which it would entail. Consequently the whole patrol system was thrown out of gear and could not be rearranged in a moment. When all this was fully explained to Wellington, his tone completely changed. 'If any one,' he said in thanking Admiral Martin, 'wishes to know the history of this war, I will tell him our maritime superiority gives me the power of maintaining my communications while the enemy is unable to do so'a remark which gives a very different colour to the current impression.

Many other points in the naval story of the Peninsular War call equally for deeper study, but here I must conclude the crude sketch which is all I have been able to attempt. It has been well said that current historythe history we have lived ourselves-is as illuminating for past history as is past history for enriching the experience of our own days. It is certainly true of the vivid, almost dazzling light with which the last years of the late war flood the period of my lecture. Seen in the new light, it looks as though nearly every current belief about the later exhausting years of our struggle with Napoleon needs modification-even the cardinal belief, the effect of Trafalgar. Going even lightly over the ground, its striking analogy to our latest struggle brings forth a whole harvest of unsettled queries; and the one which for me at least is the most insistent is this: What material advantage did Trafalgar give that Jutland did not give? It is one that, in the present state of our knowledge, I will not venture to

answer.

JULIAN S. CORBETT.

Art. 3.-THE RESIGNATION OF BISMARCK.

1. Gedanken und Erinnerungen von Otto Fürst von Bismarck. Drittes Bande. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1919.

New Chapters of Bismarck's Autobiography.* Translated by Bernard Miall. Hodder and Stoughton, 1920. 2. Fürst Bismarcks Entlassung.. Nach den hinterlassenen, bisher unveröffentlichten Aufzeichnungen des Staatssekretärs des Innern, Dr Karl Heinrich von Boetticher, und des Chefs der Reichskanzlei unter dem Fürsten Bismarck, Dr Franz von Rottenburg. Herausg. von Dr Georg von Eppstein. Berlin: Scherl, 1920.

3. Der neue Kurs: Um den Kaiser: Der missverstandene Bismarck. By Otto Hammann. Three vols. Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1918-1921.

THE subject of the resignation or dismissal of Bismarck in March 1890 has been revived by the long-delayed publication of the third volume of his 'Reflexions and Reminiscences.' The volume has disappointed German 6 readers because it does not contain much that is new regarding the events which preceded the rupture between the Chancellor and his young master, a good deal of what it does contain having already been published in other forms. The chief interest of the volume, apart from its fresh revelation of Bismarck's own character and later aims, lies in the publication of letters from Prince D William, as he then was, to Bismarck in 1887 and the early months of 1888, and of a letter in September 1886, from the Crown Prince Frederick William (afterwards the Emperor Frederick) on the faults of Prince William's character, and the inadvisability of allowing him to occupy himself at that stage, even by way of education, with the affairs of the German Foreign Office.

The crisis in the history of the Hohenzollern, or, as it might more truly be called, the Bismarckian, Empire, which came in the spring of 1890, has not invariably been estimated at its true significance. It was not so much the removal of Bismarck from the conduct of German affairs that was decisive. This must soon have happened in any case; Bismarck was seventy-five and

* There are so many errors in this translation that the writer of this article would refer those of his readers who know German to the original.

in a parlous state of nerves, if not of general health. It was the emancipation of the young Emperor from the only control of which he had stood in awe that changed everything; it was the beginning of the personal regime and all that it implied-waywardness, impulsiveness, ill-regulated ambition, theatricality, and, it must be added, frequent offensiveness in the conduct of German policy both domestic and foreign. Added to this, there was from April 1890 down to the year of Bismarck's death (1898), the constant criticism in newspapers and periodicals of the New Course' by the hermit of Friedrichsruh,' in a vein to which personal rancour imparted a malignity that warped, even where it did not entirely neutralise, the experienced wisdom of the critic. The consequences of the rupture were to expose William II without 'ministerial draperies' to the public view, and to make him for years the butt of Bismarck and of the Bismarckian fronde. This led to exasperation and intensified the evils which Bismarckian and pseudoBismarckian criticism professed to aim at curing.

Fresh light has been thrown upon the crisis itself by the publication of the Memoirs of von Boetticher, Bismarck's faithful henchman from 1880 to his official end, and by Dr Hammann's two important books, ‘Der neue Kurs' and 'Der missverstandene Bismarck.' It was not merely the incompatibility of 'crabbed age and youth,' nor was it any fundamental divergence of views, at least in the realm of foreign policy, that led to the rupture. It was largely what Hammann calls in another connexion 'die unpersönliche Tölpelhaftigkeit im Geschehen,' the fatuous way in which things happen and conspire, as it were, to subvert the best personal intentions of those whose business it is to co-operate closely in matters of the highest moment.

The characters of the two protagonists and the angles from which they approached their common task of government and policy were no doubt widely different. Yet both might have seemed to be qualified at the outset to overcome these differences—Bismarck by long experience and the faculty of dealing with men and monarchs, and William II by the real veneration which he entertained for the great Chancellor and by his determination up to the last and supreme provocation-Boetticher's

testimony brings this out-to bear all things from a servant of his grandfather and of his father whom he regarded at that time as almost indispensable.

...

There are now good grounds for believing that the first aversion and mistrust arose on Bismarck's side. While he had every reason to view with misgiving early manifestations of the Emperor's way of trying to establish the Royal and Imperial authority in the land and German prestige abroad, he had, partly through self-indulgence, such as his long absences on his estates, as well as his whole manner of life, lost touch both with his young master and with, at any rate, home affairs. He does not appear to have left Friedrichsruh between November 1889 and the day (Jan. 24, 1890) of the fateful Crown Council on William II's labour policy. Bismarck himself afterwards deplored these absences, and said to a guest in 1892, 'On the ground that my health must be taken care of, I was kept away from Berlin and from contact with the actual course of affairs. I felt no necessity or desire to be frequently away for such long periods.' William II, like William I before him, encouraged these absences from a real desire to safeguard the health of the aged Chancellor. At the beginning of 1890 William II doubtless had the additional reason that he was concerned about the line which Bismarck might take if he spoke in the Reichstag on the question of the Socialist Law, then due to be renewed or dropped. But the real coddlers of the old Chancellor were his wife and his son Herbert. Some notes, all too fragmentary, by Dr Franz von Rottenburg, Bismarck's official private secretary (Chef der Reichskanzlei), are incorporated with Boetticher's apologia in the volume Fürst Bismarcks Entlassung' recently published by Baron von Eppstein. When Rottenburg realised, in the Christmas week of 1889, that William II was maturing plans for fresh Labour legislation of a kind to which he knew Bismarck to be opposed, he strongly felt that the Chancellor ought to go at once to Berlin and see the Emperor. He broached the subject to Count Herbert, who promptly expressed his dissent.

'If the Prince went to Berlin, the Princess would insist upon accompanying him. A visit to Berlin would be dangerous for her, as influenza was prevalent there. There was no necessity

for a talk with the Emperor, as there were no differences of any importance. "You urge that he should go to Berlin," Count Herbert concluded, "only because you are bored here" [at Friedrichsruh].'

Rottenburg, who, like many others, had to suffer much insolence from Count Herbert, could only drop the subject with a mild protest against the insinuation.

Finally, Boetticher himself went down to Friedrichsruh on Jan. 7, 1890. According to a letter which Count Zeppelin, a friend of the Boetticher family, addressed to Frau von Boetticher on her husband's death in 1907, the object of Boetticher's visit was 'to adjure the Prince to abandon his abstention from political affairs, which was simply making it impossible for the government to be carried on.' Es gelingt nichts mehr' (nothing now succeeds) was a common lament in political articles and speeches at this time. The Prussian Minister of Agriculture, Baron Lucius von Ballhausen, had just written to the Chancellor in the same sense, and had complained that in Bismarck's absence the Emperor was neglecting to keep in touch with the Prussian Ministry or to pay any heed to its advice. Boetticher was well received by both the Prince and the Princess at Friedrichsruh, but he was unable to persuade Bismarck to come and confer with the Emperor about Labour legislation. He even felt, when he left, that his representations had not been welcome.

Till then, Boetticher had enjoyed the complete confidence and the friendship of the Prince, to whom, as he always acknowledged, he owed everything, including & personal intervention which had saved his father-inlaw, a Stralsund banker, from bankruptcy and himself from serious embarrassment. But there was an incident during this visit which planted a root of bitterness in Bismarck's mind; it cropped up again and again in his later communications to the press and in his Memoirs. Boetticher, as he himself narrates, had sat beside the Emperor at a dinner at Prince Hatzfeldt's, at Trachenburg, on the occasion of a shooting-party a few days before his visit to Friedrichsruh. The Emperor had begun to talk about the state of Prince Bismarck's health, and had said that he feared the Prince would not live much longer, 'especially as he was trying to ease his [neuralgic] pains