Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

My first glimpse of Bismarck was obtained during one of my journeys through middle Germany, about the time, I think, of the Franco-Prussian War. Arriving at the Kissingen junction, we found a crowd gathered outside the barriers, and all gazing at a railway-carriage about to be attached to our train. Looking toward this, I recognized the face and form of the great North-German statesman. He was in the prime of life—sturdy, hearty, and happy in the presence of his wife and children. The people at the station evidently knew what was needed; for hardly had he arrived when waiters appeared, bearing salvers covered with huge mugs of foaming beer. Thereupon Bismarck took two of the mugs in immediate succession; poured their contents down his throat, evidently with great gusto; and a burly peasant just back of me, unable longer to restrain his admiration, soliloquized in a deep, slow, guttural, reverberating rumble: ``A-a-a-ber er sieht sehr-r-r gut aus.'' So it struck me also; the waters of Kissingen had evidently restored the great man, and he looked like a Titan ready for battle.

My personal intercourse with him began in 1879, when, as chancellor of the German Empire, he received me as minister of the United States. On my entering his workroom, he rose; and it seemed to me that I had never seen another man so towering save Abraham Lincoln. On either side of him were his two big, black dogs, the Reichshunde; and, as he put out his hand with a pleasant smile, they seemed to join kindly in the welcome.

His first remark was that I seemed a young man to undertake the duties of a minister, to which I made the trite reply that time would speedily cure that defect. The conversation then ran, for a time, upon commonplace subjects, but finally struck matters of interest to both our countries.

There were then, as ever since, a great number of troublesome questions between the two nations, and among them those relating to Germans who, having gone over to the United States just at the military age, had lived there merely long enough to acquire citizenship, and had then hastened back to Germany to enjoy the privileges of both countries without discharging the duties of either. These persons had done great harm to the interests of bona-fide German-Americans, and Bismarck evidently had an intense dislike for them. This he showed then and afterward; but his tendencies to severity toward them were tempted {sic} by the minister of foreign affairs, Von B<u:>low, one of the most reasonable men in public business with whom I have ever had to do, and father of the present chancellor, who greatly resembles him.

But Bismarck's feeling against the men who had acquired American citizenship for the purpose of evading their duties in both countries did not prevent his taking a great interest in Germans who had settled in the United States and, while becoming good Americans, had preserved an interest in the Fatherland. He spoke of these, with a large, kindly feeling, as constituting a bond between the two nations. Among other things, he remarked that Germans living in the United States become more tractable than in the land of their birth; that revolutionists thus become moderates, and radicals conservatives; that the word Einigkeit (union) had always a charm for them; that it had worked both ways upon them for good, the union of States in America leading them to prize the union of states in Germany, and the evils of disunion in Germany, which had been so long and painful, leading them to abhor disunion in America.

The conversation then fell into ordinary channels, and I took leave after another hearty shake of the hand and various kind assurances. A few days later came an invitation to dinner with him; and I prized this all the more because it was not to be an official, but a family dinner, and was to include a few of his most intimate friends in the ministry and the parliament. On the invitation it was stated that evening dress was not to be worn; and on my arrival, accompanied by Herr von Schl<o:>tzer, at that time the German minister in Washington, I found all the guests arrayed in simple afternoon costume. The table had a patriarchal character. At the head sat the prince; at his side, in the next seat but one, his wife; while between them was the seat assigned me, so that I enjoyed to the full the conversation of both. The other seats at the head of the table were occupied by various guests; and then, scattered along down, were members of the family and some personages in the chancery who stood nearest the chief. The conversation was led by him, and soon took a turn especially interesting. He asked me whether there had ever been a serious effort to make New York the permanent capital of the nation. I answered that there had not; that both New York and Philadelphia were, for a short period at the beginning of our national history, provisional capitals; but that there was a deep-seated idea that the permanent capital should not be a commercial metropolis, and that unquestionably the placing of it at Washington was decided, not merely by the central position of that city, but also by the fact that it was an artificial town, never likely to be a great business center; and I cited Thomas Jefferson's saying, ``Great cities are great sores.'' He answered that in this our founders showed wisdom; that the French were making a bad mistake in bringing their national legislature back from Versailles to Paris; that the construction of the human body furnishes a good hint for arrangements in the body politic; that, as the human brain is held in a strong inclosure, and at a distance from the parts of the body which are most active physically, so the brain of the nation should be protected with the greatest care, and should not be placed in the midst of a great, turbulent metropolis. To this I assented, but said that during my attendance at sessions of the French legislative bodies, both in my old days at Paris and more recently at Versailles, it seemed to me that their main defects are those of their qualities; that one of the most frequent occupations of their members is teasing one another, and that when they tease one another they are wonderfully witty; that in the American Congress and in the British Parliament members are more slow to catch a subtle comment or scathing witticism; that the members of American and British assemblies are more like large grains of cannon- powder, through which ignition extends slowly, so that there comes no sudden explosion; whereas in the French Assembly the members are more like minute, bright grains of rifle-powder, which all take fire at the same moment, with instant detonation, and explosions sometimes disastrous. He assented to this, but insisted that the curse of French assemblies had been the tyranny of city mobs, and especially of mobs in the galleries of their assemblies; that the worst fault possible in any deliberative body is speaking to the galleries; that a gallery mob is sure to get between the members and the country, and virtually screen off from the assembly the interests of the country. To this I most heartily assented.

I may say here that there had not then been fully developed in our country that monstrous absurdity which we have seen in these last few years—national conventions of the two parties trying to deliberate in the midst of audiences of twelve or fifteen thousand people; a vast mob in the galleries, often noisy, and sometimes hysterical, frequently seeking to throw the delegates off their bearings, to outclamor them, and to force nominations upon them.

A little later, as we discussed certain recent books, I re- ferred to Jules Simon's work on Thiers's administration. Bismarck said that Thiers, in the treaty negotiations at Versailles, impressed him strongly; that he was a patriot; that he seemed at that time like a Roman among Byzantines.

This statement astonished me. If ever there existed a man at the opposite pole from Bismarck, Thiers was certainly that man. I had studied him as a historian, observed him as a statesman, and conversed with him as a social being; and he had always seemed, and still seems, to me the most noxious of all the greater architects of ruin that France produced during the latter half of the nineteenth century—and that is saying much. His policy was to discredit every government which he found existing, in order that its ruins might serve him as a pedestal; and, while he certainly showed great skill in mitigating the calamities which he did so much to cause, his whole career was damning.

By his ``History of the French Revolution'' he revived the worst of the Revolution legend, and especially the deification of destructiveness; by his ``History of the Consulate and of the Empire,'' and his translation of the body of Napoleon to France, he effectively revived the Napoleonic legend. The Queen of the French, when escaping from the Tuileries in 1848, was entirely right in reproaching him with undermining the constitutional monarchy of 1830; and no man did more than he to arouse and maintain the anti-German spirit which led to the Franco-Prussian War.