Bismarck and Frederick the Great, and to credit them with a double dose of original sin. Our reputation for sanity and scholarship depends on resisting the distorting passions of war. Frederick the Great was no better and no worse than Catherine II or Joseph II or Louis XV. Bismarck's methods were no worse than those of Louis Napoleon or Cavour. The two greatest statesmen of the 19th century had to solve similar problems, and they solved them by similar means. The war with Austria in 1859 was prepared as deliberately as the war with France in 1870; and Cavour would have manipulated the Ems telegram without a qualm in order to force his antagonist to declare war. 'If we did for ourselves what we do for our country,' he declared with revealing frankness, what rascals we should be!' The makers of kingdoms and empires fight with different degrees of skill and success, but they employ the same kind of weapons.

To maintain that Bismarck was merely the supreme example of a prevalent type is not to admire that particular school of politics or to approve the tortuous intrigues by which he fomented three wars and gathered in the opulent harvest they were designed to yield. A nation rarely obtains more than one of its legitimate demands at a time. On the overthrow of the Directory France required order and liberty; but she obtained order alone. In 1870 Germany needed unity and liberty; but she received unity alone. Moreover, the effort involved in winning her unity not only diminished her chances of securing liberty but weakened her determination to obtain it. Nothing was more natural, and yet nothing was more pitiful, than the stampede of the majority in the Prussian Chamber into the Government camp in 1866. The needle-gun at Sadowa destroyed not only the army of Benedek but the liberalism of Germany. The bourgeoisie turned National-Liberal; and, when Sedan had confirmed Sadowa, it required strong nerves to oppose the Man of Destiny. There was nothing abnormal or discreditable in the transformation, which, indeed, would have occurred in any other nation that suddenly realised the dream of centuries and found itself, as the result of two great wars, the strongest Power in Europe. In millions of German hearts there was no

other feeling than that of proud thankfulness that their country was at last a nation, and that the civil wars and foreign invasions from which it had suffered throughout history were at an end. It was not till some years had elapsed that it became clear that Germany, like Italy, had been 'too quickly made,' that the easy victories were working like a subtle poison in the blood, and that the idealistic liberalism of 1848 was being displaced by a debasing worship of power and riches. Keen-sighted and patriotic men like Mommsen openly lamented that the accession of material strength was accompanied by & decline in spiritual values. The rapid growth of wealth resulting from the advance of science stimulated materialism in both hemispheres; but nowhere were its effects so disastrous as in Germany, where the combina tion of new-won power and new-found riches produced more baneful result than either would have achieved alone.

Bismarck had played his cards with almost superhuman success; and the skill with which he arranged that both Austria and France should fight alone when the moment arrived to settle accounts constitutes the most dazzling chapter in the history of modern diplomacy. But in the moment of victory he committed an error which in the light of subsequent events may be reckoned the greatest mistake of his career. After preventing the annexation of Austrian territory in 1866 by what he always described as the greatest struggle of his life, and thereby rendering possible the speedy reconciliation of the belligerents, Bismarck allowed the great soldiers to have their way in 1871. There is no ground for the notion commonly held during the excitement of the Great War that the annexation of Alsace and a portion of Lorraine was a work of almost unique wickedness. Outside France it was generally regarded at the time, no less in England than elsewhere, as the natural punishment of the Power which had declared war and had been defeated. And where is the Great Power which would have come empty-handed out of a sanguinary and victorious struggle, and would have left in the possession of its defeated enemy rich provinces which had formed part of its own vanished empire? Let us clear our minds of cant. It was an abomination to transfer masses

of human beings from one allegiance to another without consulting their wishes; but that was the common practice of mankind before 1870 and has been since.

Yet Bismarck was aware of the unwisdom of the territorial settlement which he was called upon to sanction. 'I do not want too many Frenchmen in my house,' he remarked. His plan was to content himself with Alsace, a province of German blood and language, to insist on the dismantling of Metz, and to exact a larger indemnity; and it was a calamity for France, for Germany and for the world that his scheme was not adopted. But he never fought for his policy, and he deserves even sharper condemnation for allowing the annexation of part of Lorraine than the soldiers whose horizon was bounded by strategical considerations. No one can be certain that Alsace might not have been gradually reconciled to the change by more generous and considerate treatment than she was destined to receive; but it may be asserted with the greatest confidence that a population so passionately French, not only in sentiment but also in blood and language, as that of French Lorraine was as indigestible as the Poles at the other end of the Empire.

When the wars were over, Bismarck was called upon to deal with the thorny domestic problems of the new Empire; and few careful students will deny that in home affairs his record is on the whole a failure. At a time when it was of vital moment to rally all the forces of national life round the new Imperial structure, he Sengaged in a struggle with the Roman Church which stirred millions of loyal subjects to passionate anger and from which he emerged not indeed completely defeated but badly bruised, and saddled with a powerful permanent Centrumspartei in the Reichstag under the leadership of the formidable Windthorst. His battle with the Socialists was equally unsuccessful; but in this case he is not open to the blame of provoking an unnecessary conflict. Socialism was a world-wide phenomenon, the child of modern industrialism; and to Bismarck belongs the honour of attempting to combat what he regarded as a national danger not by repressive legislation alone, but by a gigantic system of state-aided insurance against the dangers and trials of the worker's life. Though neither

kicks nor halfpence arrested the rapid growth of Social Democracy in the Protestant towns of the Empire, the social legislation of the eighties assisted the German working classes to attain a standard of life unknown in any other part of Central or Eastern Europe.

It is a harder task to pronounce judgment on the great change in fiscal policy in 1879 which broke up the National Liberal party and forced the Minister to depend henceforward on Conservative support. Was the economic condition of the Empire so unsatisfactory as to necessitate far-reaching changes, and did the return to Protection produce the beneficial result which he expected? Bismarck frankly confessed that he had never given economic theory a thought, occupied as he was with foreign affairs and satisfied with the general prosperity of the country; but the crash of 1873, followed by over-production in some of the staple industries, pro duced a demand for a reversion to the traditional Prussian policy of protecting the home market. There were, moreover, political considerations impelling the Minister in the same direction. Under the Constitution the Empire was entitled to meet any deficit by matricular contributions from its component States until its own income sufficed for its needs; but, instead of being a stop-gap, these contributions threatened to become the mainstay of Imperial finance. The system was irksome to the States and seemed to the Chancellor derogatory to the dignity of the Federal Government. The simplest method of rendering it independent was to raise the custom duties; and, once converted, he pushed through the Tariff Bill with his usual titanic energy.

'From the industrial standpoint,' writes Mr Dawson, 'Germany's first experiences of the new tariff were not in general encouraging, for the protection of one industry proved to the prejudice of another. But in 1884 Bismarck believed that Protection had freed the country from economic pressure. Even yet, however, agriculture had not lifted up its head. Before Protection was introduced there were far seeing politicians who suspected that, though agriculture was brought last into the scheme of fiscal reform, it would end by taking the first place.'

The prophecy proved correct, for the Government became

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henceforward, with a brief interval under Caprivi, subservient to the Agrarians. How much of the wonderful prosperity of the generation that followed was due to the tariff and how much to science, education and hard work, is still disputed by the champions of rival economic theories. But there can be no question that the change inaugurated in 1879 strengthened the political influence of the great industrialists and the Junkers, and placed fresh obstacles in the path of democratic advance.

In foreign affairs Bismarck's record was far more successful. It was the mark of true greatness that, when he had obtained what he set out to accomplish, he was never tempted to new adventures. 'Wir sind satt' (We have got enough), he declared emphatically. The great maker of wars became one of the pillars of European peace. He had no belief in unlimited liabilities, and was wholly unaffected by the new passion for oversea conquest and colonisation which gained possession of the Great Powers in the later decades of the century. Europe was his chess-board, on which he knew every move of the game and on which no rival could challenge him with any hope of success. When he ran up the German flag in Africa in 1884, he only acted in response to pressure which no other Minister would have resisted so long. In the literal sense of the word his policy was conservative. He had made Germany the strongest Power on the Continent, and he would do nothing which might jeopardise her proud position.

In his survey of the foreign policy of the Empire written in 1913, Prince Bülow frankly recognised that the hostility of France was ineradicable so long as Germany refused to return the Rhine provinces. But, whereas Bülow and his master calmly proceeded to create new enemies for the Fatherland, Bismarck was of opinion that one enemy was enough, in peace no less than in war. At Versailles in the winter of 1870, he remarked to Busch that he could not sleep for the nightmare of coalitions; and his horror of a hostile league remained with him till the end. Russia was to be kept friendly by allowing her a free hand in the Near and Middle East. Austria was to be won by the promise of support in the event of a Muscovite attack. Except for a brief duel with Granville, he never thwarted British