“It would be delightful to spend a summer there. Excursions on the steamers can be made at almost any time of the day. One can visit in this way five different old countries,—Baden, Würtemberg, Bavaria, Austria, and Switzerland.”
Mr. Beal’s succinct account of the old city led to a discussion of the gains of civilization from martyrdoms for principle and progress. He was followed by Master Lewis, who gave the Class some account of
BISMARCK AND THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT.
In the eyes of the multitude, Bismarck is a great but unscrupulous statesman, intent upon uniting Germany and making it the leading nation of Europe. As a man, he seems hard-headed, self-willed, and iron-handed. As a ruler, he is looked upon as the incarnation of the despotic spirit,—a believer in force, an infidel as to moral suasion.
Many persons who sympathize with his policy censure the means by which he executes it. They do not consider that so long as that policy is threatened from within and without, the Chancellor must trust in force; nor do they read the lesson of the centuries,—Force must rule until Right reigns.
The fact is not apprehended by the unthinking multitude, that the work of grafting a statesman’s policy into the life of a nation requires, like grafting a fruit-tree, excision, incision, pressure, and time.
But it is not of Bismarck’s policy I would first speak, but of that which few credit him with possessing,—his moral convictions. Strange as it may seem to those who know only the Chancellor, Bismarck is not only a religious man, but his religion is the foundation of his policy.
Dr. Busch, one of the statesman’s secretaries, in a recent book, “Bismarck in the Franco-German War,” narrates incidents and reports private conversations which justify this assertion.
On the eve of his leaving Berlin to join the army, the Chancellor partook of the Lord’s Supper. The solemn rite was celebrated in his own room, that it might not appear as an exhibition of official piety.