¶ And the problem grew darker as the months went by.
¶ You may read till you are dizzy and then stand back and try to get a bird’s-eye view of the complicated quarrels of the Diet; the vagaries of Frankfort or Berlin; the brawls of this poet, that student, editor, publicist, or princeling; with soldiers of fortune hovering around waiting, like vultures that have already a whiff of the carrion, from afar. Instead of a bird’s-eye, the incoherent mass of details comes piecemeal, and you get the toad’s-eye view;—till we apply the simple idea that behind it all is elemental human nature, with politics as a mere frame to the picture.
¶ Look on Bismarck at this moment as one dealing with forces of human nature, the clash of many minds, ending by dominating over one and all, years hence, through his own inherent sagacity as a human being against other and weaker members of his kind—and we get at once a significant conception of the greatness of Bismarck’s mentality, also of his innate craft, enabling him to triumph over a thousand oblique forces, many of them firmly entrenched, and from a logical point fully as defensible as were his own peculiar conceptions.
¶ It was not, after all, what this man or that prince or some other ruler thought, but what Bismarck thought, that turned the balance.
A hundred instances could be offered to show that the men Bismarck was fighting had the better part of the argument, as mere argument; but between opinion and making that opinion stick is a wide gulf—however logical may be the argument.
¶ Bismarck was for the ensuing twenty years pictured as a noisy disturber, but he was shrewd, very shrewd. He could call a man “liar,” “thief,” “scoundrel,” “impostor,” in virile speechmaking, or could pass him up with a shrug, all the while keeping a cold eye on the main chance, and in the end getting his own way because he was strong enough to get his way—and that is all the logic there is in the situation.
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This miracle he did indeed perform; he turned back the political clock to feudal days and gloriously set up “Divine-right,” in the face of the intensely modern cry, “Let the People Rule!”
¶ Bismarck’s amazing career affords a classical instance of what a strong man can do, even against the very spirit of his time!