¶ If Bismarck was not made by a King’s breath, at least a breath destroyed Bismarck’s control of the situation.
Bismarck had long ruled the lives of millions; but when Wm. II snapped his fingers and said “Finis!” the old Chancellor had to go. The loss of Bismarck’s influence was as complete as though instead of being the foremost man of his time in the diplomatic world, he was instead only a clerk discharged by his superior.
¶ In listing the elements on which Bismarck builded there is always one often overlooked, yet at the very foundation, the bottom stone in the wall. That one was the favorable attitude of King William I. Without the King’s consent, Bismarck’s career would have been impossible! Herein, we find a classic illustration of how interdependent are men’s lives; what small causes sustain or defeat great careers.
¶ But first we wish to tell you something of his honors during the past few years, also of the munificent patronage of the Kaiser, going far to refute the libel that the Kaiser was ungrateful. The patient Kaiser in truth dealt nobly with the moody old man.
On the old man’s 70th birthday (1885), the people of Germany offered a gift of $1,350,000, one-half of which Bismarck used to repurchase the ancestral estate, Schoenhausen, which he had sold in his impecunious years; and now, thanks to the gratitude of the German nation, the old place, mightily enlarged and improved, passed again into Bismarck’s hands.
The other half of the $1,350,000 Bismarck set aside as an endowment fund for school teachers.
¶ Even Victor Hugo added his hero-worship, in this curious letter: “The giant salutes the giant! The enemy salutes the enemy! The friend sends the greeting of a friend!
¶ “I hate you, cruelly, for you have humiliated France; I love you because I am greater than you.