Germany, so the zealots proclaimed, should by blood and language be united; and in this respect orators of the hour were correct.

Germany had a manifest destiny, the speakers continued, but in this respect they were guided by faith rather than by experience. At least, the momentary end of "manifest destiny" was clearly the political function; to be one and united.

-- So far good.

-- Then why "should not" this n.o.ble German Idea be "accepted"? The word Idea was usually presented with a capital letter, in form of personification, so real had the thing become to German political orators.

Certainly every German was ready to testify that National Unity had been the one political dream of generations past and gone.

Had not the old wandering minstrels sung of the Fatherland, alas, too long delayed by miserable human selfishness! German bull-headedness insisted on insularity, on individualism, on particularism, on standing each petty monarch in his corner, with farce-comedy courtiers bowing and sc.r.a.ping while the rights of the peasant were forgotten.

a.s.suredly, the day had come for this folly to cease. Then in Heaven's name, why not a United Germany--here and now?

-- The petty pa.s.sions of rival princes acted as a bar to the acceptance of the glorious National Idea, spelled with the big "I."

Intense particularisms preferred loyalty to local princes, fashions, customs, dialects rather than to lose the old ways in the larger life of the German Nation.

-- But Bismarck did not lose heart.

CHAPTER IX

So Much the Worse for Zeitgeist

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We will never get at Bismarck through a study of the interplay of politics; suppose we state his case in terms of human nature?

-- From this time on, the shelves are freighted with volume after volume of German political jargon, forming a bewildering diagonal of forces crossing and recrossing in thousands the tangled threads.

Bismarck's presence runs throughout, but it is a long and complex story, hard to comprehend and difficult to compress without sacrificing important details.

-- We find "Grand Germans" against "Petty Germans"; Grimm, the philologist, has his say against Simson, the jurist; Arndt, the poet, against Welcker, the publicist; the Frankfort parliament offering its paper crown to the King of Prussia, imploring him to become a democratic liberator and unifier; and on the other hand we hear Bismarck in the Berlin Diet, urging the king to stand firm for the Old Regime; arks of free-speech from Polish insurgents, also ill-advised youth waving banners of blood; mobs in the Berlin streets, whiffs of grapeshot here and there to clear the air; John of Austria urging something and the Prince Consort of England advising, post-haste, the kings of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Wuertemberg; the a.s.sembly manufacturing Magna Chartas, after noisy clashes of opinion.

-- "There is not enough practical sense behind all," says Bismarck, "to build a political chicken-coop, to say nothing of an empire." Then, the patriots, so-called, leave for America, worn out with waiting for some new freedom set down on paper; and of the motley crew, not one is sufficiently wise, or strong enough to make head or tail of the complex situation. Barricades are thrown up, artillery plays upon the mobs, and general blood-letting follows; thousands of lives are snuffed out, to be charged up as advance sacrifices for political cohesion. Hapsburger against Hohenzollern, Protestant against Catholic, Ultramontanes beholding the reign of Anti-Christ; Guelphs and Wittelsbachs, protesting their own peculiar and ancient lineage against self-seeking latter-day upstart aristocrats!

-- And the problem grew darker as the months went by.

-- You may read till you are dizzy and then stand back and try to get a bird's-eye view of the complicated quarrels of the Diet; the vagaries of Frankfort or Berlin; the brawls of this poet, that student, editor, publicist, or princeling; with soldiers of fortune hovering around waiting, like vultures that have already a whiff of the carrion, from afar. Instead of a bird's-eye, the incoherent ma.s.s of details comes piecemeal, and you get the toad's-eye view;--till we apply the simple idea that behind it all is elemental human nature, with politics as a mere frame to the picture.

-- Look on Bismarck at this moment as one dealing with forces of human nature, the clash of many minds, ending by dominating over one and all, years hence, through his own inherent sagacity as a human being against other and weaker members of his kind--and we get at once a significant conception of the greatness of Bismarck's mentality, also of his innate craft, enabling him to triumph over a thousand oblique forces, many of them firmly entrenched, and from a logical point fully as defensible as were his own peculiar conceptions.

-- It was not, after all, what this man or that prince or some other ruler thought, but what Bismarck thought, that turned the balance.

A hundred instances could be offered to show that the men Bismarck was fighting had the better part of the argument, as mere argument; but between opinion and making that opinion stick is a wide gulf--however logical may be the argument.

-- Bismarck was for the ensuing twenty years pictured as a noisy disturber, but he was shrewd, very shrewd. He could call a man "liar,"

"thief," "scoundrel," "impostor," in virile speechmaking, or could pa.s.s him up with a shrug, all the while keeping a cold eye on the main chance, and in the end getting his own way because he was strong enough to get his way--and that is all the logic there is in the situation.

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This miracle he did indeed perform; he turned back the political clock to feudal days and gloriously set up "Divine-right," in the face of the intensely modern cry, "Let the People Rule!"

-- Bismarck's amazing career affords a cla.s.sical instance of what a strong man can do, even against the very spirit of his time!

So much the worse for that Zeitgeist! The jade had to come to him, at last, completely subdued, as in the "Taming of the Shrew."

-- As King's Man, Bismarck now preached "Divine-right" in an age of democratic ideas.

Thrones were falling everywhere; the inflammatory ideas of the French Revolution had wrested from monarchs the form, if not the substance, of const.i.tutional liberties for the ma.s.ses.

The people were clamoring for they knew not what; at any rate for some new experiment in the quest for happiness, which they believed could be attained through new forms of government. Bismarck fought the new order, and as late as A. D. 1870, restated the seemingly worn-out doctrine of "Divine-right." How did he accomplish this political miracle?

-- A strong leader, by tireless repet.i.tion of some idea, finally brings about faith in that idea. It does not follow that this leader must necessarily be wiser than the ma.s.ses. It is always his will to power, rather than the inherent validity of his ideas.

-- First, he stands alone with his idea, whatever it may be. Finally, one person is convinced? This is the beginning. Well, if one, why not two, then ten, then a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand?

-- And so the wonder grows.

-- At last, our stubborn man with the idea is believed! He now has his long-awaited day to prove the force of his contribution to human welfare.

-- There is a species of religious glamour over the old man's basic conception of respect for kings. The word king, for Bismarck, spells faith in discipline, obedience, loyalty to chosen leader--as against excesses sure to follow in turning over the Government to the rabble, according to the idea of the French Revolution. There is this condition to be made here: that Bismarck undoubtedly leaned as far in one direction as the old-line French Revolutionists did in another; Bismarck was an extremist no less than Danton, Marat, Robespierre. But there is also this distinction, in Bismarck's favor: He was a great constructive statesman and the French agitators turned out to be but a.s.sa.s.sins and political fools.

-- We spare no one in this a.n.a.lysis, neither Bismarck nor Robespierre.

Therefore, we boldly, here and now, call your attention to a certain strange fallacy in all political ideals.

-- The people expect some new form, or change of government, to make them happy and free. The machinery of legislation is the thing. It is proclaimed the great leveler.

-- Thus men eagerly try all manner of political enterprises, believing that ultimately in some plan of government, social equality will result. In the light of the anomaly that in spite of our efforts, we persist in reverence for "the good old" days, as against the iniquities of the moment, it is clear that either we deceive ourselves, or are forever wandering about in a fool's paradise.

-- Bismarck at least does not justify cynical d.a.m.nation. He was intensely human, and so was the King of Prussia. It is playing with race prejudice to call Prussia, after the French fashion, "That robber Prussia."

-- Nations act as do men individually, are swayed by forms of pride, pa.s.sion and prejudice. If every nation that robbed or stole should return its loot of land, to whom would it ultimately go?

-- The United States would not, at least, now be in possession of California. But for that matter, the Spaniards stole her from the Indians, and the Indians from the Aztecs, and the Aztecs from we know not whom. Always then, history justifies herself with the will to power--as manifested by the strongest!

-- Take it by and large, this miracle he did indeed perform: He turned back the political clock of Time to Feudal days, and gloriously set up "Divine-right," in the face of the intensely modern cry, "Let the people rule!"