Part 20

Again Bismarck, while making it the chief occupation of his life to study how the Plebs might be managed, has never stooped to such immoral means for this purpose as the French officials of the Second Empire employed. He was deeply interested in Napoleon III.'s experiments with universal suffrage. The whole system of plébiscites, official candidatures, prefectoral newspapers, and electoral districts, so arranged that peasant votes should neutralise those of Radical working-men, seemed to him “very pretty,” as he once told a disgusted Republican refugee. But the encouragement given by De Morny, De Persigny, and others to every kind of immorality that could amuse the people—frivolous newspapers, improper novels and plays, gambling clubs, and outrageous fashions in dress—this was a very different affair. De Morny was fond of quoting the anecdote about Alcibiades having cut off the tail of his dog to give the Athenians something to talk about, and during Bismarck's short stay in Paris as Ambassador in 1862, he and the Prussian statesman had more than one conversation about the art of ruling. Bismarck had the frankness to say that he looked upon the comedies of Dumas the younger, and indeed on most French plays of the lighter sort, as grossly corrupting to the public morals. “_Panem et circenses_,” smiled De Morny. “_Panem et saturnalia_,” muttered Bismarck.

Another point upon which De Morny and Bismarck could not agree, was about the qualities that are requisite in a public servant. De Morny cared nothing for character. The men whom he recommended for prefectships or posts in the diplomatic service were, for the most part, adventurers—brilliant, witty, _diseurs de rien_ and cajolers of the other sex. “A French Ambassador,” he maintained, “should always consider himself accredited _auprès des reines_.” Bismarck loathes ladies' men: and he had the poorest opinion of Napoleon III.'s diplomatists. His own ideal of a State functionary is the blameless man without debts or entanglements—laborious, but not pushing, well-educated but not abounding in ideas, a man in all things obedient. His sneering judgment on plenipotentiaries like M. Benedetti and the Duc de Gramont is well known. He called them “dancing dogs without collars.” They never seemed to have a master, he complained, “but stood up on their hind legs and performed their antics without authority from man alive. If they barked, you were sure to hear a voice from Paris crying to them to be quiet. If they fawned you might expect to see them receive some sly kick, warning them that they ought to be up and biting.” Bismarck conceived some liking and respect for Napoleon III., whom he saw to be better than his _entourage_. Had the Emperor's health remained good, the war of 1870 would doubtless never have taken place; but so early as 1862 Bismarck perceived that Napoleon III.'s bodily ailments were causing an indolence of mind that left the Emperor at the mercy of intriguing counsellors; and what he observed in his subsequent visits to Paris in 1867 and to Plombières in 1868, confirmed these impressions. His ceaseless study of France as the great enemy that would have to be coped with soon, moreover added to his deep and moody detestation of that country. When the formal declaration of war by France reached Berlin in July 1870, Count Bismarck was staying for a few days at Varzin. The news was communicated to him by a telegram which was put into his hands just as he was returning from a drive. He at once sprang into his carriage, to go to the railway station, and on his way through the village of Wussow, he saw the parish minister standing at the door of his manse. “I said nothing to him,” ejaculated Bismarck, in relating the story long afterwards to some friends, “but I just made a sign as of two sabre-cuts crosswise, and he quite understood.”

The pastor of Wussow understood the sign of the cross in sword-cuts to mean crusade, and as such the war against France was viewed by all good Prussians. Bismarck and the village clergyman were at one in regarding the French people as the Beast of the Apocalypse, and Paris as Babylon. Such sentiments are not incompatible with Christian piety, for there must be militants in the Church. But where Bismarck ceases to be a Christian in the common acceptance of that term, is in his exaggerated contempt for almost all men as individuals.[35]

His want of charity—we do not of course mean in almsgiving, for in this respect he is as generous as the Princess, his wife, allows him to be—is the most unamiable and disconcerting trait in his nature. Disconcerting because misanthrophy is an evidence of moral short-sightedness, begetting timidity and rendering a man incapable of forming disciples to carry on his work. Without trustfulness, a statesman can make no real friends. It may be said that uncharitableness like Bismarck's must be the result of many disenchantments; but a man who only keeps rooks and ravens must not complain that all birds are black. The men who were at different times Bismarck's most zealous helpmates—Count Harry Arnim, Herr Delbrück, Count Stolberg and Count Eulenborg—were all discarded as soon as they gave the smallest sign, not of mutiny, but of independence. Bismarck would not accept advice or remonstrance from them; he required on all occasions that blind obedience which is not loyal service, but servility. For the same cause he would never employ Herr Edward Lasker, whose great talents as a financier and parliamentary debater would have been of immense value to the monarchy. He has rejected the advances of Herr Bennigsen, the Hanoverian founder of the _Nationalverein_, who is now leader of the National Liberals; and those of Dr. Rudolph Gneist, who is one of the ablest politicians in Germany, but who had the misfortune to take the wrong side during the _Conflikt-Zeit_. Opposition, as Bismarck has often taken care to impress upon his hearers, shall never be _regierungsfähig_ so long as he holds office. He abominates the Parliamentary system which brings to power men who have begun life as demagogues agitating for the abolition of this and that, and who, afterwards, are obliged to make shameless recantations, or to quibble away their words. The contrary system of selecting for his assistants only men who have never sown political wild oats is, however, compelling Bismarck to rely now on such henchmen as Herr Von Puttkamer and Herr Hofmann. The former is the Chancellor's brother-in-law, an excellent subordinate, supple as a glove, but with no originality of mind or firmness that could enable him to remain Home Minister if he were not propped up in this post. Herr Hofmann is also a mere painstaking bureaucrat, who, if he did not hear the voice of command, would be quite inapt to think for himself. Of late Prince Bismarck is said to have been training his son, Count Herbert to act as his Secretary and to take his place by-and-by. Count Herbert is a clever man, but dynasties of _maires du palais_ have never succeeded in any country, and it is strange Bismarck should have forgotten that the Hohenzollern dynasty has owed its rapid rise to a respect for that principle which he is now ignoring, namely the selection of the best men without favoritism. If independence of mind and character have been eyed with suspicion by the Prussian kings, as they now are by the Chancellor, Germany would have had no Bismarck.

The popular idea of a genial, soldierly, blunt-spoken Bismarck is a wrong one. Bismarck can be jovial among friends and good-humoredly affable with strangers; but genial he is not. There is a sarcastic tone in his voice which grates on the ears of all who are brought in contact with him for the first time, and his unconcealed mistrust for the rectitude of all public men, of no matter what country, who do not happen to be in his good graces at the time, is too often offensive. It must be remembered that when Bismarck has quarrelled with public men, it has generally been because, having changed an opinion himself, he has been unable to persuade men to do the same at a moment's notice. Turn by turn, Free-trader and Protectionist, inclining one day to the Russian, another to the Austrian alliance, coquetting at one time with England, then with Italy, and even with France, he has ever been actuated by the sole desire to use every passing wind which might push the interest of his Government. He has declined to formulate any policy in details, because against such a policy parties might coalesce, whereas by veering and tacking often, he throws disunion among his opponents. He appropriates what is best in the new designs of this or that party, takes for his Sovereign and himself the credit of carrying them into execution, and then leaves the original promoters with a sense that power has gone out of them—that they have been played with, but that they have nothing to complain of.

This policy of variations, however, has exposed Bismarck to some cutting rebukes from loyal Prussians whose consciences were not acrobatic. The trouble with Count Harry Arnim began when this diplomatist—“_Der Affe_,” as he was nicknamed by his familiars—said to Countess Von Redern, at one of the Empress Augusta's private parties, that he had hitherto been trying to walk on his feet in Paris, but that from “his latest instructions he gathered that he was expected until further notice to walk on his hands.” The saying was reported to Bismarck and made “his three hairs bristle.” “The 'Ape' has only been employed, because we thought him quadrumanous,“ he exclaimed, and from that moment there was war between the two men.

Another time Bismarck had to bear a snub from a young nobleman of the House of Hatzfelt. This gentleman, being left in charge of a Legation during the absence of the Minister, sent home a despatch embodying views favorable to the policy which the Chancellor had, until then, been pursuing towards the country where the attaché was residing. But it so chanced that the Chief of the Legation had been summoned to Berlin on purpose to receive instructions for a change of policy; so that when the attaché's despatch arrived, it gave no pleasure in Wilhelmstrasse, and the Chancellor spoke testily of its writer as a ”_Schafsköpf_.” Hearing this, the attaché resigned. He was a young man of high spirit, who had many friends at Court, and it was pointed out to the Chancellor by an august peacemaker, that the young fellow had not been very well-treated. Somewhat grudgingly—for he does not like to make amends—the Chancellor was induced to send his Secretary to the ex-attaché offering to reinstate him. But the recipient of this dubious favor drew himself up stiffly and said: “Germany has not fallen to so low a point that she needs to be served by _Schafsköpf_; and for the rest, you may tell the Chancellor that I have not been trained to turn somersaults.”[36]

It has been mentioned that Bismarck has had to contend with many a boudoir cabal. The Empress Augusta's long antipathy to him is no secret, and the Chancellor has never had to congratulate himself much on the friendliness of the Crown Prince's and Princess's circle. The ill-will of royal ladies enlists that of many other persons influential in society; but it stands to Bismarck's honor that he has never used newspapers to combat these drawing-room foes. The revelations made to the public some years since by an ex-member of the “Reptile's Bureau” were no doubt in the main true, and they showed that the Chancellor had raised the art of “nobbling” the Press to a high pitch of perfection. Not only had he, all over Germany, newspapers supported in part out of the Secret Service Fund and inspired wholly by the Press Bureau, but he has been accused of employing hirelings on the staffs of newspapers reputed as independent, and through these he was in a position to procure the insertion of articles in foreign journals, these effusions being afterwards reprinted in German papers as genuine expressions of foreign opinion.

All this constituted a very powerful organization, which the Chancellor might have used with telling effect in fighting society caballers. But while he has not scrupled to direct the heaviest artillery of his newspapers and not unfrequently torpedo attacks against open political opponents, he would never let his difficulties with “_die Wespen_” as he called society aggressors, be made the subjects of Press comments. Newspapers, guilty of assailing members of the Imperial family or of the Court household, have been unsparingly prosecuted by his orders. “_Er is kein Journaliste!_” exclaimed a too zealous partisan-writer, who had gone to the Chancellerie with a proposal for creating in Berlin a newspaper like the Paris _Figaro_, “_er könne sich nicht auf die feine Malice zu verstehen_.” This may be rendered as, “He won't throw mud;” and it is no small compliment to the integrity of a statesman, whom his enemies are wont to describe as more astute than Machiavelli, and more unscrupulous than Richelieu.[37]

In the autumn of the present year the Pope gave a commission to the painter Lenbach to paint a portrait of Prince Bismarck. The Chancellor agreed to sit; the artist went several times to Varzin, and people have been asking ever since what is the meaning of this strange fancy of Leo XIII.'s to have a portrait of the arch-enemy of Rome, the formidable champion of the Kulturkampf. A French journalist has suggested that there is at the Vatican an artistic Index Expurgatorius—a _Galerie des Réprouvés_—and that Bismarck's portrait is to hang there in the place of honor, between that of Dositheus the Samaritan, and Isaac Laquedem the Wandering Jew.

It is more likely that the Pope aspires to some political _rapprochement_ with Germany, and if he have such a hope it must have come to him from the knowledge that the Chancellor would not object to a reconciliation. But if Bismarck consents to make peace with the Vatican, and to find some official post for Herr Windhorst, it would not be that any of his own private Lutheran prejudices against Rome have vanished. He is a doughty Protestant in whose religion there is no variableness, but he may veer on the Kulturkampf as he did on that of free trade, simply because, having failed, after doing his best, to crush the Catholics, he will see no use in recommencing the struggle. And whatever is useless seems to Bismarck a thing which should not be attempted, indeed, many of his great triumphs hitherto have been won by shaking hands with yesterday's enemy, and saying “Let us two stand together.” Before long the world may see Prince Bismarck recognise the Roman Catholic Church as one of the greatest living forces of Continental Conservatism, and enlist its services in the work of “dishing” both Liberals and Socialists. It is significant that in one of his few autumn speeches, Bismarck was heard quoting Joseph De Maistre's dictum about the Soldier and the Priest being the sentries of civilisation.—_Temple Bar._

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Lassalle was killed in a duel in 1864, at the age of thirty-nine.

[28] In the play, Charles V. has a long conference with Franz, but ends by saying of him what Bismarck must have said to himself about Lassalle: “The man is great, but his is not the greatness which I seek, and which I can employ.”

“Der mann ist gross, doch ist es nicht die Grösse, Welche ich suche und gebrauchen kann.”

[29] Karl Sand, a student of Erlangen, assassinated Kotzebue at Manheim in 1819, and having ineffectually tried to commit suicide, was executed in the following year. In striking Kotzebue, he meant, as he said, “to exterminate the apologist of despotism.”

[30] “Personne n'a de l'esprit, comme tout le monde.” “On peut avoir plus d'esprit qu'un autre, mais non plus d'esprit que tous les autres.”

[31] Prince Bismarck does not care much about the theatre, and it may be mentioned that when he visited Paris in 1867, Offenbach's “Grande Duchesse,” which, as a skit upon militaryism, made so many laugh, excited in him only anger. He was especially indignant at the song of “Here is the Sabre of my Sire.” “You can't expect a pair of Jews (Offenbach and Ludovic Halévy) to feel any reverence for military traditions,” he said; “but now 'Le Sabre de mon Père' will be associated with ludicrous ideas in the minds of Frenchmen, and old generals will be ashamed to give their swords to their sons on account of this odious jingle.” At this same visit to Paris, however, Bismarck saw a performance of Sardou's “Nos bons Villageois” at the Gymnase, and he laughed loudly at the scene in which a Colonel, who is Mayor of his village, makes all the municipal Councillors sign a document acknowledging that they are “a troop of donkeys.”

[32] Two of Bismarck's heroes in history are Wallenstein and William the Silent. He once said of Marshal von Moltke: “Lucky man, he need only make his one speech a year in the Reichstag and then the echoes of cannon seem to be speaking for him!” Marshal von Moltke, however, speaks as well as he writes. His _Letters_ to his late wife, while he was travelling in Turkey and the Danubian Provinces, are faultless in their composition, instructive, amusing, and models of style. All the qualities which distinguish them are to be found in the Marshal's speeches, which are clear, short, and captivate the attention, not less by what they contain than by the tuneful voice in which they are uttered.

[33] Some years ago, when a young Prussian officer of noble family was turned out of the army for declining a challenge on conscientious grounds, an English clergyman sent Prince Bismarck a copy of the Diary of Mr. Adams, who was American Minister of the Court of St. James's at the beginning of this century. Mr. Adams speaks with admiration of the efforts which were being made to put down duelling in England by force of public opinion. Prince Bismarck, in courteously acknowledging the book, wrote: “There is much good sense in England, but you have not done away with duelling, as you suppose. There is more of it among your schoolboys, who fight with fists, than among those of any other country; and this may prevent the necessity for much fighting in after-life. English boys take rank at school according to their pluck, and hold that rank afterwards.”

[34] M. Teste had been one of Louis Philippe's Ministers. Getting into disgrace through financial jobberies, which subjected him to criminal proceedings, he had to resign his portfolio and retire altogether from public life. To revenge himself on Louis Philippe's family (though no member of it had had any share in his ruin) he privately drew up for Napoleon III. the report that was required to justify the seizure of the Orleans property. No respectable lawyer could be found to do this work.

[35] After a dinner at Count Lehndorff's the conversation once fell upon religious topics, and Bismarck exclaimed: “I cannot understand how without faith in a revealed religion we can believe in God; nor do I see how, without faith in a God, Dispenser of all good and Supreme Judge, a man can do his duty. If I were not a Christian, I should not remain at my post. It can yield me nothing more in the way of honors; the exercise of power is no longer a pleasure but a worry, since I can never carry out the simplest scheme without struggles, trying to a man of my age and weak health. If I were ambitious of popularity, I could get it by retiring. All men would speak well of me if I lived in retirement. I should then perhaps have more real power than I have now. I should certainly have more power to help my friends. But it is because I believe in a Divine dispensation which has marked out Germany for great destinies that I remain at my post. I have a duty to perform and must continue to do it so long as I am permitted. If I am stricken down and rendered incapable for work, then I shall know that my time of rest has come; but not till then.”

[36] Bismarck has never had much veneration either for diplomatists or diplomacy. Here is an extract of a letter which he wrote to his wife in 1851 when he was at Frankfort: “In the art of saying nothing and in a great many words, I am making rapid progress. I write many pages of letters which read like leading articles, and if Manteuffel, after perusing them, can tell what they are about, he certainly knows more than I. Every one of us pretends to believe that his colleagues are full of ideas and plans; and yet all the time the whole body of us knows nothing, and each is aware that the others know nothing. No man, not even the most malicious sceptic of a democrat, can believe what charlatanism and big pretence is all this diplomacy.”

It may be remarked, in view of Prince Bismarck's opinions on duelling, that for an affront like that which he offered to the young attaché, a French Admiral, the Bailli de Suffren, was killed by a lieutenant. The affront was offered on the high seas; the subaltern bore it at the time without a murmur, but on returning to France he resigned and sent the admiral a challenge, saying: “You are no longer my superior now. We are both gentlemen and you owe me a reparation.” In Germany this would have been impossible, for the attaché must have belonged either to the _Landwehr_ or the _Landsturm_, so that the Chancellor as a general of the _Landwehr_ remained always his superior. Thus in military countries one of the chief excuses for duelling—namely, that it enables a man to punish the insolence of office—cannot be urged.

[37] A fact that speaks well for Prince Bismarck is that ladies are not afraid of him. Napoleon I. made women cower; they knew that his Corsican spitefulness would disdain no means of retaliation for a slight or an injury. But ladies have often been maliciously epigrammatical, or downright saucy to the Chancellor, without having anything worse to fear from him than scowls and grumbles.

A FEW NOTES ON PERSIAN ART.

The limner's art in Persia has few patrons, and the professional draughtsman of the present day in that country must needs be an enthusiast, and an art-lover for art's sake, as his remuneration is so small as to be a mere pittance; and the man who can live by his brush must be clever indeed. The Persians are an eminently practical people, and buy nothing unless it be of actual utility; hence the artist has generally to sink to the mere decorator; and as all, even the very rich, expect a great deal for a little money, the work must be scamped in order to produce a great effect for a paltry reward. The artists, moreover, are all self-taught, or nearly so, pupilage merely consisting of the drudgery of preparing the canvas, panel, or other material for the master, mixing the colors, filling in backgrounds, varnishing, &c. There are no schools of art, no lectures, no museums of old or contemporary masters, no canons of taste, no drawing from nature or the model, no graduated studies, or system of any kind. There is, however, a certain custom of adhering to tradition and the conventional; and most of the art workmen of Iran, save the select few, are mere reproducers of the ideas of their predecessors.

The system of perspective is erroneous; but neither example nor argument can alter the views of a Persian artist on this subject. Leaving aside the wonderful blending of colors in native carpets, tapestries, and embroideries, all of which improve by the toning influence of age, the modern Persian colorist is remarkable for his skill in the constant use of numerous gaudy and incongruous colors, yet making one harmonious and effective whole, which surprises us by its daring, but compels our reluctant admiration.