BISMARCK.*
Ma. GRANT Roaearsores able and brilliant study of Bismarck appears opportunely. He declares that it is not a product of the war, that he began it long ago and formed his conclusions before the war broke out. This we can well believe, for it is obviously the result of very careful study of the masses of printed matter by or relating to the Iron Chancellor. At the same time, we cannot affect to regard the book as having no bearing on the war. Bismarck's statecraft was obviously one of the fundamental causes of the catastrophe, and it is impossible for us now to discuss his policy without prejudice, because the world is suffering from its evil consequences. Some people are tempted to contrast Bismarck favourably with his successors, and to suggest that, if the pilot had not been dropped in 1890 but had been granted perpetual youth, Germany would have developed peacefully instead of challenging Europe. It is true that Germany's present rulers are pitiful bunglers in diplomacy as compared with Bismarck, and that they have made every possible mistake in their political strategy and tactics. But it is very far from true that they differ from Bismarck in • Bismarck. By O. Grant Robertson. " 3Iakers of the Nineteenth Century " Series. London : COngt4410 IPA C9. [Oa 4d, 4961
principle. There is nothing to choose between Bismarck and hi followers in the utter lack of morality which is their dominant characteristic. Bismarck was guided solely by reasons of State. In his political capacity he never showed the least trace of chivalry or philanthropy or unselfishness. His sole object was to make Prussia the head and chief of a united Germany, and he oared nothing for humanity outside Prussia, or, indeed, outside the narrow circle of the Prussian Court. We cannot imagine Bismarck taking a passionate interest in the efforts of a foreign people to free itself from alien rule, as Palmerston, for example, showed in the liberation of Belgium and of Italy. Bismarck was unquestionably a greater man than Palmerston, as the world measures greatness ; but it is already apparent that the English statesman's instinct was sounder than the German's, and that his policy, though erratic, was essen- tially modern, whereas Bismarck, with all his immense talent, sought to put new life into a mode of government which Europe has long outgrown.
One of the great merits of Mr. Grant Robertson's book is that it gives prominence to Bismarck's domestic policy. We can all see now that Bismarck's destruction of Liberalism in Prussia in the " sixties " of last century was far more disastrous both for Germany and for Europe than his Machiavellian diplomacy. For if the Prussian Landtag had developed on Constitutional lines into a real Parliament such as even Austria possesses, there would have been some hope that Prussia might come into the European system. Had the Prussian people acquired some share in the government of their country, the Prussian rulers would gradually have been forced to modify the methods that estranged their neighbours. Demo- cracies are not always peaceful, but they are as a rule responsive to fair dealing, and are incapable of sustained deceitfulness and bad faith. We have no reason to think well of the modern Prussians, but we can admit freely the truth of the author's contention that the Prussians of fifty years ago showed a desire for democratic insti_ tutions and some capacity for using them. If the Prussian Liberals of that day had persevered and succeeded, the history of Europe would have been very different. That they failed utterly was, in the main, the work of Bismarck. The struggle between him as Minister-President of Prussia and the Liberal majority in the Landtag, over the Army Estimates, was precisely similar to the struggle between Charles I. and his Parliaments. If we wish to know what would have happened to England if Strafford had succeeded in his policy of " Thorough," we may read the answer in the Prussia of Bismarck The Prussian Strafford, backed by a less irresolute Monarch than Charles and by a far larger Army than the Stuarts could boast, set the Parliament at defiance, levied the taxes without Parliamentary sanction, took arbitrary measures against all critics, and finally overwhelmed the opposition in the patriotic exultation provoked by a successful war. If Charles had won the " Bishop's War " against the Scots, instead of losing it, he might have set his tyranny on a firm basis, although we naturally like to think that Britons never would have been slaves in any conceivable circumstances. Bismarck, however, skilfully con- trived a war with Denmark, a war with Austria, and then a war with France, and used the victories, which from the German people's standpoint were desirable, as the means of establishing a despotism, which the people certainly did not want. It is just as true to say that his foreign policy was designed to further his domestic policy as it is to say that he desired autocracy at home in order to work uncontrolled for a greater Prussia and a united Germany. His famous remark that " Germany has its eyes not on Prussia's Liberalism but on its might. . . . The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and resolutions of majorities—that was the blunder of 1848 and 1849—but by blood and iron," was made in almost his first speech as Minister-President in September, 1862, in a debate on the Army Bill which the Landtag declined to pass. As the author says, " It was a warning to Germany as well as to the Prussian Landtag ; it was a concentrated condemnation of all, and not merely the Liberal, methods hitherto employed ; it poured contempt on reform by ` moral penetration ' and government by consent of the governed. It was the summary of the creed that the State stood. for power, and that in political problems force, not right, was the sovereign remedy."
It was, unhappily for Prussia, Germany, and Europe, the creed that prevailed, and that has enthralled two generations of Germans. By yielding to the tempter, Prussia gained glory and power and riches but lost her soul—and the tempter was Bismarck.
We shall not attempt to discuss the long and complex story of his career, which Mr. Grant Robertson tells very clearly and dis- passionately. But we may draw attention to his brief survey of Bismarck's views in his retirement, between 1890 and 1898, when the Emperor was beginning to follow a " new course " and to see visions of " world-power." The old statesman dreaded the aliena- tion of Italy and a quarrel with Great Britain. In his last year he said that " Nothing could be more strongly opposed to Germany's interest than to enter upon more or less daring and adventurens enterprises, guided merely by the desire to have a finger in every pie, to flatter the vanity of the nations or to please the arabitions of those who rule it."
And yet, as the author says, Bismarck's disciples could retort that they were merely applying his principles and methods in wider spheres :— " The young generation of the new Germany felt by a true and inexorable logic which it had learned from the ex-Chancellor that if a State's needs constitute its rights, and if the realization of those rights can only be achieved by force, a world-empire could be made, and only be made, by precisely the same methods as had made the German Empire, and by none other."
Thus, if Bismarck's successors, in carrying his principles to their logical conclusion, have brought death and destruction on Europe and earned for Germany the detestation of mankind, the true author of the crime was Bismarck. He was a great man, a very great man, but greatness that works for evil must be unsparingly condemned if history is to have any moral value at all. Germany would be a far happier country to-day if the Prussian Minister- President of 1862 had been a Cavern., a Lincoln, a Pitt, instead of a Junker of genius like Bismarck.
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