¶ On one occasion he moodily replied to a question: “Who are the Hohenzollerns? My family is as good as theirs!” And the old man meant it, every word of it.
¶ He began bombarding the newspapers with bitter reviews, criticising the Government, the affairs of the day. The African treaty he dissected, to Caprivi’s disadvantage. “I never would have signed it!” wrote Bismarck, and the press took up the cry. Any utterance from the old political sage was welcomed, the more caustic the criticism the better it read, all to the disadvantage of the Emperor and the new advisers.
¶ Many newspaper reporters called at Bismarck’s country retreat; the old man would tell them strong truths against the Government. Here and there, a newspaper came out as Bismarck’s official spokesman!
¶ It did seem as though nothing Caprivi did ever pleased the old man.
The curious fact was this: that Bismarck in his own time had always held as an inviolable principle, “No criticism of the Government in foreign affairs,” but now he claimed a privilege he had never granted to another.
¶ One of his many startling confessions of state secrets was that the Franco-Prussian war never would have taken place but for the garbled Ems dispatch. Instead of being a “holy war,” to support the very life of the Fatherland, it was now made clear that the old Divine-right idea had been but the stage-play of a political minister, for his imperial sovereign’s march to glory.
¶ The last illusion was now dispelled.
Caprivi was obliged to issue a circular-letter to Germany’s diplomatic corps, everywhere, “Do not mind Bismarck’s utterances; take no stock in them!”
¶ Even when Bismarck’s old friend, von Moltke, died, the Man of Iron refused to go to the funeral; he did not care to take a chance of meeting the Emperor, there!
¶ Querulous, iron-willed—such he is to remain. No giving up, no softening, no forgiveness; but blood and iron to the end. We must present him thus, our sad-hearted, irritable old master, proclaiming against the vanity of earthly glories, and like Wolsey wondering on the frailties and ingratitude of kings, whose memories are indeed no longer than the going down of the sun.