Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1

by Andrew Dickson White

When Bismarck uttered his famous saying, ``We Germans fear God and naught beside,'' he simply projected into the history of Germany his own character. Fearlessness was a main characteristic of his from boyhood, and it never left him in any of the emergencies of his later life.

His activity through the press interested me much at times. It was not difficult to discern his work in many of the ``inspired'' editorials and other articles. I have in my possession sundry examples of the originals of these, —each page is divided into two columns,—the first the work of one of his chosen scribes, the second copiously amended in the chancellor's own hand, and always with a gain in lucidity and pungency.

Of the various matters which arose between us, one is perhaps worthy of mention, since it has recently given rise to a controversy between a German-American journalist and Bismarck's principal biographer.

One morning, as I sat in dismay before my work-table, loaded with despatches, notes, and letters, besides futilities of every sort, there came in the card of Lothar Bucher. Everything else was, of course, thrown aside. Bucher never made social visits. He was the pilot-fish of the whale, and a visit from him ``meant business.''

Hardly had he entered the room when his business was presented: the chancellor wished to know if the United States would join Germany and Great Britain in representations calculated to stop the injuries to the commerce of all three nations caused by the war then going on between Chile and Peru.

My answer was that the United States could not join other powers in any such effort; that our government might think it best to take separate action; and that it would not interfere with any proper efforts of other powers to secure simple redress for actual grievances; but that it could not make common cause with other powers in any such efforts. To clinch this, I cited the famous passage in Washington's Farewell Address against ``entangling alliances with foreign powers'' as American gospel, and added that my government would also be unalterably opposed to anything leading to permanent occupation of South American territory by any European power, and for this referred him to the despatches of John Quincy Adams and the declarations of President Monroe.

He seemed almost dumfounded at this, and to this day I am unable to decide whether his surprise was real or affected. He seemed to think it impossible that we could take any such ground, or that such a remote, sentimental interest could outweigh material interests so pressing as those involved in the monkey-and-parrot sort of war going on between the two South American republics. As he was evidently inclined to dwell on what appeared to him the strangeness of my answer, I said to him: ``What I state to you is elementary in American foreign policy; and to prove this I will write, in your presence, a cable despatch to the Secretary of State at Washington, and you shall see it and the answer it brings.''

I then took a cable blank, wrote the despatch, and showed it to him. It was a simple statement of the chancellor's proposal, and on that he left me. In the evening came the answer. It was virtually my statement to Bucher, and I sent it to him just as I had received it. That was the last of the matter. No further effort was made in the premises, so far as I ever heard, either by Germany or Great Britain. It has recently been stated, in an American magazine article, that Bismarck, toward the end of his life, characterized the position taken by Mr. Cleveland regarding European acquisition of South American territory as something utterly new and unheard of. To this, Poschinger, the eminent Bismarck biographer, has replied in a way which increases my admiration for the German Foreign Office; for it would appear that he found in the archives of that department a most exact statement of the conversation between Bucher and myself, and of the action which followed it. So precise was his account that it even recalled phrases and other minutiae of the conversation which I had forgotten, but which I at once recognized as exact when thus reminded of them. The existence of such a record really revives one's child- like faith in the opening of the Great Book of human deeds and utterances at ``the last day.''

Perhaps the most interesting phase of Bismarck's life which a stranger could observe was his activity in the imperial parliament.

That body sits in a large hall, the representatives of the people at large occupying seats in front of the president's desk, and the delegates from the various states—known as the Imperial Council—being seated upon an elevated platform at the side of the room, right and left of the president's chair. At the right of the president, some distance removed, sits the chancellor, and at his right hand the imperial ministry; while in front of the president's chair, on a lower stage of the platform, is the tribune from which, as a rule, members of the lower house address the whole body.