Dream ye of peace?[1]
Dream he that will—
War is the rallying cry!
Victory is the refrain.
Militarism, which by rights is an education for the people and an instrument of policy, turns policy into the instrument of military power when the patriarchal absolutism of the soldier-kingdom makes possible an attitude which a democracy, remote from military Junker influence, would never have permitted.
So think our enemies, and so they must think when they see that, in spite of capitalistic industrialisation and in spite of socialist organisation, "the living are still ruled by the dead," as Friedrich Nietzsche says. The principal war aim of our enemies, the democratisation of Germany, will be realised!
Bismarck
Bismarck, like Napoleon, loved conflict for itself. As a statesman he avoided fresh wars, the folly of which he recognised. He was content with bloodless battles. After he had, in rapid succession, vanquished Christian, Francis Joseph, and Napoleon, it was the turn of Arnim, Pius, and Augusta. That did not suffice him. Gortschakow, who thought himself the greater, had repeatedly annoyed him. The conflict was carried almost to the point of war—even by depriving him of his railway saloon. This gave rise to the miserable Triple Alliance. At last came the conflict with William, in which the mighty one was vanquished, as Napoleon was vanquished by Alexander.
Political life-and-death unions only prosper if founded on a constitutional basis and not on an international one. They are all the more questionable if the partner is feeble. Bismarck never meant the Alliance to take this form.
He always treated the English with forbearance; he knew that this was wiser. He always paid marked respect to the old Queen Victoria, despite his hatred of her daughter and of political Anglomania; the learned Beaconsfield and the worldly-wise Salisbury he courted; and even that strange Gladstone, whom he did not like, really had nothing to complain about.
The Ultimatum to Serbia was the culminating point of the policy of the Berlin Congress, the Bosnian crisis, the Conference of London: but there was yet time to turn back.
We were completely successful in achieving that which above all other things should have been avoided—the breach with Russia and England.