¶ Bismarck knew all about this dirty French mess, parading itself as the “voice of the people.” He was a strong man himself and he was guilty of gross ambitions in his rise to power, but on the whole Bismarck stood for self-possession and for manly audacity, certainly not the French Revolution type of audacity. It is a fact that Bismarck, as a human being, was a vast egotist, and had his own, ofttimes unscrupulous, way of gaining his ends, but his conception of Militarism, the force he did eventually use, was at bottom a virtuous effort to support, liberate and unify the Fatherland, not drag it into the mire of idolatry and bestiality.
¶ We shall frequently say harsh things about Bismarck, in this book; we do not wish to follow French methods and endeavor to make an impossible hero of a man of clay. Bismarck, as a man and in the methods of his rise to great glory, had his gross faults, and we fearlessly point them out.
¶ But here are some of the facts that Bismarck can never stand accused of, in the light of this much-boasted French political “Millennium” of 1789-93, and here, likewise we find the real reasons why he did struggle with all his might against a reluctant people to enforce Militarism throughout the jealous clashing 39 German states; and if Bismarck’s exercise of the strong hand, in the bosom of the German family was a fault, then at least it did not include these French conditions, set up to cause the world to gasp in admiration.
¶ The bull-necked Danton, the Parisian ward-heeler, in control of public opinion, came on with his guillotine; and closed the city’s gates against any man that had a dollar to pay his debts or buy a dinner.
¶ The so-called “will of the people” was in short a spurious affair, unnaturally created by a political morphine that gave glorious dreams; and this wretched drug was supplied by the mob-leaders.
All the blood-letting was represented as a harmless affair, tending toward liberty and equality; all the confiscations of church-lands and redistribution among the peasants was declared a “great” political triumph.
Throughout even the loneliest country districts the word was passed that the political millennium was about to break.
¶ The King was represented as a “monster fattening on crime.” His wife was called an Austrian “panthress,” and vile pamphlets were secretly passed around reflecting on her character. God was represented as judging the King, and the guillotine was awaiting Louis, by Heaven’s decree.