In the final analysis he was secretly fortified by his instinctive knowledge of the peculiar political idiosyncrasies of Prussians; how dog-like in the final analysis is their submission to the political conception of the Over-man who rules by Divine-right.
¶ It was to this National faith that Bismarck was constantly addressing himself—this loyalty to a paternalistic idea—and his attitude was much the same as that of the Chinese in their worship of ancestors, or of an American who preserves his family record.
Bismarck was urging family unity among quarreling German sons and daughters; and as is the case in all family feuds, the intrinsic merits of the controversy were often overlooked and the time taken in an endeavor to inflict personal humiliations.
¶ Bismarck was essentially appealing to National honor, which he placed higher than absolutism or republicanism, tyranny or democracy. By National honor, he meant the German conception of an over-lord for a ruler, preferably one with a strong military record.
Herein, we touch the core of Bismarck’s strength, the measure of his greatness.
When a man fights, on honor, for institutions which his forefathers slowly fostered and sustained through six hundred years of strife, the question of his rights or his wrongs is merged into the larger question of chivalry.
¶ If there were no other gift which might be set up to justify for Bismarck a commanding position among the world’s great figures, his conception of National honor, based on powerful personal convictions, his inheritance, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh—utterly apart from the French mob-rule idea of liberty expressed in license—Bismarck’s plea for the National honor of Prussia, as the custodian of ancient German traditions, suffices to stamp Bismarck as the true custodian of German political tradition of his age.
¶ To this might reasonably be added another claim which in our broad view of Bismarck’s character we here demand for him as one of the world’s great men—courage of the bull-dog type, not altogether unselfish, but courage and remarkable consistency; standing the acid test of self-sacrifice during thirty-odd years’ vexatious delays in attaining his goal; a period of probation certainly long enough to try the stoutest heart.
¶ With qualities of this supreme order, far outside average human nature, Bismarck at last prepared himself to win his surprising fight for a United Germany; incidentally stamping himself, his power and his purpose high among the great Germans of all time, from Charlemagne down.