So much for the value of public opinion. What then does it all mean?
Bismarck made his 30-years’ battle against the people and won; and the people, strange to say, turned a mental somersault and now saw no inconsistency in cheering Bismarck, as liberator.
¶ How strange this sounds!
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Here is the Man of the Hour, depicted in all his naked realism.
¶ This amazing German problem called for a wise despot, to confront and overawe weak men, gathered in German parliaments in which there were worlds of cackling, but no wisdom.
The curse of Germany had been too much speechmaking, too much poetry, too much dreaming. The babble went on from 1815 to 1866, at least—fifty years!
¶ The times called for a hard-headed, dogmatic, tyrannical man with a plan large enough to subdue the thirty-nine warring parts, and weld the whole into a mighty Empire.
This meant a tyrant of the massive Frederick the Great type. It called for a man erect and proud, keen of speech, with absolute self-confidence, who in a pinch was master at underhand dealing, and who could deliberately use harshness and malice.
The man had to understand the delicate art of flattery, and at other times be blustering and outspoken.