¶ The old man had a grand idea just the same; he devoted his life to building up a free and united Germany. His intense belief in German virtues made his task sacred. He met the desire for a National cause and for greater freedom. He had to carry men by storm.
¶ However offensive, politically speaking, may seem in democratic America Prussia’s “Divine-right” theory, it is a fact that we, also, appeal to the god of battles just as Bismarck did. We open our Congress with prayers often couched in conceited belief that God is on our side; while our historians have repeatedly dwelt on the fact that America has a “manifest destiny,” a phrase reiterated by editors the land over till it has sunk deep into the public conscience. Therefore, in democratic America, we avow that we are in the hands of the Lord; an idea secretly nourished by millions of Americans who would publicly deny that any such Feudal conception as Divine-right of kings could possibly exist in related form, in the United States.
Surely we cannot mean that Divinity has anything to do with the majorities in an American election?
¶ Then this “manifest destiny” must refer to the ultimate fact that, however we may blunder along, in times of crisis the Lord comes forth, to lead us out of the wilderness.
It is a familiar line of thought to find Grant, Sherman, and Lincoln and others, deified in the American press, as men “miraculously risen” in storm and stress to preserve the “manifest destiny” of our Nation.
If there be any logical distinction between this hope on the part of millions of loyal Americans, expressing their patriotism in terms of Heaven’s protective policy, and the attitude of Bismarck in regard to his King, as ordained of God, to rule over the Prussian people, then it would require a high-power microscope to detect any essential variation.
¶ Meantime, we go on building dreadnaughts and inscribe on our coins, “In God We Trust.”
King William in Bismarck’s day refused the people’s paper crown of the Frankfort assembly, but plotted to have one offered to him by the princes of Germany. Was he, logically, any more inconsistent than is our own “manifest destiny” conception of America?
¶ For it is ever the way with strong men to believe themselves the Lord’s anointed, likewise with strong nations—and democratic America is no exception.