He would have absolutely nothing to do with the political ideas from over the Vosges; he knew too well the curse of olden times, and his one great central emotion was to end that condition—as he hoped forever.
You are to read of the battles of a giant, filled with immense compassion for the follies and weaknesses of his misled countrymen, filled, too, with fanatical zeal to punish, that good might come of it at last.
Bismarck used the strong military arm, the hell fires and the lightnings.
His nature scorned any further mere palliation of the weaknesses of human nature. Like all supermen, Bismarck struck straight from the shoulder; in turn to be misunderstood, cursed and reviled by the very people he would serve; but in the end aroused German manhood to a just comprehension of the power and dignity of a free and united Fatherland.
¶ For upwards of 100 years before Bismarck’s great hour, the French had been accustomed to exploit Germany. To fill the pocketbook, to provide soldiers for wars, or to afford opportunities for buccaneering expeditions, were all the same.
We do not say this to bring up any “moral” issue, but we make the statement merely as one uses the word dung or manure.
That is to say, certain historical facts stink to heaven.
Annexations, concessions, raids, riots at the hands of the French conspired to keep Germany disunited, belligerent and mutinous; and as the years passed Germany, to a large extent, seduced by French ways, lost a sense of her dignity. France had looked to Germany to furnish allies to help fight Prussia, Austria or England; then England turned the trick against France. It is discouraging to add that even the great Goethe was so seduced by the glamour of Napoleon’s genius that he wrote these strange words in praise of the French tyrant:
Doubts that have baffled thousands, he has solved:
Ideas o’er which centuries have brooded,
His giant mind intuitively compressed.