To sum up: I do not believe in an immediate interruption of peace, and I ask you to discuss this bill independently of such a thought or apprehension, looking upon it as a means of making the great strength which God has placed in the German nation fully available. If we do not need all the troops, it is not necessary to summon them. We are trying to avoid the contingency when we shall need them.
This attempt is as yet made rather difficult for us by the threatening newspaper articles in the foreign press, and I should like to admonish these foreign editors to discontinue such threats. They do not lead anywhere. The threats which we see made—not by the governments, but by the press—are really incredibly stupid, when we stop to reflect that the people making them imagine they could frighten the proud and powerful German empire by certain intimidating figures made by printer's ink and shallow words. People should not do this. It would then be easier for us to be more obliging to our two neighbors. Every country after all is sooner or later responsible for the windows which its press has smashed. The bill will be rendered some day, and will consist of the ill-feeling of the other country. We are easily influenced—perhaps too easily—by love and kindness, but quite surely never by threats! We Germans fear God, and naught else in the world! It is this fear of God which makes us love and cherish peace. If in spite of this anybody breaks the peace, he will discover that the ardent patriotism of 1813, which called to the standards the entire population of Prussia—weak, small, and drained to the marrow as it then was—has today become the common property of the whole German nation. Attack the German nation anywhere, and you will find it armed to a man, and every man with the firm belief in his heart: God will be with us.
MOUNT THE GUARDS AT THE WARTHE AND THE VISTULA!
September 16, 1894
TRANSLATED BY EDMUND VON MACH, PH.D.
[On September 16, 1894, when Bismarck was no longer chancellor, 2,200 Germans from the province of Posen appeared in Varzin to thank him for his devoted work in the service of the national idea, and to gather courage from him in their fight against the Polish propaganda which had gained strength under the new régime at court. The aged farm-manager, Mr. Kennemann, was the leader and spokesman of the visitors.]
Gentleman! First I must ask your indulgence, since for two days I have been upset by an unpolitical enemy called lumbago, an old acquaintance of mine for sixty years. I hope to get the better of him soon, and then to be able to stand again fully erect. At present, I must confess, I am hampered by him.
I begin by replying to the words of the previous speaker with thanks for the honor done me, addressing myself first of all to him, but then also to you. The previous speaker is as old as I. We were both born in 1815, and different walks of life have brought us together again here in Varzin after almost eighty years. The meeting gives me great pleasure, although I have not run my course as safe and sound as Mr. Kennemann. When I claim to be an invalid of hard work, he may perhaps claim the same. But his work was possibly healthier than mine, this being the difference between the farmer and the diplomat. The mode of life of the latter is less healthy and more nerve-racking. To begin with, then, I am grateful to you, gentlemen, and I should be even more grateful, if we were all to put on our hats. I have lost in the course of years nature's own protection, but I cannot well cover my head if you do not do the same.
I thank you that you have spared no exertion to show your national sentiments in this way. The exertion was considerable, a night in the train, a second night on the way back, insufficient meals, and inconveniently crowded cars. The fact that you have stood all this and were not deterred by it attests the strength of your national feeling, which impelled you to bear witness to it here. That you did it here greatly honors me, and I recognize in it your appreciation of my part in the work of establishing the conditions which we are enjoying in Germany today, after years of disunion. These conditions may be imperfect, but "the best is the enemy of the good." At the time when we shaped these conditions we never asked: "What may we wish?" but "What must we have!" This moderation in our demands for union was one of the most important preliminaries of success. By following this path we have reached the results which have strengthened the pledge that your home will remain united with the German empire and the kingdom of Prussia. The proportion, in the meanwhile, of Germans in the foundation of our structure to the less reliable—I will not say loose—Polish element has become decidedly more favorable for the Germans. Our national figures are forty-eight million Germans and two million Poles; and in such a community the wishes of the two million cannot be decisive for the forty-eight million, as must be apparent, especially in an age when political decisions are dependent on a majority vote as a last resort. The forces which guarantee the union of these territories are strong enough both in the parliament and in the army to assure it, and no one can doubt that the proper authorities are ready to use these forces at the right time. No one mistakes the meaning, when the announcement is made from the highest quarters: "Ere we shall yield again Alsace, our army will have to be annihilated" (and words to this effect have been spoken). The same thing is true, to an even stronger degree, of our eastern frontier. We can spare neither, Posen even less than Alsace, and we shall fight, as the Emperor has said, to the last man, before we renounce Alsace, this protection of our Southern states. Yet Munich and Stuttgart are not more endangered by a hostile position in Strassburg and Alsace than Berlin would be endangered by a hostile position near the Oder. It may, therefore, be readily assumed that we shall remain firm in our determination and sacrifice, if it should become necessary, our last man and the last coin in our pockets for the defense of the German eastern frontier as it has existed for eighty years. And this determination will suffice to render the union between your province and the empire as positively assured as things can be in this world.
We confined our demands to what was necessary for our existence and what enabled the big European nation which we are to draw a free breath. We did not include territories where German used to be spoken, when this had been largely due to a propaganda of the German courts. More German used to be spoken in the East, North-east, and elsewhere than today. Remember our ally, Austria, and how familiar German was there in the days of Joseph II. and of the Empress Maria Theresa, when German was a greater force in parts of Hungary than it is or can be today. But, for everything we gave up in the shape of a linguistic and outward union, we have found rich compensation in the intensity of a closer union. If the older gentlemen will think back to the time before Emperor William I., they will realize that the lack of love among the various German tribes was much greater at that time than it is today. We have made notable progress in this direction, and, when we compare the unequivocal expressions of opinion from Bavaria and Saxony today with the familiar sentiments of earlier times, we must say that Germany, which for the past one hundred years had lagged behind the other people of Europe in national development, has rapidly caught up with them. Forty years ago we were far behind all other nations in national feeling and love of one another. Today we are no longer behind them.