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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 83

Von Busch's "Bismarck."

Von Busch's "Bismarck."

Moritz Von Busch is Bismarck's Boswell. He fills up the interstices in our knowledge of the most remarkable man of this generation.

Hezekiel's Life of Bismarck, with its graphic little engravings, presents Bismarck, as a young man, in a short cut beard all round his face, besides the familiar moustache. He returned to the beard a couple of years ago, but it appears he has been shaving again.

During the intrigues before and in the course of the war between Russia and England and France, Bismarck was a Prussian diplomatic agent at Frankfort. Recently published correspondence shows that he had a decided influence in the temporising policy of Prussia, so severely criticised by Prince Albert, in letters published with Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort.

As Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Bismarck obtained that ascendancy over Prince Gortchakoff which he used afterwards with such effect. It helped to keep Russia back in the wars of 1866 and 1870. Gortchakoff wanted this kindness to be repaid by Bismarck's good offices in the complications of 1877-8. The good feeling between Bismarck and Gortchakoff was marred by the independent attitude which the former adopted. At the Berlin Congress he was master of the situation, arbiter between Gortchakoff and Beaconsfield.

After his Russian experiences, Bismarck was Ambassador at Paris. He cajoled the French Emperor, and obtained a full knowledge of how the Empire was riddled and worm-eaten. Metternich has cynically admitted in his memoirs that he was page 20 only luring the first French Emperor on to his doom in the negotiations which preceded Austria's alliance with Prussia, Russia, and England. We ought to apply the lessons of history to present experience. Klaczko's work on the "Two Chancellors" ably delineates the struggle in which Bismarck obtained the whiphand, and got to windward of Gortchakoff.

Bismarck's apparently brutal candour hides the subtlety of—well, we ransack the creation in vain. Look how he played upon Austria, as a pipe, drawing her into the war against Denmark. He rightly judged that the vapourings of England, the absurd despatches of Lord John Russell as Foreign Minister, meant nothing. England and France combined could then have placed an effective bridle on the mighty German. But fate opens the career to the man.

The war of 1866 against Austria grew naturally out of the affairs of 1864. Bismarck appears to have sketched out his whole course beforehand—the humiliation of Austria and France. How cleverly he held France back in 1866. The French Emperor judged that Austria would be victorious, or, at all events, that his opportunity would be to step in as umpire between exhausted combatants.

Out of this war again, grew that with France. Bismarck remained at the helm of Europe.

While he was Ambassador in Paris, he stood one evening on a balcony with a brilliant circle. Some one remarked on the beauty of the Dome of the Invalides, tinged with gold by the setting sun. "It is like a Prussian helmet," said Bismarck.

Prosper-Merimée relates how he strolled with the French Emperor and Bismarck on the sands by the seashore, at Biarritz. Bismarck was magniloquently unfolding his schemes for the rearrangement of Europe, for he talked ever with seeming recklessness. The Emperor pinched Merimée's arm with glee, as much as to say, "What a bombastic fool!"

A dozen volumes are published of Bismarck's Speeches in the Reichstag. He has spoken in both Houses of Parliament, as Thiers used to address both the Senate and Legislative Assembly in the earlier years of the present French Republic. Bismarck's Parliamentary speaking is quite original. The quarter of a century of his experience in this line has not moulded him into any macadamised form, like the stereotyped stylo of the House of Commons. He is as blunt, rugged, impulsive, and peculiar in 1885 as he was in 1861. These qualities come out most in his speeches to that branch of the Reichstag which answers to the Commons, where he figures by far the most often. He is fond of interlarding English and French, with German expressions taken from the vulgar dialect, the essence of which is so expressive as to be untranslatable. page 21 He sits at a little table by himself, jotting down his ideas on appropriately big sheets of paper, with a big blue pencil. Lasker, the Jewish Liberal, was his most effective antagonist, indeed, the only one who has shaken him. But the German M.P.'s are poor fellows. There is nothing of the free atmosphere of debate, like that in the House of Commons, or an Australian Legislature. The members speak essays, or prefer to read them. Burke used to be called the "Dinner Bell of the Commons." German Parliamentarians are nearly all of the Dinner Bell school. They are too nervous and decorous for anything like a real debate. One sighs for a Clemenceau, a Pelletan, a de Cassagnac, among these stolid foolscap men. It is a School of Pedagogues, with a Great Bear in the midst.