[15] These suspicions, though fully justified by appearances, were subsequently shown to be for the greater part unfounded, except that there was inadequate provision for the requirements of the wounded. I reproduce the episode as evidence of the Minister’s usual humane feeling and love of justice.
[16] A reference to the popular Thuringian ballad of “The Landgrave and the Smith.”
[17] His greeting to those who brought him the news of his election as Emperor while he was netting birds in the forest.
[18] Thun, Rechberg and Prokesch held in succession the position of Austrian Minister to the Bundestag.
[19] The communication referred to is a letter by Thomas Carlyle published in The Times of November 18, in which it occupied two and a half columns. The passages quoted by Dr. Busch are here reproduced from the original:—
“The question for the Germans, in this crisis, is not one of ‘magnanimity,’ of ‘heroic pity and forgiveness to a fallen foe,’ but of solid prudence and practical consideration what the fallen foe will, in all likelihood, do when once on his feet again. Written on her memory, in a distinctly instructive manner, Germany has an experience of 400 years on this point; of which on the English memory, if it ever was recorded there, there is now little or no trace visible.... No nation ever had so bad a neighbour as Germany has had in France for the last 400 years; bad in all manner of ways; insolent, rapacious, insatiable, unappeasable, continually aggressive.... Germany, I do clearly believe, would be a foolish nation not to think of raising up some secure boundary fence between herself and such a neighbour now that she has the chance. There is no law of nature that I know of, no Heavens Act of Parliament whereby France, alone of terrestrial beings, shall not restore any portion of her plundered goods when the owners they were wrenched from have an opportunity upon them.... The French complain dreadfully of threatened ‘loss of honour’; and lamentable bystanders plead earnestly, ‘Don’t dishonour France; leave poor France’s honour bright.’ But will it save the honour of France to refuse paying for the glass she has voluntarily broken in her neighbour’s windows. The attack upon the windows was her dishonour. Signally disgraceful to any nation was her late assault on Germany; equally signal has been the ignominy of its execution on the part of France. The honour of France can be saved only by the deep repentance of France, and by the serious determination never to do so again—to do the reverse of so for ever henceforth.... For the present, I must say, France looks more and more delirious, miserable, blamable, pitiable and even contemptible. She refuses to see the facts that are lying palpably before her face, and the penalties she has brought upon herself. A France scattered into anarchic ruin, without recognisable head; head, or chief, indistinguishable from feet, or rabble; Ministers flying up in balloons ballasted with nothing else but outrageous public lies, proclamations of victories that were creatures of the fancy; a Government subsisting altogether on mendacity, willing that horrid bloodshed should continue and increase rather than that they, beautiful Republican creatures, should cease to have the guidance of it; I know not when and where there was seen a nation so covering itself with dishonour.... The quantity of conscious mendacity that France, official and other, has perpetrated latterly, especially since July last, is something wonderful and fearful. And, alas! perhaps even that is small compared to the self-delusion and unconscious mendacity long prevalent among the French.... To me at times the mournfullest symptom in France is the figure its ‘men of genius,’ its highest literary speakers, who should be prophets and seers to it, make at present, and, indeed, for a generation back have been making. It is evidently their belief that new celestial wisdom is radiating out of France upon all the other overshadowed nations; that France is the new Mount Zion of the universe; and that all this sad, sordid, semi-delirious, and, in good part, infernal stuff which French literature has been preaching to us for the last fifty years is a veritable new Gospel out of Heaven, pregnant with blessedness for all the sons of men.... I believe Bismarck (sic) will get his Alsace and what he wants of Lorraine, and likewise that it will do him, and us, and all the world, and even France itself by and by, a great deal of good.... (Bismarck) in fact seems to me to be striving with strong faculty, by patient, grand and successful steps, towards an object beneficial to Germans and to all other men. That noble, patient, deep, and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation and become Queen of the Continent, instead of vapouring, vain-glorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless and over-sensitive France, seems to me the hopefullest public fact that has occurred in my time.”—The Translator.
[20] The King.
[21] The Crown Prince.
END OF VOL. I.
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BUNGAY.