“Such are substantially,” says M. Vilbort in conclusion, “the political opinions expressed to me by M. de Bismarck. His thoughts conveyed by my pen, in another form, may have lost to some extent their emphasis; but I have anxiously endeavored faithfully to reproduce them.”
We have placed this report of the intellectual Frenchman here on purpose, because Count Bismarck, independently of other interesting remarks, has given indications as to the course of his future policy not easily to be misunderstood; for it may readily be conceived that we do not feel called upon to enlarge upon Bismarck’s policy in the last three years. What he has done in this period, and how he has done it, is vivid before the eyes of every one, and fresh in every one’s memory, and there is scarcely time yet to incorporate it with history. Our readers will have convinced themselves, that in contradistinction to others, we do not find the last deeds and speeches of Bismarck inconsistent with his earlier acts and speeches; and we think we have demonstrated that the Bismarck of to-day has developed consequently from the Bismarck of 1847—that the great aristocratic statesman is still the “King’s man,” as he then was the “Junker Hotspur,” or conservative party leader. The demand for the so-called indemnity, the amnesty, the direct elections, and all those things which are sometimes praised and sometimes blamed and designated “Bismarck’s contradictions,” are only apparent contradictions, at once to be explained if thoroughly examined. It is very easy to hold very different opinions on many points from those of Bismarck, and warmly as we admire him, we do not regard him as infallible; but we think that it is necessary to be very careful in censuring his individual political acts, even where such unpleasant surprises occur, for actually a quite incomparable political instinct has fitted him for leadership, and has caused him to discover ways and means not existing in any programme, sometimes coming into severe collision with theory, but in practice either have or will have great blessings in them for the Prussian kingdom and the German people.
We have depicted Bismarck in person at various ages; of latter years he has altered but little at first sight. Those who have only seen him in the distance at the Chamber or the Diet, looking round with his eye-glass, looking through papers, or playing with his pencil, will only have seen the tall form in the King’s plain blue uniform, with a single Order—a cross hanging from the neck. It is necessary to draw nearer to observe that time has done more than pass with a friendly greeting by the Chancellor of the Diet. Such years of service as those of Bismarck, in this period of his life, count double, like soldiers’ years. Bismarck, according to this calculation, is more than fifty-four years of age.
As an orator, too, the Chancellor of the Diet is almost the same as of old, only he has grown quieter. A member of the Diet, Herr L. Bamberger, describes him in his book as follows:[55]—“Count Bismarck is certainly no orator in the usual sense of the word, yet, in spite of many defects in his delivery, he commands the attention of his audience by the evident force with which his thoughts work within him. It seems, besides, as if the habit of speaking in public, and especially the certainty which is so requisite, and which he now possesses of obtaining the ear of his audience, has materially contributed of late years to the development of his parliamentary faculty. Yet in the year 1866, one of his admirers, who had attended a sitting of the Reichstag, drew his portrait in the following terms:—‘No oratorical ornamentation, no choice of words, nothing which carries the audience away. His voice, although clear and audible, is dry and unsympathetic, the tone monotonous; he interrupts himself, and stops frequently; sometimes even he stutters, as if his recalcitrant tongue refused obedience, and as if he had difficulty in finding words in which to express his thoughts. His uneasy movements, somewhat lolling and negligent, in no wise aid the effect of his delivery. Still, the longer he speaks, the more he overcomes these defects; he attains more precision of expression, and often ends with a well-delivered, vigorous—sometimes, as every one is aware, too vigorous—peroration.’” “It should be added,” observes Herr Bamberger,[56] “that his style, although unstudied, is often not wanting in imagery. His bright and clear intellect does not despise coloring, any more than his strong constitution is free from nervous irritability.”
The same author says at another part of his book,[57] “To an opponent he can be provoking, malicious, even malignant; but he is not treacherous; he offends against morality and justice, but against good taste, by pathetic appeals, never. He is not of the tribe of paragraph writers who imagine that the world is governed by fine phrases, and that public evils are to be mastered by wrapping them up in pompous commonplaces. On the contrary, he is one of those who delight in heightening a contrast by exaggeration, and who thus overshoot their mark. What induced him to confess his principle of blood and iron at that committee meeting?” The instance is very unhappily chosen, without considering that by a blunder the so-called blood-and-iron theory is written, Principe du fer et du feu,[58] for Bismarck never proclaimed this theory, with which Philisters are made to shudder, at all. In an actually peaceable sense there was a reference at that committee meeting of the 1st September, 1862, as to sparing the effusion of blood and the use of iron. But it is useless to say this, and to reiterate it; Bismarck has been credited with the blood-and-iron theory, and his it will remain, for it has been proverbial as a “winged word.”[59]
Another description of Bismarck as an orator (by Glagau) we extract from the Daheim.
“The chivalrous personality of Count Bismarck, his easy carriage, and, above all, his universal fame as a diplomatist and statesman, lead us to expect him also to be a brilliant speaker; either one who could bring forth a deeply meditated, well arranged speech without hesitation or trouble, in an elegant flow, or, still more, a speaker of natural eloquence, whose thoughts and figures arise in the soul during his speech, the play of whose words and rhetorical figures, born of the moment, leap in winged dance from the lips, who poetizes in his speech like an improvisatore, whose lightning thoughts and catchwords hit the mark, moving, and burning the hearts of his auditors. Neither of these. Certainly, a few moments before, with a swift pen, he has written a few notes on a narrow slip of paper, which looks like a recipe, over which he, while turning his thumbs one over the other, balancing the upper part of his body backwards and forwards, and speaking to the House, occasionally casts a glance; but, nevertheless, he stops, and hesitates, even sometimes stammers and repeats himself; he appears to struggle with his thoughts, and the words clamber over his lips in a half-reluctant way. After two or three words he continually pauses, and one seems to hear an inarticulate sob. He speaks without gestures, pathos, and intonation, without laying a stress on any particular word; sometimes he accentuates the final syllable or the halting verb in a manner totally wrong. Can this be the man who has now a parliamentary career of twenty years behind him?—who already belonged in the Diet of 1847, as Deputy of the Saxon chivalry, to the leaders and promptest speakers of the then exceeding extreme right; who set the liberal majority into excitement and rage in 1849 and 1850, as a member of the Second Chamber and of the Erfurt Union Parliament; who, finally, has, almost singly, opposed a closed phalanx of progressists, as Minister-President, since 1862, repaying their emotional speeches, full of self-confidence and security, in almost the same coin, replying to their mocking and malicious attacks upon him on the spot, and with flashing presence of mind even exciting them to the combat by witty impromptus and cutting sarcasms, often wounding them to the soul?
