Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

From time to time, the town, and even the empire, was aroused by news that he was in a fit of illness or ill nature, and insisting on resigning. On such occasions the old Emperor generally drove to the chancellor's palace in the Wilhelmstrasse, and, in his large, kindly, hearty way, got the great man out of bed, put him in good humor, and set him going again. On one of these occasions, happening to meet Rudolf von Gneist, who had been, during a part of Bismarck's career, on very confidential terms with him, I asked what the real trouble was. ``Oh,'' said Gneist, ``he has eaten too many plover's eggs (Ach, er hat zu viel Kibitzeier gegessen).'' This had reference to the fact that certain admirers of the chancellor in the neighborhood of the North Sea were accustomed to send him, each year, a large basket of plovers' eggs, of which he was very fond; and this diet has never been considered favorable to digestion.

This reminds me that Gneist on one occasion told me another story, which throws some light on the chancellor's habits. Gneist had especial claims on Americans. As the most important professor of Roman law at the university he had welcomed a long succession of American students; as a member of the imperial parliament, of the Prussian legislature, and of the Berlin town council, he had shown many kindnesses to American travelers; and as the representative of the Emperor William in the arbitration between the United States and Great Britain on our north- western boundary, he had proved a just judge, deciding in our favor. Therefore it was that, on the occasion of one of the great Thanksgiving dinners celebrated by the American colony, he was present as one of the principal guests. Near him was placed a bottle of Hermitage, rather a heavy, heady wine. Shortly after taking his seat, he said to me with a significant smile, ``That is some of the wine I sent to Bismarck, and it did not turn out well.'' ``How was that?'' I asked. ``Well,'' he said, ``one day I met Bismarck and asked him about his health. He answered, `It is wretched; I can neither eat nor sleep.' I replied, `Let me send you something that will help you. I have just received a lot of Hermitage, and will send you a dozen bottles. If you take a COUPLE OF GLASSES each day with your dinner, it will be the best possible tonic, and will do you great good.' Sometime afterward,'' continued Gneist, ``I met him again, and asked how the wine agreed with him. `Oh,' said Bismarck, `not at all; it made me worse than ever.' `Why,' said I, `how did you take it?' `Just as you told me,' replied Bismarck, `A COUPLE OF BOTTLES each day with my dinner.' ''

Bismarck's constant struggle against the diseases which beset him became pathetic. He once asked me how I managed to sleep in Berlin; and on my answering him he said—``Well, I can never sleep in Berlin at night when it is quiet; but as soon as the noise begins, about four o'clock in the morning, I can sleep a little and get my rest for the day.''

It was frequently made clear that the Emperor William and the German officials were not the only ones to experience the results of Bismarck's ill health: the diplomatic corps, and among them myself, had sometimes to take it into account.

Bismarck was especially kind to Americans, and, above all, to the American diplomatic representatives. To this there was but one exception, my immediate successor, and that was a case in which no fault need be imputed to either side. That Bismarck's feeling toward Americans generally was good is abundantly proven, and especially by such witnesses as Abeken, Sidney Whitman, and Moritz Busch, the last of whom has shown that, while the chancellor was very bitter against sundry German princes who lingered about the army and lived in Versailles at the public expense, he seemed always to rejoice in the presence of General Sheridan and other compatriots of ours who were attached to the German headquarters by a tie of much less strength.

But, as I have already hinted, there was one thing which was especially vexatious to him; and this was the evasion, as he considered it, of duty to the German Fatherland by sundry German-Americans. One day I received a letter from a young man who stated his case as follows: He had left his native town in Alsace-Lorraine just before arriving at the military age; had gone to the United States; had remained there, not long enough to learn English, but just long enough to obtain naturalization; and had then lost no time in returning to his native town. He had been immediately thrown into prison; and thence he wrote me, expressing his devotion to the American flag, his pride in his American citizenship,—and his desire to live in Germany. I immediately wrote to the minister of foreign affairs, stating the man's case, and showing that it came under the Bancroft treaties, or at least under the construction of them which the German Government up to that time had freely allowed. To this I received an answer that the Bancroft treaties, having been made before Alsace-Lorraine was annexed to the empire, did not apply to these new provinces, and that the youth was detained as a deserter. To this I replied that, although the minister's statement was strictly true, the point had been waived long before in our favor; that in no less than eight cases the German Government had extended the benefit of the Bancroft treaties over Alsace-Lorraine; and that in one of these cases the acting minister of foreign affairs had declared the intention of the government to make this extension permanent.

But just at this period, after the death of Baron von B<u:>low, who had been most kindly in all such matters, the chancellor had fallen into a curious way of summoning eminent German diplomatists from various capitals of Europe into the ministry of foreign affairs for a limited time—trying them on, as it were. These gentlemen were generally very agreeable; but on this occasion I had to deal with one who had been summoned from service at one of the lesser German courts, and who was younger than most of his predecessors. To my surprise, he brushed aside all the precedents I had cited, and also the fact that a former acting minister of foreign affairs had distinctly stated that, as a matter of comity, the German Government proposed to consider the Bancroft treaties as applying permanently to Alsace-Lorraine. Neither notes nor verbal remonstrances moved him. He was perfectly civil, and answered my arguments, in every case, as if he were about to yield, yet always closed with a ``but''—and did nothing. He seemed paralyzed. The cause of the difficulty was soon evident. It was natural that Bismarck should have a feeling that a young man who had virtually deserted the German flag just before reaching the military age deserved the worst treatment which the law allowed. His own sons had served in the army, and had plunged into the thickest of the fight, one of them receiving a serious wound; and that this young Alsatian Israelite should thus escape service by a trick was evidently hateful to him. That the chancellor himself gave the final decision in this matter was the only explanation of the fact that this particular acting minister of foreign affairs never gave me an immediate answer.

The matter became more and more serious. The letter of the law was indeed on Bismarck's side; but the young man was an American citizen, and the idea of an American citizen being held in prison was anything but pleasant to me, and I knew that it would be anything but pleasant to my fellow-citizens across the water. I thought on the proud words, ``civis Romanus sum,'' and of the analogy involved in this case. My position was especially difficult, because I dared not communicate the case fully to the American State Department of that period. Various private despatches had got out into the world and made trouble for their authors, and even so eminent a diplomatist as Mr. George P. Marsh at Rome came very near being upset by one. My predecessor, Bayard Taylor, was very nearly wrecked by another; and it was the escape and publication of a private despatch which plunged my immediate successor into his quarrel with Bismarck, and made his further stay in Germany useless: I therefore stopped short with my first notification to the State Department—to the effect that a naturalized American had been imprisoned for desertion in Alsace-Lorraine, and that the legation was doing its best to secure his release. To say more than this involved danger that the affair might fall into the hands of sensation-mongers, and result in howls and threats against the German Government and Bismarck; and I knew well that, if such howls and threats were made, Bismarck would never let this young Israelite out of prison as long as he lived.

It seemed hardly the proper thing, serious as the case was, to ask for my passports. It was certain that, if this were done, there would come a chorus of blame from both sides of the Atlantic. Deciding, therefore, to imitate the example of the old man in the school-book, who, before throwing stones at the boy in his fruit-tree, threw turf and grass, I secured from Washington by cable a leave of absence, but, before starting, saw some of my diplomatic colleagues, who were wont to circulate freely and talk much, stated the main features of the case to them, and said that I was ``going off to enjoy myself''; that there seemed little use for an American minister in a country where precedents and agreements were so easily disregarded. Next day I started for the French Riviera. The journey was taken leisurely, with interesting halts at Cologne and Aix-la-Chapelle; and, as I reached the hotel in Paris, a telegram was handed me—``Your man in Alsace-Lorraine is free.'' It was evident that the chancellor had felt better and had thought more leniently of the matter, and I had never another difficulty of the sort during the remainder of my stay.

The whole weight of testimony as regards Bismarck's occasional severity is to the effect that, stern and persistent as he was, he had much tenderness of heart; but as to the impossibility of any nation, government, or press scaring or driving him, I noticed curious evidences during my stay. It was well known that he was not unfriendly to Russia; indeed, he more than once made declarations which led some of the Western powers to think him too ready to make concessions to Russian policy in the East; but his relations to Prince Gortchakoff, the former Russian chancellor, were not of the best; and after the Berlin Conference the disappointment of Russia led to various unfriendly actions by Russian authorities and individuals of all sorts, from the Czar down. There was a general feeling that it was dangerous for Germany to resent this, and a statesman of another mold would have deprecated these attacks, or sought to mitigate them. Not so Bismarck: he determined to give as good as was sent; and, for a very considerable time he lost no chance to show that the day of truckling by Germany to her powerful neighbor was past. This became at last so marked that bitter, and even defiant, presentation of unpalatable truths regarding Russia, in the press inspired from the chancery, seemed the usual form in which all Russian statesmen, and especially members of the imperial house, were welcomed in Berlin. One morning, taking up my copy of the paper most directly inspired by the chancellor, I found an article on the shortcomings of Russia, especially pungent—almost vitriolic. It at once occurred to me to look among the distinguished arrivals to see what Muscovite was in town; and my search was rewarded by the discovery that the heir to the imperial crown, afterward Alexander III, had just arrived and was staying a day or two in the city.