THE BATTLE OF KÖNIGGRÄTZ—FROM THE PAINTING BY GEORG BLEISTREW
THE DECISIVE BATTLE OF THE SEVEN WEEKS’ WAR, BY WHICH PRUSSIA BECAME THE LEADING POLITICAL AND MILITARY POWER IN GERMANY. IN THE CENTER OF THE PICTURE IS SHOWN KING WILLIAM, SURROUNDED BY BISMARCK, VON MOLTKE, AND THE MEMBERS OF HIS STAFF.
Photographed by the Berlin Photographic Co.

Before the smokers could have got half through with their cigars, the Minister of Justice, who seemed to act as mentor and guide to the gentlemen of the Penal Code Commission, took leave of the host, which was accepted by the whole company as a signal to depart. I followed 376 their example, but the Chancellor said: “Wait a moment. Why should you stand in that crowd struggling for your overcoat? Let us sit down and have a glass of Apollinaris.” We sat down by a small round table, a bottle of Apollinaris water was brought, and he began at once to ply me with questions about America.

EMPEROR NAPOLEON III
WHOM BISMARCK CALLED “THE ADVENTURER ON THE THRONE,” AND WHOSE DOWNFALL HE PREDICTED IN A CONVERSATION WITH CARL SCHURZ TWO YEARS BEFORE SEDAN

He was greatly interested in the struggle going on between President Johnson and the Republican majority in Congress, which was then approaching its final crisis. He said that he looked upon that struggle as a test of the strength of the conservative element in our political fabric. Would the impeachment of the President, and, if he were found guilty, his deposition from office, lead to any further conflicts dangerous to the public peace and order? I replied that I was convinced it would not; the executive power would simply pass from the hands of one man to the hands of another, according to the constitution and laws of the country, without any resistance on the part of anybody; and on the other hand, if President Johnson were acquitted, there would be general submission to the verdict as a matter of course, although popular excitement stirred up by the matter would run very high throughout the country.

The Chancellor was too polite to tell me point-blank that he had grave doubts as to all this, but he would at least not let me believe that he thought as I did. He smilingly asked me whether I was still as firmly convinced a republican as I had been before I went to America and studied republicanism from the inside; and when I assured him that I was, and that, 377 although I had in personal experience found the republic not as lovely as my youthful enthusiasm had pictured it to my imagination, but much more practical in its general beneficence to the great masses of the people, and much more conservative in its tendencies than I had imagined, he said that he supposed our impressions or views with regard to such things were largely owing to temperament, or education, or traditional ways of thinking.

“I am not a democrat,” he went on, “and cannot be. I was born an aristocrat and brought up an aristocrat. To tell you the truth, there was something in me that made me instinctively sympathize with the slaveholders, as the aristocratic party, in your Civil War. But,” he added with earnest emphasis, “this vague sympathy did not in the least affect my views as to the policy to be followed by our government with regard to the United States. Prussia, notwithstanding her monarchical and aristocratic sympathies, is, and will steadily be by tradition, as well as by thoroughly understood interest, the firm friend of your republic. You may always count upon that.”

He asked me a great many questions concerning the political and social conditions in the United States. Again and again he wondered how society could be kept in tolerable order where the powers of the government were so narrowly restricted and where there was so little reverence for the constituted or “ordained” authorities. With a hearty laugh, in which there seemed to be a suggestion of assent, he received my remark that the American people would hardly have become the self-reliant, energetic, progressive people they were, had there been a privy-counsellor or a police captain standing at every mud-puddle in America to keep people from stepping into it. And he seemed to be much struck when I brought out the apparent paradox that in a democracy with little government things might go badly in detail but well on the whole, while in a monarchy with much and omni-present government things might go very pleasingly in detail but poorly on the whole. He saw that with such views I was an incurable democrat; but would not, he asked, the real test of our democratic institutions come when, after the disappearance of the exceptional opportunities springing from our wonderful natural resources which were in a certain sense common property, our political struggles became, as they surely would become, struggles between the poor and the rich, between the few who have, and the many who want? Here we entered upon a wide field of conjecture.

The conversation then turned to international relations, and especially public opinion in America concerning Germany. Did the Americans sympathize with German endeavors towards national unity?—I thought that so far as any feeling with regard to German unity existed in America, it was sympathetic; among the German-Americans it was warmly so.—Did Louis Napoleon, the emperor of the French, enjoy any popularity in America?—He did not enjoy the respect of the people at large and was rather unpopular except with a comparatively small number of snobs who would feel themselves exalted by an introduction at his court.—There would, then, in case of a war between Germany and France, be no likelihood of American sympathy running in favor of Louis Napoleon?—There would not, unless Germany forced war on France for decidedly unjust cause.