loss of liberty.

On the ruins of Roman imperial glory, Teutonic conquerors founded an Empire that defied time and chance for upwards of 1,000 years; then there crept in a peculiar dry rot. The ancient German oak died at the top. Along came Napoleon, hacking away the limbs and scarring the gnarled trunk with fire and sword. The ruin seemed complete. Dead at the top, dead at the root, men said. And what men say is true. There is no longer a Germany, except as a mere geographical designation; when you speak of the German Empire you recall merely the echo of a once mighty name.

It now becomes Bismarck’s solemn duty, fortified by a noble appreciation of the ancient legend, to make the German oak green again in its immortal youth. And he watered the roots with blood.

¶ We cannot tell you the great story in a few baby-sentences; you must read and grasp the broad spirit as it gradually unfolds. Bismarck in the crudity of his early inspiration scarcely finds himself for years. But all the while he is holding fast to the idea that the Fatherland should under God be free and united, sustained by the ancient Teutonic brotherhood in arms.

We present him in part as a tyrant, a wild, intolerant spirit, working his own plans to be sure, but those plans in the end are to redound to the good of the nation he long and unselfishly serves.

We ask you to see him in his weakness and we hope with some of his strength, always with his high purpose.

We ask you to behold him as a man with all a strong man’s frailties and faults. We do not spare him. We paint him black, now and then, deliberately, that you may know how very small ofttimes are the very great; also to realize that if we are to wait for perfect human beings to front our reforms then those reforms will never be made.

Bismarck is too great a man to be belittled by the glamour of spurious praise for spurious virtues.

It was not necessary for him to cease to be a human being in order to carry out his work. He remained, to the end, grossly human, for which the gods be praised.

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¶ Did you ever see a bulldog battle with one of his kind? The startling fact is this: The dog suddenly develops magnificent reserve force, making his battling blood leap; is transformed into a catapult, bearing down his adversary or by him borne down—it matters not which!—for the joy of battle. To fight is the realization of his utmost being.

¶ A peculiar fact known to all admirers of a fighting bulldog is this: The dog during the fight, looks now and then at his master near-by, as much as to say, “See how well I fight!”

¶ Thus Bismarck looked at his King.

¶ The nature of the pit bulldog is seen in Bismarck’s head. His surly face inspires a sense of dread. There is that in his physiognomy that shows his ugly disposition, when aroused. If you saw that moody face in the crowd, one glance would be sufficient to make you feel how vituperative, short, sharp, murderous the unknown man could be, on occasion.

¶ Yet the fear stirred by the sight of a pit bulldog is ofttimes largely illusionary. The dog at heart is genial in a brute way, and never a more loyal servant than the bulldog to his friends—devoted even to death, to his master.

¶ It is the sense of dread in the bulldog’s head that strikes home! So with Bismarck’s physiognomy. The Iron Chancellor had but to come into the room to make his onlookers experience uneasiness. There was an ever-present suggestion of pent-up power, that could in an instant be turned upon men’s lives, to their destruction!

¶ It is true that Bismarck had his genial side, but it cannot be said that he drew and held men to him. He had thousands of admirers to one friend. During the greater part of his life he was either hated or feared—at best, misunderstood. Like the pit bulldog, Bismarck was born to rule other lives—and he fulfilled his mission.

¶ The element of absolutism in the man, his uncompromising severity, his command of the situation regardless of cost, sorrow or suffering to other men, is seen in his realistic physiognomy. We study these facts more and more, as we go along.

¶ There was always something imperious about this great man. He brooked no interference. His excessive dignity compelled respect. He never allowed familiarities; you could not safely presume on his good nature. He never permitted you to get too near. This abnormal self-confidence conveyed the idea that this giant in physique and in intellectual power was truly cut out for greatness.

One of his favorite pranks, as a boy, was to amuse himself making faces at his sister; he could frighten her by his queer grimaces.

From early youth, he was accustomed to take himself very seriously, and by his offensive manners conveyed an immediate impression of the ironical indifference in which he held humanity, in the mass.

¶ He was a born aristocrat, in a sense of high, offensive partisanship.

¶ Men shrank from him, cursed him, reviled his name; but they respected his intellect, even in the early days when he used his power in an undisciplined way; yes, was painfully learning the business of mastering human lives.

¶ The brute in the man loomed large; the unreasoning but magnificent audacity of the bulldog expressed itself in scars, wounds, deep-drinking bouts, fisticuffs, and in twenty-eight duels.

¶ But he had another kind of courage, greater in import than that expressed by physical combat.

¶ When we say Bismarck’s work is a revelation of his will to power, we emphasize again how unnecessary it is to make him either less or more than a human being. There is a school of writers that never mentions his name except with upturned eyes, as though he were a demigod. The tendency of human nature is to idealize such as Bismarck out of all semblance to the original, creating wax figures where once were men of flesh and blood.

¶ Men rise to power largely in uniform ways; that psychic foundation on which they draw is always grossly human, rather dull when you understand it, always conventional;—and the great Bismarck himself is no exception.

¶ In doing his work, Bismarck is following the psychic necessities of his character; is acting in a very personal way, upheld always by the soldier’s virtue, ambition. There is also a large element of self-love. His idiomatic lust for control is to be accepted as a root-fact of his peculiar type of being. And while on the whole his ambition is exercised for the good of his country, herein he is acting, in addition, under the ardent appetite, in his case a passion, to dominate millions of lives; urged not perhaps so much from a preconceived desire to dominate as from an inherent call to exercise his innate capacity for leadership.

¶ Making allowance for the idea that Bismarck is a devoted servant of the King of Prussia, it is not necessary to believe that Bismarck poses as the Savior of his country. In fact, he distinctly disavows this sacrifice, has too much sense to regard himself from this absurd point of view.

¶ The words carved on Bismarck’s tomb at his own request, “A Faithful German Servant of Emperor William I,” show that however much other men were unable to comprehend the baffling Bismarckian character, the Iron Chancellor himself had no vain illusions.

¶ When he was 83 and about to die, the old man taking a final sweep of his long and turbulent life, asked himself solemnly: “How will I be known in time to come?”

¶ Fame replied: “You have been a great Prince; an invincible maker of Empire, you have held in your hand the globe of