Now indeed will the giant rage, snapping his teeth in the face of the hurricane,—yes, four long years he is to rule without color of law.
43
On comes the storm—Not by speechmaking but by blood and iron are the great questions to be decided, says Bismarck!
¶ At least, we admit that William I was a thoroughbred Hohenzollern in innate admiration of the iron fist!
Now this was the situation: The secret war-chest against Austria had to be filled in one way or another; but the difficulty was found in the fact that the common people, acting under a mysterious instinct not to be explained but very real withal, had already begun to show unrest about an approaching War of the Brothers, as the sentimentalists called the irrepressible conflict between Austria and Prussia. The upshot was that Bismarck’s political secrets while not definitely understood in detail, were quite generally divined by close students of the German problem. The Liberals were intent on their own interests, in Prussia, and believed that their political solution depended on hampering the King, regardless of his cause. Hence the Liberal deputies of the Chamber spunkily stood out against William’s heavy demands for cannon and gunpowder.
¶ Bismarck, as King’s Minister, had to face the political storm. He did not dare to say that he wanted the money for war; he wanted the money—was not that enough?
Thereupon, Bismarck proceeded to domineer over the delegates.
The Chamber was willing to do something, but how about the rumor that these huge appropriations are to be hereafter a permanent item in the budget? Bismarck would not make the delegates’ minds easy; he wanted money, much money, 12,000,000 thalers in fact, for the army—and the least the delegates could do was to vote the funds. If they did not give the cash gracefully, why he would coerce the deputies—that was all!
¶ “It is not by speechifying and majorities,” he thundered, “that the great questions of the time will be decided—that was the great mistake in ’48 and in ’49,—BUT BY BLOOD AND IRON.”
¶ Members of the Chamber shrank in horror.