PRINCE BISMARCK'S TAUNTS.
WE observed only a fortnight ago, in speaking of Von Moltke's great speech, that there appeared to be some- thing of meditated policy in the tone of ostentatious precaution against attack, and exaggerated apprehension of the danger of attack, which the German official speakers were introducing into their speeches. The two utterances of Prince Bismarck's, which we have had within the last ten days, more than con- firm the impression that this tone, whether from the motive we then suggested, or from any other, has at least been pre- meditated. In resisting the motion of the Alsatian Deputies for the repeal of the exceptional laws to which their province is subjected, Prince Bismarck took occasion to speak almost as scornfully of France—as he thinks. We do not in the least suppose that he spoke more scornfully than he thinks, perhaps even less so. For Prince Bismarck's chief skill in disguising his policy has generally consisted in the frankness with which le has avowed his feelings, a course which diplomatists have never been apt to interpret rightly, so accustomed are they to a very different mode of procedure. And no doubt it is quite true that Prince Bismarck does not speak out without a purpose, though, when he does speak out, he is apt to say what he means, calculating very sagaciously that that is the last thing diplomatists will give him credit for. He did not express his true feelings for Austria for a considerable time before he broke up the old Bund. He did not express his true feelings for France while the struggle with Austria was still indeterminate. When he does express his feelings, they are apt to be his true feelings, because he knows that frankness is one of the best disguises a diplomatist can wear. But he says nothing at all, when he thinks it for any reason imprudent to say what he means. Hence we do not doubt that the taunts he has lately cast at France, first in ad- dressing the the Reichstag, and next in talking with the Hungarian interlocutor, Herr von Jokai, with whom he conversed so freely the other day, were the quite genuine expression of his feeling, though he calculated rightly that the very candour with which he avowed it would puzzle statesmen, and probably mislead them as to his ultimate purpose. That he intended to irri- tate France we do not doubt at all ; not, most likely, in the ii)pe of provoking a speedy war, though it is very possible indeed that Prince Bismarck would not object to such an issue, if only the initiative were again taken by France, but certainly in the hope of exciting apprehension of war in Germany, and causing such signs of new irritation in France as, though such excitement may be steadily suppressed, would at least answer the purpose of keeping Germany anxious and
alert, and indisposed to discuss with any eagerness questions of internal policy not very convenient to the Government. We suspect that Prince Bismarck regards foreign suspicion and foreign hostility towards Germany as, for the present, a great advantage to the cause of German unity and cohesion. He looks upon such hostility as a counter-irritant,—as medical men regard blisters and mustard-plasters,—likely to diminish interior inflammation. He thinks he can hardly, for the present, sow in Germany enough apprehension of foreign His fight with the Pope is a policy of the same kind, only that there he hazards also serious dissensions within the Empire, in order to unite the great majority of the German people still more closely. With one great national foe and one great spiritual foe to fight, he thinks, no doubt, that Germany's two great dangers, political democracy and social communism, will not gain much ground against the infant Constitution ;- so that Germany may be welded into something like solid political form, before any of the questions which most seriously divide German politicians and German Protestants grow into importance.
That is the view we are inclined to take of what would otherwise seem to be imprudent outbursts on the part of Prince Bismarck. For what can be apparently less like policy than for a conqueror who has gained all he wants to be constantly and publicly rubbing vitriol into the sores which war and conquest have made ? One day, for instance, we find him ridiculing the French Assembly and its President, M. Buffet, in the Reichstag, remarking that had the annexed Germans spoken as freely at Versailles as the annexed Alsatians spoke at Berlin, "M. Le President Buffet, in that peculiarly in- cisive style of his, would have put a stop to these perora- tions." Now, that is not the way in which statesmen usually speak of the great officials of neighbouring countries. It would mean something if either Prince Bismarck or the Due de Broglie went out of his way to attack the Speaker of the House of _ Commons, or the President of the Chamber of Deputies at Rome. And no doubt it meant something when Prince Bismarck spoke in the most taunting way of the theatrical, French style of the Alsatian Deputies, and remarked casually to the Reichstag that it is the commonest thing in the world for a German to be moved to laughter by the performance of a French tragedy, even when acted by "the first heroes of the stage." The whole of that speech was one long mockery of France, of French impatience and irritation, and of the Alsatian indig-
nation at being kept under by the heavy hand of Germany. It would not do, he said, to abolish the exceptional laws in Alsace, —indeed; he has since made them heavier—at a time when Alsatians were talking such nonsensical violence in Berlin. It might be safe to say at Berlin what it would not be safe to say in
Strasburg. The Alsatians had not been as free for 200 years as they are now under the heavy yoke of Germany, and in two hundred years more they will be as thankful for their recon- quest as they are now sullen under it,—a reassuring prophecy for mortals whose three-score years and ten are already perhaps more than half lived out.
Again, another day, Prince Bismarck burst out into what looked like an involuntary tirade against the French to his Hungarian interviewer, Herr von Jokai,—" Oh, those Frenchmen, those implacable savages! Just scratch the Parisian cook, tailor, or perruquier, and you will not be long in discovering the Red Indian underneath all his superficial gloss. Nol we have to stand sentinel against the French, who are our mortal enemies, and we have no idea of involving ourselves in fresh troubles on our Eastern frontier likewise." And that day, too, he probably did not doubt that the remark, which was woven into the very web of his discourse of Germany's Eastern policy, would be carefully reported, nor did he wish it to be suppressed. Evidently he loses no opportunity of saying what will alarm and irritate the French, sometimes in public, sometimes in those private-public discourses which exercise almost the same influence as official speeches. And the natural inference is either that he regards this ostentatious hostility of tone as for some reason politic, or that he is losing his statesmanlike sagacity, and becoming Vete exalte'e under the influence of unparalleled success.. The last supposition is, of course, possible, for Prince Bismarck is not beyond mental weaknesses, and even the greatest minds have been inflated and overset by too great success. But we do not regard this as a probable explanation of Prince Bismarck's unusual and
reiterated tirades against France. If that were the true ex- planation, we 'should in all probability see other signs of moral intoxication. We are strongly disposed, then, to believe that the wish to keep up vigilance and alarm in Germany and
hearty union amongst the Protestants, whom he probably rightly regards as the true core of the empire, is even more truly the explanation of his apparently excitable outbreaks against France, than any motive which has its end in French national action. But in addition to this, it is quite likely, we think, that he persuades himself that invective against France must have one of two effects. Either it must cow the French, who are, as he knows, usually a cautious and very nervous people ;—or it must inflame them into one of their sudden spasms of passion ; and he probably says to himself that either of these results would serve his purpose equally well. If they are cowed by hearing the great statesman who has compassed their downfall talking of them with such con- temptuous disgust, he will by that means secure a respite from war without any danger that Germany will relapse into apathetic security. The tranquillity ensured by language so high and aggressive as his can never be regarded as more than an armed peace,—that armed peace which Count von Moltke said must last for fifty years at least. 'If, on the contrary, this language should provoke France into some new spasmodic out- burst of wrath, then Prince Bismarck would get the oppor- tunity that rumour says he is so anxiously waiting for, to secure Germany from her foe by a military dismemberment of France ; and for this policy, too, he would have prepared Germany by the language he has so sedulously used against France. Thus, as we understand Prince Bismarck's very unusual regimen of blistering for the patient he has already so effectually bled, it is meant, in the first instance, to keep up in Germany the sense of danger and of vigilance which tends to distract the national attention from critical home questions ; next, to subdue and break the spirit of France by the evidence it gives of haughty contempt for French power and complete indifference to French feeling ; or, lastly, if that should not be the effect, to accustom Europe and Germany to the idea that France is an intolerable neighbour, whose next attack upon Germany must be punished with something worse than fine and trivial rectifications of boundary,—by dismem- berment on a large scale.
But while we hold it quite likely that this is Prince Bis- marck's deliberate policy, and not in any way the result of the political intoxication of success, we cannot doubt that such a policy itself betrays something of that over-confidence of purpose and dictatorial presumptuousness of feeling which is a much milder, because an intellectual, form of undue exal- tation of mind. Deliberate scorn, publicly expressed, is a most dangerous political weapon, which hardly any man can use securely. It has a tendency to alarm and alienate other nations besides the object of it. There is a solidarite' of feeling between nations on this head which it is impossible to destroy. No one will forget that though French vanity was ready to his hand, Prince Bismarck deliberately irritated it into the outbreak which led to the great victories of 1870. The ostentatious adoption of a similar policy a second time, and this time with so much greater a power at his disposal, will gradually alarm all Europe ; and should the French show any kind of fortitude and patience under it, as it is reasonable after such a disaster to expect, it is more than probable, that they will be gaining and he will be losing allies, by every taunt which Prince Bismarck flings at them. We do not think Prince Bismarck is off his head. We think he is playing one of his old, deep, candid games. But we believe he is playing a very dangerous game, which he may be very likely indeed to find a losing one for German influence, and indeed one better calculated than any other he could adopt to win new friend- ships and alliances for France. No European Power, however great, can afford to fling about taunts as gratuitous as Prince Bismarck is now systematically discharging at the head of his humiliated neighbour.
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