CHAPTER XX
A TALK WITH COUNT BISMARCK IN 1866
I
By one of those pieces of good fortune which descend only upon the undeserving, I came to know Count Bismarck before I left Berlin. I was advised to present my letter at the Landtag, and as the Count was said to be in the House, I sent it in. He came out to the ante-chamber where I was waiting, and there for the first time I looked into the pale blue eyes whence had flashed the lightnings that had riven the power of Austria on the field of Sadowa. Now they had a kindly and welcoming look in them. But, said Count Bismarck:
"I have not a moment. A debate is on, and I am to speak at once. Come to my house in the Wilhelmstrasse at half-past ten to-night, and we can have a talk. Meantime you might like to hear the debate."
And he called to an official to take me into the Chamber, shook hands again, and away he went. I heard his speech, marvelled at the sight of a Parliamentary chief in full military uniform; marvelled at the tone of authority, which also was military; marvelled again at the brevity and directness of the orator who took no thought of rhetoric and hardly cared to convince, but rather to command. It was the oratory of the master of many legends. True, the four years' conflict between him and the Prussian Parliament was over, but true also that on both Parliament and Minister that conflict had left a mark. In his voice there was still a challenge, and in the silence of the Chamber still something sullen. He had won. They had lost in a struggle upon which, as Herr Loewe told me, they ought never to have entered; would never have entered had they known. Loewe and his party of so-called Liberals confessed themselves not only beaten but wholly in the wrong.
At half-past ten I rang at the outer door—which was more like a gate—of the palace in the Wilhelmstrasse. It was opened by a soldier who asked my name, and when he heard it told me I was expected and asked me to follow him. I was taken upstairs to a large empty room on the first floor. In a moment out came Count Bismarck's famous adlatus, Herr Lothar Bücher. The Count was engaged with the Minister of War but if I could wait would see me presently. I waited ten minutes. Again the door to the left opened, and forth came Von Roon, the mighty organizer of war, himself of course a soldier since in Prussia everybody who counted in affairs of State was a soldier, and still is. You had need to visit Berlin in those warlike days to understand what was meant by the phrase that Prussia was a camp. Then you had need to visit it again in time of peace to understand that whether in peace or war Prussia was still a camp, and as much in peace as in war. What it is now I cannot say. I have not been in Berlin these last fifteen years, but between 1866 and 1893 I was there many times, and every time it was a camp. The garrison of Berlin and Potsdam was never, I think, less than 40,000 men. The streets of Berlin were always thronged with officers, and on the broad sidewalks of the Unter den Linden or the Friedrichstrasse there was scarce room for anybody else. The youngest lieutenant wanted all of it to himself. To each other these officers were civility itself but the civilian had no rights they were bound to respect.
I had already seen something of this all-pervading military spirit and military supremacy, and sat reflecting on it in this great salon where I waited for Count Bismarck to be at leisure. When Herr von Roon came out he recognized me, I suppose, as a stranger, and, civilian though I was, gave me the greeting he thought due to Count Bismarck's guest, which I returned. There was almost a halt as he strode past; his face was turned to me, and I could read in it the stern record of a long conflict; of vast responsibilities and years of unceasing toil; a rugged face enough but the light of victory in his eye. He, too, had fought and won. Curiously enough, among the men I met at that time in Berlin, the man who, Bismarck excepted, seemed to have most of the statesman in him, with the statesman's civic virtues and traits, was this Minister of War. Not because he was Minister in the sense in which an English Secretary of State for War is Minister. The English War Minister is never a soldier; he is a Parliamentary chief, and his authority over the army denotes the supremacy of Parliament over the whole military hierarchy from commander-in-chief down to the drummer boy.
But of Parliamentary supremacy there had been for these last four years in Prussia none whatever. The Minister of War was not responsible to Parliament; he never has been; he is not now. He was then responsible to the King of Prussia, as he is now to the German Emperor. When, in May, 1863, the Chamber protested to the King that the attitude of the Ministry to Parliament was arbitrary and unconstitutional (as it was), the King made answer that the Ministry possessed his confidence, and sent the Parliament about its business. That is, he prorogued Parliament, announced that he would govern for the present without a Parliament; and as matters did not mend and the Chamber again in December refused to vote a war budget, the King dissolved it. Parliamentary government existed at that time in Prussia under the constitution, but in name only.