Franco-German War. It says much to
those who would penetrate the depths and weaknesses in
that passionately human but lonely heart, that dearly as
he loved Varzin, the Iron Chancellor could not face its
memories and its desolate hearth after the Princess's death
in 1894. It was at Varzin that his wife was buried--until
she was brought to share his grave at Friedrichsruhe.
Rest was essential. In 1871 and 1872 the Chancellor
was repeatedly absent from Berlin; in 1873 he resigned the
Minister-Presidency of Prussia to Roon and retired to
Varzin for ten months. But the experiment was not a
success. Roon, in his fierce old age, could not convert him-
self into a supple parliamentary hand, and Bismarck dis-
covered the truth of his own prediction that separation of
the Chancellorship and the Minister-Presidency in Prussia
sterilised his power. At the end of 1873 Roon resigned
the Ministry of War and abandoned political life. Bis-
marck sorely missed the loyal friend with whom 'he had
fought shoulder to shoulder from 1862' against all the
beasts of Ephesus. The vacant chair in the Council
Chamber where Roon had sat reminded him ' that I once
had a comrade. ' He resumed his dual office, but in 1876--
embittered by the Conservative split--he sent in his resig-
nation, to which the Emperor replied on the margin with
a single word, ' Never! ' In the autumn of 1876 Bismarck
took long 1 leave,' and retired to Varzin for more than a year.
Men said that he was failing--the Clericals that Lucifer
had fallen, never to rise again. He had broken Count
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The seven months from July 1870 to January 1871 regis-
tered five events of capital importance: the Declaration of
Papal Infallibility (July 18), the virtual establishment of the
Third Republic in France (September 4), the unification
of Italy by the entry of the Italian troops into Rome
(September 20), the fall of the Temporal Power of the
Papacy, and the establishment of the unified German
Empire (January 18, 1871). Of these five the two most
momentous in their wide-world significance were the
Declaration of Papal Infallibility and the abolition of the
Temporal Power of the Papacy.
With January 18, 1871, secular Europe entered on the
age of Bismarck. 'Germany in the Age of Bismarck ' was
transformed into 'Europe in the Age of Bismarck,' the
Imperial Chancellor of the new German Empire. From
1871 to 1890 Bismarck was the transcendent figure in Euro-
pean politics, with an influence akin to, but far surpassing,
the ascendency of Metternich from 1815 to 1848. Metter-
nich had equals and rivals who contested his supremacy
and defeated his policy--Castlereagh, Canning, Palmerston,
Nicholas 1. Bismarck did not meet a British Canning nor
a Russian Nicholas. Lord Odo Russell (Lord Ampthill),
who weighed his words, wrote from Berlin in 1880: 'At
St. Petersburg Bismarck's word is gospel, as well as at Paris
and Rome, where his sayings inspire respect, and his silences
apprehension. ' And Lord Odo might have said the same
with equal truth of Vienna, Madrid, and Constantinople.
In 1872 Lord Odo had informed our Foreign Office that
Bismarck's policy was 'the supremacy of Germany in
B. T
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BISMARCK
Europe and of the German race in the world. ' When
Bismarck fell in 1890 the author and upholder of a definite
political system ended his career. Every one asked the
question: Could the system continue without a Bismarck?
Was a new system about to take its place, and, if so, what?
Two broad conditions after 1871 materially assisted
Bismarck's policy and German supremacy--the weakness
and disorganisation of most of the European States, and
the character of the Germany of which he was the Chan-
cellor. Although her recovery from the collapse of 1870
was astonishingly rapid, France had not securely found her-
self when Bismarck fell; and her internal history during
his chancellorship is a chronicle of crises, from the struggle
with the Commune to the suicide of Boulanger on the
grave of his mistress at Brussels (1891). These were sur-
mounted, it is true, but with great difficulty. The Dual
Empire of Austria-Hungary was a continuous prey to the
complications that had produced the Compromise of 1867,
and the consequences of that very provisional settlement.
Russia was swayed successively by the ideas underlying the
reform policy of Alexander n. , a reversion to the absolutism
of Nicholas 1. , Pan-Slavism, the rise of Nihilism, and the
conflicting claims of the Near and the Far East. The
closer that Russian policy, within or without the Empire,
in this epoch is studied, the stronger stands out the lack
of continuity and of insight, due to undeveloped resources,
administrative disorganisation, internal and immature fer-
mentation, and contradictory conceptions and indecision in
the successive directors of the autocracy. Italy, ambitious
to be a Great Power at a stroke, but forgetting that though
salvation could not come without unification, it would not
come by unification alone, wrestled ceaselessly with
poverty, and the terrible consequences, moral, political,
and intellectual, of three centuries of denationalisation and
misgovernment. And Italy suffered more than any other
European State from the inevitable opposition that the
Quirinal found in the Vatican.
Yet Italy, like France, was slowly finding herself, as she
groped her way through the valleys of disillusionment and
indecision. Spain was in no position to mark out an
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
independent orbit of policy, and the gravitation of Madrid
to the German system, which would have been accelerated
had Leopold of Hohenzollern crossed the Pyrenees in 1870,
was steadily accentuated between 1870 and 1890. The
Ottoman Empire and the Balkans were the Ottoman
Empire and the Balkans, and they provided in the evolution
of things many opportunities that Bismarck seized with a
cautious but relentless grip.
The one exception to the continental States was Great
Britain. Men of British speech analysing their politics
with a microscope, and forgetting the telescope and per-
spective so essential to sane and long views, are prone to
discover in these twenty years of British development
from 1870 to 1890 either nothing but the repellent scuffle
of parochial parties or an expansion of imperialism in
which the insular record is an irritating blot. The critical
function of history, however, like the critical function of
literature, is not summed up in the scheduling and auditing
of mistakes. Mistakes there were in plenty, but the connec-
tion between the external' expansion of England ' and the
internal development was intimate, vital, and decisive.
The Empire that was being expanded and consolidated
after 1870 rested securely, but not without many violent
controversies, within and without the island, on responsible
representative self-government for the heart of the system:
and from that heart it could radiate in time slowly and
surely to every part. It might well have been otherwise.
There were not lacking influential voices within, respond-
ing to the powerful influences without, that demanded a
different course leading to a very different result. Great
Britain did not altogether escape the hypnotism of Bis-
marckian Europe. But the broad fact remains that she
deliberately continued to toil up the steep and stony stairs
of representative self-government. Though she did not
recognise the full significance at the time, Great Britain
preserved and strengthened a polity, an ideal, and an
Imperial State that were the antithesis in every respect
of the German Empire. They were also the negation of
the ultimate efficacy and value of German principles.
Great Britain in the nineteenth, thus accomplished a
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? 292
BISMARCK
work no less momentous than her achievement in the
seventeenth, century. From 1603 to 1688 she cut herself
adrift from the tremendous swing of tendencies on the
Continent. From 1870 onwards she refused to surrender
or betray the principles which had given her a unique
position. The implicit antagonism of the "British State
to the monarchies of the Continent runs like a red thread
through the diplomacy of Bismarck. Bismarck recognised
the danger, but failed to exorcise or destroy it.
In comparison with Russia, France, Italy, Austria-
Hungary, and Spain, and despite the severity of her in-
ternal struggles, Germany revealed a continuity of foreign
policy clean-cut and self-conscious alike in principles and
methods, together with an executive and an administrative
stability, which contributed enormously to the riveting
of a German supremacy on the Continent. The con-
tinuity and stability were not wholly due to Bismarck.
The military, which preceded the political, ascendency of
Prussia was laid on the granite, hewn and dressed by the
German mind and German science. Bismarck had for
his instrument in completing the political supremacy,
which came last, a nation convinced that national like
individual success must be won by sacrifice and self-
discipline. We may both detest and admire the achieve-
ment of Germany, but it is only ignorance that fails to
recognise the solidity of work on which German ascend-
ency was based, and the futility of impeaching it except
by a superiority in toil, concentrated purpose, and sacrifice.
In 1871 the grand lines of German unification and a new
State-system, adjusted to the supremacy of a German
Central Europe, were roughly made, but the mould required
to be filled and adapted to use. Time and peace were the
two essential requirements, which the Chancellor must
provide. Foreign policy could provide peace--home
policy must see that the time was fully employed. When
Bismarck described himself as a Friedensfanatiker--a
fanatic for peace--he was not so far wrong. But it was
not peace in and for itself that Bismarck valued; it was
peace imposed by the armed strength of the Empire, a peace
by which Germany would develop every quality and char-
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 293
acteristic that established the State as Power, carrying out
a policy the criterion of which was superiority in force.
Between 1870 and 1890 Bismarck was not converted to the
beauty and rationality of pacificism. Quite the contrary.
The last of his great speeches, February 6, 1888, was a pas-
sionate plea for an invincible German army as the arbiter
in international disputes; his theory of international
relations assumed that fear, greed, and jealousy were the
main motives of international life, and that a sharp sword
was the true weapon of policy; and the whole argument
was a coda built up from the leading themes that his state-
craft had continuously exemplified since 1862.
Bismarck returned to Berlin on March 9, and took part
on June 16 in the triumphal entry of the victorious army.
Between March 7 and May 10 the Chancellor's main task
had been to translate the Preliminaries of Versailles into
the definitive Treaty of Frankfurt. On March 21 the
Emperor had opened in state the first Reichstag of United
Germany, to which the new Constitution was submitted.
Bismarck might affect indifference whether the titles of
Empire (Reich) or League {Bund) was to be assigned to the
new polity, but at Versailles he had correctly maintained
that the imperial title ' made for unity and centralisation,'
and that' in" the term Praesidium lay an abstraction, in the
word "Emperor" a powerful coercive force'--and the
sequel proved that he was right. Exception was taken in
debate, more particularly to four points: the concessions
to Bavaria emphasized by the militarists; the virtual veto
vested in Prussia (objected to by the Southern States), since
rejection by fourteen votes of the Federal Council vetoed all
changes in the Constitution, and Prussia had seventeen votes
out of a total of fifty-eight; the futility of the new Com-
mittee of the Bundesrat on Foreign Affairs (from which
Prussia was excluded); and the requirement that for any
but a 'defensive war' the consent of the Federal Council
must be added to the imperial declaration. The reply to
these criticisms was given in the Reichstag; the concessions
to Bavaria rested on a treaty ratified by Bavaria, and it was
too late at this stage to impugn its validity or its terms;
the military convention was more formal than real, since
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BISMARCK
the Bavarian army would be organised in peace on the
Prussian model and would pass under the imperial
supreme command in war; the Foreign Affairs Committee
was a decorative luxury (as a matter of fact it has only met
four times, in 1875,1879, 1900, and 1910, and its influence
on foreign policy has been absolutely nit); the negative
veto of Prussia was an inevitable tribute to her complete
predominance in Germany, based on her contribution to
the Empire of from one-half to two-thirds of the total
wealth, area, and population; and finally, it was argued
with delightful naivete and prescience that Germany
would never wage an 'offensive' war, since the Foreign
Office would always see to it that a war was, in name at
least, 'defensive. '
The incorporation of Alsace and Lorraine provided an
interesting problem. The anti-German feeling of the
population foreshadowed years of hostility and alienation;
for, whatever ardent German historians and publicists
wrote about the essentially German character of the
annexed provinces, no one in Germany was ignorant that
a plebiscite would have resulted in an oveiwhelrning
majority against the forcible dismemberment from France
and annexation to Germany. 'French we are,' said the
Alsatians and Lorrainers in the Assembly of Bordeaux,
'and French we will remain. ' Treitschke spoke for
German Nationalism when he asserted that' we Germans
know better what is good for Alsace than the unhappy
people themselves . . . we will give them back their
identity against their will . . . we invoke the men of the
past against the present. ' But how was incorporation to
be carried out? Annexation to Prussia would have stirred
fierce jealousy, and would have planted Prussia on the
flank of Bavaria, Wiirttemberg, and Baden. Annexation
to any others of the federated States was open to grave
and obvious objections. The military chiefs and Bismarck
were united in fearing the tenderer heart of the south in
dealing with ' the unhappy people. ' It was dangerous to
split the annexed provinces and divide them amongst the
frontier States which might subsequently compete in the
severity of their coercion or the lenity of their humanity.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 295
The method of 'giving the Alsatians back their lost
identity' was therefore found in constituting the two
provinces an Imperial Territory (Reichsland), placed, until
January I, 1874, under an administrative dictatorship,
confided to the Emperor, whose legislative power was to
be exercised with the assent of the Federal Council. At
that date the Lorrainers and Alsatians were to receive
such a degree of 'forced freedom' as they merited or
circumstances justified.
This solution of the problem satisfied Bismarck, for it
was practically his own. Alsace and Lorraine under Prus-
sian administration were safe, and the treatment meted
out would be more a matter of policy than of justice, or
the ' English cant term ' of ' humanity ' and ' civilisation. '
The Reichsland would be a convenient whipping-boy for
the future delinquencies of France. The strategic value of
the annexation justified a multitude of administrative sins to
come. The Prussian staff accordingly set to work at once
to construct strategic railways and fortifications based on
Metz; -it contemplated a future invasion, pivoting on
the fortress won by Bazaine's military incompetence and
political treachery; and Metz as the crow flies is only one
hundred and sixty miles from Paris. The retention of an
unwilling Alsace and Lorraine was an irrefragable argu-
ment for keeping the new Empire armed to the teeth.
The use that Bismarck made of a French war of revenge
after 1871 is one of the most instructive episodes in his
policy; for when French feeling flagged, if German
policy required it, he invariably lashed French patriotism
into frontier incidents by a dose of severity to the
Reichsland.
Most Germans in 1871 undoubtedly believed that a few
years of German rule would make Alsace and Lorraine as con-
tented as Bavaria. The widespread belief in the magic of
their culture was so strong that, when the magic completely
failed, they could only explain the failure by the assump-
tion that the Latin, like the Polish race, was cursed with
a treble dose of original sin. If it be true that anything
can be done with bayonets except to sit on them, it is no
less true that the forcible imposition of an alien civilisation,
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BISMARCK
even if it be superior, can never succeed when the subjects
of the imposition can immunise themselves by anti-toxins
from an antagonistic and living civilisation at their doors.
The extirpation of France might in time have enabled a
purely German Alsace and Lorraine to grow up, as the
extirpation of Russian and Austrian Poland might have
Germanised the province of Posen. The magic of German
culture in Alsace and Lorraine was defeated by the
counter-magic from across the frontiers of a France that
after 1871 renewed the genius of the French mind in a
marvellous renaissance. Germany was placed in a dis-
agreeable dilemma. Justice to the annexed simply widened
the door by which French influence entered; injustice
strengthened the hold of the old allegiance.
Bismarck, probably, never entertained the illusions of
many of his nobler compatriots. He had not annexed
Alsace and Lorraine to convert good Frenchmen into bad
Germans. He accepted the historic argument of an
'unredeemed Germany' because it was a force in Ger-
many that it was dangerous to ignore and useful to exploit.
Alsace and Lorraine were essential to complete the
unified Germany that was to make a Central Europe the
throne of German hegemony. Without Alsace and Lor-
raine the Rhine was not secure, nor was France reduced to
the subordination that German Centralism required. The
stubbornness of Alsace and Lorraine probably did not
surprise him; it certainly neither weakened nor strength-
ened his reasons for the policy he subsequently pursued.
Just as Prussian Poland was an absolute necessity to the
position of Germany in the east, so Alsace and Lorraine
were a consummation of Germany's position in the west.
And if the inhabitants of- both territories were so stiff-
necked as to refuse to recognise that Germany's necessities
were Germany's law of existence and justification, so much
the worse for them. The State that was Power could not,
without denying the validity of its own title-deeds, admit
the validity of the title-deeds pleaded by Alsatian or Pole.
Might preceded right, and national safety outweighed all
sentiment. 'You are not a people,' Bismarck told the
Polish deputies to the Reichstag of 1871, 'you do not
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 297
represent a people; you have not got a people behind you;
you have nothing behind you but your illusions and
fictions. ' The same reply was in substance given to the
Danes in Schleswig as to the Alsatians and Lorrainers. 1
The force of nationality was in Bismarck's eyes' an illusion
and a fiction' unless it was backed by a material power
strong enough to enforce its claims. German Nationalism
had produced 1848 and *i 870. French Nationalism had
failed to save Alsace, and would no less fail to recover it.
Another remark of Bismarck's (April 19) in the consti-
tutional debates summed up a very significant view: 'I
see,' he said,' in the Federal Council (Bundesrat) a kind of
palladium for our future, a grand guarantee for the future
of Germany. Do not touch it. ' The Reichstag was not
allowed to 'touch it. ' And the Imperial Constitution,
ratified by the Reichstag, was simply a replica of the Consti-
modifications as were required to admit the south, practi-
cally on the same terms that the Northern States had
accepted in 1867. With that constitution before us, and
Bismarck's continuous refusal to admit the slightest modi-
fication that would facilitate ministerial responsibility, it
is astonishing to read, on Lord Odo Russell's authority,
that ' on more than one occasion Prince Bismarck com-
plained (to the British ambassador) of his imperial master
for resisting the introduction of a system of administration
under a responsible Premier, as in England, which he,
Prince Bismarck, considered the best method of developing
the education of the Germans, and teaching them the art
of self-government. '--(Life of Lord Granville, ii. 113. )
There is no reason to suppose that Lord Odo believed
what Bismarck said, but the mendacity of the confession
is very characteristic. When, in 1877, Bismarck had an
opportunity of introducing 'a system of administration
1 The clause in the Treaty of Prague (October 5,1866) which provided that
'the populations of the districts of the north of Schleswig shall be reunited to
Denmark, if they express the desire by a free vote,' was not carried out between
1867 and 1879, and m 1*79 ** was expunged, with the consent of Austria,
from the Treaty. It had served its purpose in 1866--to deceive Napoleon and
Europe. Prussia had never intended to put it into execution, and Denmark
was not able to compel her. The rest of Europe, not being a party to the
Treaty, could only note this violation of a solemn pledge.
tution of the North
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BISMARCK
under a responsible Premier, as in England,' he showed
what he really thought of such a system. And the elaborate
argument in the Memoirs is the best refutation by Bismarck
himself of this amazing utterance to Lord Ampthill.
The results of the general election for the Reichstag
conclusively revealed the distribution of political opinion
with which Bismarck had to reckon in the next eight years.
The National Liberals, numbering 114 out of 382 members,
were the strongest party; Conservatives of various shades
made another hundred votes; a new party--the Centre
leadership of Windthorst, could reckon on sixty votes; the
remaining hundred members were divided between the
old Progressive Radical Party (Forts chritts-Partei), the
South GermanPopular Tarty (Deutsche Folks-Partei), under
the leadership of Richter, and the handful of Guelphs, Poles,
and Social Democrats (2). The inveterate tendency of
German parties to split up and re-label their organisations
makes the history of parties very confusing. This was
partly due to the political impotence of the Reichstag as
a government-making organ; partly to the continuance of
the deep-grained Particularism which gave to local claims
a paramount importance; partly to the inexperience of the
German nation in political self-government which always
fosters a group-system as distinct from a party-system;
and partly to the impact of new categories of thought in
collision with the old traditions and names.
From 1871 to his fall Bismarck was confronted in the
Reichstag with opposition and criticism, always strong
and often bitter.
A volume could be compiled from the
passages in the Chancellor's speeches devoted to denun-
ciations of the party spirit, the decay of patriotism, and the
wrecking character of the parties represented in the Reichs-
tag. The Chancellor was never weary of dilating on his
own freedom from party partisanship, his single-minded
fidelity to one principle--the welfare and interest of a
unified Germany--and his unbroken record of party pre-
judice subordinated to the public good. Bismarck's
tenacity of purpose is beyond challenge; but, dispassion-
ately considered, his claim amounts to nothing more than
-formed from the Catholics
under the
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 299
a sincere conviction that the policy and measures he advo-
cated were, and that the policy and measures of his
opponents were not, identical with the best interests of
Germany and Prussia as he conceived them. For much
of the bitterness in debate Bismarck was himself respon-
sible. He said of Windthorst that his oratory was not
oil but vitriol on an open wound; but as a debater his own
vivid phrase could work like a fret-saw on raw flesh, and he
was a master of the provocative lash and the studied insult.
Above all, he lacked the sense of gratitude. 'You know,'
he confessed to his wife, ' that my capacity for recognising
services is not very large ' (November 17, 1870). It was
painfully true. Colleagues, such as Delbruck, Biilow,
Camphausen, Stephan, Falk, to whom he owed an un-
stinted devotion to duty; opponents such as Bennigsen,
Miquel, Lasker, Forckenbeck, Richter, Windthorst, and
Bebel, to whose criticism many of the Chancellor's most
celebrated legislative achievements owed a large portion of
their success, were usually dismissed, not with faint praise,
but an ugly reminder of their weakest points. Bismarck
could be guilty of incredible pettiness and vindictiveness. 1
And outside the Reichstag the journalist hacks were in the
pay of the Chancery Press Bureau to import, at command,
into the discussion of home or foreign politics the temper,
tone, and insinuations of the gutter and the blackmailer.
It is impossible to acquit the Imperial Chancellor of
frequently having poisoned the wells on the purity of
which the dignity and decency of public life in Germany
depended.
Bismarck's theory of government through, and not by,
a Parliament was really very simple. It was based on the
Prussian tradition in which he was born and bred. The
initiative in legislation, as in policy and administration, was
the prerogative of the Crown. The King in Prussia
weighed the needs of his country and devised appropriate
remedies, with the advice of ministers responsible solely to
himself. In the Empire, the functions of the Prussian
1 Witness, for example, the disgraceful refusal of the Chancellor in 1884 to
communicate a message of condolence from Congress to the Reichstag on the
death of Lasker at New York, on the ground that the dead Liberal leader had
criticised Bismarck and the Bismarckian system in a hostile spirit.
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BISMARCK
Crown were allotted to the Federal Council, which was a
syndicate of the federated governments. The Federal
Chancellor, who was also Minister-President of Prussia,
controlled the Prussian vote, and cast it in accordance with
Prussia's interpretation of her interests. The decisions
of the Council therefore represented the final harmony
of the federated governments and the Prussian Crown;
in a word, the Federal Council was an imperial mechanism
exercising an independent initiative corresponding to the
authority of the Prussian King in Prussia. The Reichstag
as a legislative organ could amend or reject the proposals
emanating from this federalised prerogative; but it could
not compel the acceptance of an alternative proposal, nor
could it in any way touch the independence of the govern-
ments composing the Council (which rested on the treaties
antecedent to the Constitution) nor the position of the
Federal Chancellor (appointed by the Emperor); still less
could it impair the prerogative and power of the Emperor
as King of Prussia. Prussia, very nearly two-thirds of
Germany, was beyond the competence of the Reichstag
altogetherT-^ixcept by imperial legislation, to which the
Federal Council (controlled by Prussia) was a necessary
party. A resolution of the Reichstag, even if unanimous,
had as little influence on the royal prerogative and policy
in Prussia as tickling the dome of St. Paul's would have
on the Dean and Chapter.
In practice Bismarck argued that the government had a
right to the support of the Reichstag. The Imperial
Parliament was representative of all Germany, i. e. it mir-
rored the needs which it was the duty of the government
to consider in deciding its measures. But it was for the
Reichstag to follow the government, not for the govern-
ment to follow the Reichstag. Criticism in the Reichstag
should therefore be limited to criticism of detail, and
amendment should be devoted to improving measures by
practical suggestions, and not extended to disputing prin-
ciples or opposing ends. Opposition to principles or ends
Bismarck denounced as proof of a party spirit, hostile to
the Empire. The monopoly of disinterested patriotism
was vested in the government, i. e. himself. The charge
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
of unpatriotic conduct can be dismissed as ungenerous and
ridiculous. From Bennigsen to Bebel the party leaders
were as stout Germans as Bismarck or Moltke. And they
proved it by the ungrudging enthusiasm with which as
representatives of the nation they shouldered the tremen-
dous sacrifice that universal military service from 1871
imposed on every German. A close study of the pro-
grammes issued by the various German parties between
1871 and 1890--documentary evidence that fills several
closely printed volumes--reveals a remarkable devotion in
every class to the fundamental postulates of German unity
and solidarity. The Federal Council and Bismarck him-
self could rely--as the general elections in 1878 and 1887
conclusively proved--on the patriotism of the whole popu-
lation. But the fierce and prolonged controversies from
1871 onwards also showed conclusively that what Bismarck
denounced as partisan parochialism or the relics of Parti-
cularism was in reality an opposed conception of the kind
of Germany, the type of German citizenship, and the char-
acter of political rights and freedom held by German party
leaders as earnest and sincere as himself. Bismarck desired
to make a Germany closely resembling the Prussia that
obeyed its sovereign; his opponents desired to liberalise
Prussia. And as soon as any party attempted to touch
the structure of society in Prussia, or the independence of
the Imperial Executive from parliamentary control, it
found itself in danger of being crushed as 'hostile to the
Empire' (Reichsfeindlich).
Moreover, the Chancellor's increasing egoism and self-
will more and more regarded criticism as a personal matter,
which affected his honour. His position and character
made this inevitable. Every one knew that, in fact, the
government was Bismarck, and Bismarck was the govern-
ment. But the sinister chapter of prosecutions for
'Bismarck-defamation' (Bismarckbeleidigung) is more dis-
creditable to the Chancellor than to the prosecuted. And
down to 1880 far the bitterest attacks apart from the
Kulturkampf (discussed in the next section), came from
the extreme right, his old allies, the Junkers of the
Kreuzzeitung and the Agrarian League.
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BISMARCK
In 1871 it was clear that an alliance with the National
Liberals was essential, not merely because they were the
strongest party, but because they were the one party ready
to work with Bismarck in making the formal unity of the
new Empire a working and living reality. The ability,
knowledge, and enthusiasm of the serried ranks that
followed Bennigsen made their co-operation indispensable.
From 1871 to 1878 Bismarck therefore worked through the
National Liberals, aided by one-half of the Conservatives
--the Free Conservatives, who supported the government
on principle--and the varying support of the Prussian and
South German Radical parties. By this coalition the
Chancellor had a good working majority with which the
Centre, the. Poles, the Guelphs, and other odds and ends
could be decisively beaten. But the alliance was from
the first a precarious mariage de convenanee. Bismarck was
not, and never desired to be, a National Liberal. But so
long as the National Liberal crew were content to man the
ship of State and to work at improving the engines, while
the Chancellor stood on the bridge and directed the navi-
gation, it was the most effective way for steering through
the uncharted home waters.
The progress was rapid, allowing for the complexity of
the difficulties. A common imperial currency was estab-
lished (1871); an Imperial Bank was set up (1873), and
the Banking Law revised and placed on a common statu-
tory basis for the whole Empire; the organisation of the
Imperial Post Office was reformed and extended by
Stephan with great success; an Imperial Railway Office to
co-ordinate the working of the railways (1873) was set up;
an elaborate code of Trade Law (Gnoerbeordnung) was
enacted in 1870, as was also a new code of civil and criminal
procedure; the criminal law was codified (1877), and a
supreme Court of Appeal for the whole Empire established
at Leipzig; a civil code (Burgerliches Gesetzbuch) was taken
in hand, and when it finally came into force in 1900 was
a monument of scientific jurisprudence of which its
authors had every reason to be proud. In 1874 the system
of military jurisprudence and of procedure in the military
courts was also codified.
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
The driving force in these measures was National Liberal-
ism, though their success was partly due to the zeal and
efficiency of the civil service. The result was to give
Germany, what she had never had even in the palmiest days
of the mediaeval Empire and the mighty Hohenstaufen,
a uniform system of law, currency, communications, and
military defence, crowned by a single imperial ruler, con-
trolling a highly educated and organised civil service, and
governing a nation represented by universal manhood
suffrage in a unitary Reichstag. The cumulative effect of
the devoted toil, mainly in the Committees of the Reichs-
tag, on the conception and manifestation of the State as
Power cannot be exaggerated, and can be traced in the
debates, and in the speculative treatment of political
philosophy by the universities and the professoriate. The
theory of the State laid down in such works as Treitschke's
Politik is simply an exposition in a philosophical form of
the facts that Treitschke had lived through and saw
developing fresh activities all round him--an exposition
erected into a system of thought by deducing from the
facts principles held to be inherent in the successive mani-
festations of spirit through the realities of Germany's
political life. Treitschke and his school did not anticipate
Bismarck and Bismarckianism. They harmonised the
practical policy of the Chancellor with a philosophical
explanation drawn from that policy and fitted together to
justify and rationalise the experience of the 'average
sensual German '--and from the acts of Bismarck and the
Bismarckian State they built up a creed, treated as a series
of principles of an universal validity.
The formative influence of this unifying organisation of
a common purpose and a nation's power--intellectual,
moral, economic--on Bismarck's conception of Central
Europe and a system of international State relations for
the Continent, can be traced in many directions in his
foreign policy. The whole conception of centralism,
based on Berlin, acquired a new content and outlook with
the increasing organisation of German Power. If any
man had reason to be grateful to the National Liberals
that man was Bismarck, for the result of their efforts was
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BISMARCK
to place in the Chancellor's hands a unity of authority and
force, over which the Reichstag had little or no control.
Without the National Liberals the Empire could neither
have been made nor developed, nor could Prussian Parti-
cularism, the Centre, and Social Democracy have been
kept in check.
In the alliance of the National Liberals with the govern-
ment there were frequently difficulties and hitches.
Bismarck's scheme for acquiring all the railways for the
Imperial State was decisively defeated. The establish-
ment of the Supreme Court at Leipzig, and not in the
capital, was against his wishes, and was a deliberate step to
remove the highest judicial authority from the pressure of
the government. It is one of the few clear instances when
the Federal Council defeated the Chancellor. The pro-
posal in 1874 permanently to establish the strength of the
army and to remove from supervision the annual financial
votes was defeated in the Reichstag on the ground that it
seriously diminished the right of the legislature annually
to determine the Budget. The Emperor could not under-
stand why the army should not be made as independent
of the Parliament as the judiciary, but the Reichstag
saw that if it surrendered its power to determine the
number of men required and the cost of maintaining them,
it might as well take a permanent holiday. It looked as if
the constitutional conflict of 1862 was to be revived, and
that in the middle of the Kulturkampf--for the General
Staff with Moltke at their head were furious at the rebuff
and very insistent. Bennigsen and the National Liberals
saved the situation by a compromise, which granted the
government's demands for seven years, when the system
would come up for a fresh revision. Thus originated the
'Septennates. ' As a matter of fact, the government won.
The septennial revisions provided full-dress debates and
much criticism from the Left. But to all intents the
Reichstag might have agreed in 1874 to a permanent
establishment. The relics of right reserved in the com-
promise adopted only revealed more tellingly the naked
impotence of the Reichstag to bring either the strength,
or the cost, or the character of the army under national
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR
control. Gneist, who had been one of the constitutional
opposition in 1862, now calmly admitted that 'annual
revision of the Army Budget was incompatible with the
principles of conscription. ' But had Bennigsen and his
colleagues fought the issue to the bitter end Germany
would have had a more violent constitutional controversy
than Prussia had faced in 1862, one which might in 1874
have shattered the fabric of imperial unity. It was the
votes of National Liberalism that defeated the Centre, the
Progressives, and the Radicals. The party that in 1862
had fought the Crown and failed, now aided the Crown
and disarmed itself.
The National Liberals were in more ways than one
steadily building the tomb of their once powerful party.
The strength they thrust into Bismarck's hands was before
long to be used to destroy them. Bismarck chafed under
the alliance; but the Conservatives raged. The military
chiefs who looked to E. von Manteuffel, the Court Liberals
who clustered round the Crown Prince, and regarded
General von Stosch as a substitute for Bismarck, derided the
Chancellor's failures to coerce the Reichstag. The powerful
agrarians from the centre and east of Prussia, to whom the
Empire was only useful if it meant a Prussianised Empire
with themselves in command, regarded Bismarck as a rene-
gade who betrayed the interest of the governing class by
truckling to middle-class Liberals. Roon had a hard time
between his devotion to the old friend, his own dislike of
this 'truckling to' parliamentarism, and the anger of the
Conservative party with which he sympathised. When the
Prussian government so far forgot itself as to introduce into
the system of local government in Prussia the principles of
representation, and to lay profane hands on the sacred
right of Junkertum to govern the country districts, the
Upper Chamber of the Landtag threw the measure out.
The Crown accepted the challenge. Opposition from the
Conservatives to the will of the sovereign was an intoler-
able defiance, and the creation of peers to ensure the passing
of the measure brought the ' rebels' to heel. The Em-
peror was very angry and spoke plainly. But the ' rebels,'
unable to touch the sovereign, and smarting under the
b. u
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? 306
BISMARCK
prerogative that they professed to regard a< the one sound
institution of the State, turned on the Chancellor. The
Kulturkampf gave them their chance, and a solemn pro-
nunciamento--the Declaranten as they called themselves--
signed by names such as Gerlach, Senfft-Pilsach, Kleist-
Retzow and Blanckenburg, the men and the friends with
whom Bismarck had grown up at SchSnhausen, Kniephof,
and Varzin, declared their public reprobation of the Chan-
cellor's policy, and publicly withdrew their support from the
government of which he was the chief. The quarrel was
embittered by Lasker's exposure of corruption in railway
concessions in which blue-blooded Junkers were involved,
and which led to the resignation of Graf Itzenplitz, the
Minister of Commerce. The 'Arnim process' was also
provoking a violent controversy in the press. The Conser-
vative party split up, and the press of the Reichsglocke and
the Kreuzzeitung rang with the recriminations of the old
Conservatives, the 'monarchical-national' party, 'the
Free' Conservatives, and 'the German' Conservatives.
Bismarck himself hit out freely in debate, and his henchmen
replied with scurrility to scurrility under his inspiration.
The unsavoury episode, however, only emphasised the
Chancellor's unique position. The Emperor had further
signalised his appreciation of unique services by the gift in
1871 to the new Prince of a princely estate--Friedrichsruhe
--in the duchy of Lauenburg, near Hamburg; and the
development of this noble demesne, together with the
management of Varzin, was a fresh interest to the Chan-
cellor worn out by the labours of the nine preceding years.
The only peace that he loved, the peace of a vast country-
side, studded with oak and beech, and fretted with clear
streams, by whose pastures the cattle browsed, and where
the smoke, din, and pettiness of the crowded dirty town,
the hollow shams and splendour of courts and princes, and
the prison-house of parliament and politicians, could be
forgotten--that peace he found at Varzin and at Friedrichs-
ruhe. 'When my political acts have long been forgotten,'
he said, pointing to an avenue he had planted,' these trees
will be here to tell the world that I once existed. '
Nature was not cursed with ingratitude or jealousy: she
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? THE IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 307
was lavish of her bounty to all who would toil with her--
and she was free. No devilish diplomatists could wash
the blue from the sky, falsify the inspiration of the dawn,
or rob the night of its stars. Bismarck went back and slept
in the room at SchOnhausen where he had slept as a boy
and dreamed of his life to come. SchSnhausen--Kniephof
--Varzin--Friedrichsruhe, to what an avenue of acts
planted by himself and now attaining their maturity and
splendour in the passage of the relentless years, did not
these homes of Bismarck bear witness. Varzin, in parti-
cular, was associated with his wife; they had made it
together in the period that preceded and followed the
triumphs of the Franco-German War. It says much to
those who would penetrate the depths and weaknesses in
that passionately human but lonely heart, that dearly as
he loved Varzin, the Iron Chancellor could not face its
memories and its desolate hearth after the Princess's death
in 1894. It was at Varzin that his wife was buried--until
she was brought to share his grave at Friedrichsruhe.
Rest was essential. In 1871 and 1872 the Chancellor
was repeatedly absent from Berlin; in 1873 he resigned the
Minister-Presidency of Prussia to Roon and retired to
Varzin for ten months. But the experiment was not a
success. Roon, in his fierce old age, could not convert him-
self into a supple parliamentary hand, and Bismarck dis-
covered the truth of his own prediction that separation of
the Chancellorship and the Minister-Presidency in Prussia
sterilised his power. At the end of 1873 Roon resigned
the Ministry of War and abandoned political life. Bis-
marck sorely missed the loyal friend with whom 'he had
fought shoulder to shoulder from 1862' against all the
beasts of Ephesus. The vacant chair in the Council
Chamber where Roon had sat reminded him ' that I once
had a comrade. ' He resumed his dual office, but in 1876--
embittered by the Conservative split--he sent in his resig-
nation, to which the Emperor replied on the margin with
a single word, ' Never! ' In the autumn of 1876 Bismarck
took long 1 leave,' and retired to Varzin for more than a year.
Men said that he was failing--the Clericals that Lucifer
had fallen, never to rise again. He had broken Count
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-14 09:48 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/mdp.
