His central belief was that power consists in bullying. Had he thought things over he might, perhaps, have noticed that it costs more strength to lift a man up than to knock him down. He chose the other way. His spiritual successors tell you that the meaning of the black, red, and white of the German tricolour is: “Through night and blood to the light.” Germany had legitimate ambitions. There are ways of influencing the world that do not involve war: it was not powder, or bayonets, or even howitzers that laid Europe in intellectual bondage to Kant. Bismarck chose the formula of “Blood and Iron.” What it cost he himself will tell us, speaking out of the shadows and desolation of old age. The quotation is from Busch, his less discreet Boswell—
“‘There is no doubt, however,’ said Bismarck, ‘that I have caused unhappiness to great numbers. But for me three great wars would not have taken place. Eighty thousand men would not have been killed, and would not now be mourned by parents, brothers, sisters, and widows.’ ‘And sweethearts,’ I added somewhat prosaically and inconsiderately. ‘And sweethearts,’ he repeated. ‘I have settled that with God, however. But I have had little, if any, pleasure from all that I have done, while on the contrary, I have had a great deal of worry, anxiety, and trouble.’”
He sought power, and, in seeking it, he had little regard for scraps of paper. Frederick the Great had taught him that, if a ruler is sometimes bound to sacrifice his life, he is often bound to sacrifice his honour to the greatness of the State. Maturely, coldly, with ashes fallen over all the flames of passion, he tells us in his Reflections and Reminiscences how he forced on the Franco-German War. There are versions of the story more vivid and so far more vile. The Ems telegram has arrived. Bismarck is dining with von Moltke and Roon, and all three fail to find anything resembling war in it. But the Prince has a “conviction”—
“Under this conviction I made use of the royal authorisation communicated to me through Abeken, to publish the contents of the telegram; and in the presence of my two guests I reduced the telegram by striking out words, but without adding or altering....
“The difference in the effect of the abbreviated text of the Ems telegram as compared with that produced by the original was not the result of stronger words but of the form which made this announcement seem decisive, while Abeken’s version would only have been regarded as a fragment of a negotiation still pending, and to be continued at Berlin.
“After I had read out the concentrated edition to my two guests, Moltke remarked: ‘Now it has a different ring; it sounded before like a parley; now it is like a flourish in answer to a challenge.’”
Bismarck then explained what he would do with his “concentrated edition.”
“This explanation brought in the two generals a revulsion to a more joyous mood, the liveliness of which surprised me. They had suddenly recovered their pleasure in eating and drinking, and spoke in a more cheerful vein. Roon said: ‘Our God of old lives still, and will not let us perish in disgrace.’ Moltke so far relinquished his passive equanimity that, glancing up joyously towards the ceiling, and abandoning his usual punctiliousness of speech, he smote his hand upon his breast and said: ‘If I may but live to lead our armies in such a war, then the devil may come directly afterwards and fetch away the “old carcase.”’”
If the God of Roon, the God of falsified telegrams, was the same God with whom Bismarck “settled matters” regarding his eighty thousand slain, that strange compact of reconciliation is readily intelligible. Otherwise, no!
If Bismarck made cruelty his sacrament, in the gross, he was far from neglecting details. No torch lit a village in France, no finger pulled a trigger against non-combatants, that was not sped by his counsel. I first read his words in Belgium as the stories of Liége, and Visé, and Aerschot, and Louvain poured in—