PRINCE BISMARCK'S DIFFICULTIES.
THERE is something very striking in the historic situation in Berlin. The Empire is not only founded, but at the very pinnacle of its military fame. France, with two pro- vinces wrested from her, is lying helpless and reticent almost at the feet of Germany. The Papacy is trembling before the bitter thoroughness of Prince Bismarck's ecclesiastical policy. Two Archbishops and a Bishop of the Prussian Catholic Church are in prison. Austria, so lately the bitter and humiliated foe of Germany, has given her old rival the kiss of peace and forgiveness. Italian statesmen, though less submissive than they might be to German hints, speak with sugared words of the great German Power. Russia pays court to the new empire on every possible occasion, and no one doubts that Germany is the arbiter of Europe. Yet with all this success and glory, the great Minister who has brought it about lies chafing on a sick-bed at the failure of 1."..Tilans, harping on the necessity for his own resignation ; while the great Emperor scolds away at his Parliament about the Military Bill, after a fashion that brings back even to him- self his old and savage struggle with the Prussian Diet of the years 1862-66; and every one begins to see that the greatest prince and the greatest statesman in Europe are hardly more powerful in the sense of being nearer to their own ends, than they were when wrangling with the Prussian Diet about the constitution of the Prussian Army at a time when King William counted for little beside Louis Napoleon, and Count Bismarck for even less beside Count Morny. Yet now Prince Bismarck, as he groans on his sick-bed, is reported to talk after the following fashion ; and Herr Lucius of Erfurt, in giving some correction to the report, appears to confirm all the more important statements :—" In 1867 I said let us set Germany in the saddle ; she already knows how to ride. I am afraid I must retract that remark. The Reichstag seems to wish to prove that Germany cannot ride. The Reichstag misunderstands the situation. Certain leading ' members consider themselves bound by earlier expressions of !opinion, and for that reason they dare not do what the present I emergency demands. With me it is otherwise. I have I always striven to learn the new, and have always been ready and proud to correct errors of opinion. I pat my country above myself, and a different attitude is to me in- conceivable ; but in Parliament, men who were expressly elected on the strength of my name, whose constituents meant that they should support the Imperial policy and I assist me against the common foe, seem to think that they are free to shirk the task when it conflicts with what they may have said at another time, in another place, and in altogether different circumstances. I am bound to be dissatisfied with such a condition of things. I cannot sacrifice my European reputation. I will demand my resig- nation as soon as I am able to hold a pen. Perhaps there is somebody else who knows how to find a safe majority in this Reichstag. I have difficulties enough in the Bandsrath and elsewhere, and my friends point mockingly to the Liberals and Radicals in Parliament, and say, Well, those are the men on whom you rely.' An end must be put to such a state of things, which is fatal to the best interests of the Empire, and there are but two remedies,—my retirement or the dissolution of the Reichstag." It is clear that the Prince chafes bitterly under the reluctance of the Reichstag to vote for ever a peace establishment of over 400,000 men for the German Army, and regards. that reluctance as a proof that now that Germany is in the saddle, she cannot ride. Perhaps all it proves is that Germany, now that she is in the saddle, would like to have the power to ride her own way, and not Prince Bismarck's way. For the present, there can be no doubt that she is quite willing to follow Prince Bismarck's lead, and does not underestimate his powers as a guide. But it does not follow that on that account she should hand over, not merely to Prince Bismarck and the Emperor, but to Prince Bismarck's successors and the Emperor's successors, for an in- definite period, the power of directing the political riding excursions of Germany, and disposing of her vast military resources. It seems to us very plain that the Reichstag is right in taking this stand against the perverse and despotic resolve of the Emperor and his Minister to emancipate the military policy of Germany from the authority of the German Parliament for as long as the present Constitution may. last. It is not clear, indeed, that the Liberals will persist in that wise refusal to commit future German Parliaments by their act. The last rumour is that if a slight reduction of some 17,000 men is made in the numbers of the peace establish- ment, the Liberals will vote the permanence of such peace estab- lishment,—a fatal step, which would deprive them of all real power for the future. But whether they yield or whether they stand out, it is sufficiently remarkable that another dead-lock, precisely of the kind which agitated Prussia for many ses- sions a decade ago, should have occurred within four years of the great victories which established the new German Empire.
And what no doubt irritates Prince Bismarck more than anything in the new situation is this,—that the crisis is more or less the result of the very policy by which he had, as he thought, united the National party under his leadership. When he declared war against the Roman Catholics, he knew that he alienated a party that had considerable influence in the Empire, and that so long as it was fairly treated, was little disposed to quarrel- with the strength of the State. Had that party been in favour with the Chancellor, instead of a persecuted party, it would have voted his Military Bill to a man, and given him a considerable majority, even if only the Conservatives and the Conservative Liberals, from amongst the other elements of the Reichstag, had remained true to him. But to expect progresaive, Liberals to go with him here, solely because the Roman Catho- lics go against him, is clearly pushing his view of the power
Prince Bismarck's mistake has been a double one. He forgot all about the affair, and the impression of complete has never rightly estimated the moral power of opinion, success was se strong that when the King of Ashantee, pro- and he has estimated too highly the power of the per bably, Sir Garnet Wolseley says, after years of preparation, sonal popularity gained by great achievements. He invaded British territory on the Gold Coast, the Abyssinian grossly under-estimated the necessity under which Roman scheme was adopted once more. Sir Garnet Wolseley was Catholics would find themselves to resist the laws he imposed selected to bring the King to a reasonable state of mind, either upon them ; he grossly under-estimated the difference between by reasoning with him or thrashing him, and there the their sense of the deference due to the claims of a Church matter was, as far as the Cabinet was concerned, practi- which lays its whole stress on authority and tradition, and of the cally left. When Sir Garnet started, Mr. Gladstone said the deference due to the claims of a newly-founded State, however Government had practically no plan at all, except to do exactly powerful. Again, he greatly under-estimated,—though not as it was bid. Sir Garnet Wolseley arrived on the Gold so greatly,—the necessity under which the Liberals would Coast, which he found still ours, because Colonel Festing, find themselves of holding to at least some rags and of the Marines, and Captain Fremantle, of the Barraconta, tatters of the creed of self-government ; and he greatly with a handful of Blue-jackets and Marines, had held Elmina over-estimated the extent to which his own claims and Cape Coast Castle for Her Majesty against the Ashantee as a popular Minister, who had set Germany "in the army, had won a most gallant battle against an enemy now saddle," crushed and mulcted France, and humiliated the pronounced a most dangerous one, and had fought for a strip Papacy, would be regarded as justifying his appeal to the of coast like a forlorn hope. For that service—one of the Liberal party to trust him, even when he asked something most remarkable ever performed on a microscopic, but perfect quite counter to its own principles. Personal influence scale—Colonel Festing receives a C.B., one of the shabbiest of that kind is no doubt great, but it is great only rewards that even Great Britain, always stingy unless the when you can preserve the decencies of dignified self- butcher's bill is heavy, ever bestowed, but, we suppose, enough consistency and superficial continuity of principle. Prince for a Marine. Sir Garnet, once landed, found the Marines Bismarck has evidently held, more or less, that to ride very ill, as they would have been, under the circumstances, rough-shod over principle is as easy as to ride rough-shod in any other swamp ; decided that the climate was the over the territory of a weak foe. It is by no means so easy. worst in the world, though Governor Maclean lived in it He asks a Church which has always boasted,—as well openly twenty years, and travelled about as freely as a native ; as in its heart,—of its infallibility and its independence of the assumed that natives who had been drilled, as Captain Fre- State, to accept whatever terms the State likes to dictate, and mantle reported, for one day and a half, would never make he finds an obstruction in his path far greater than any soldiers ; found that the King did not intend to be reason- which opposed the German armies on their invasion able, and resolved that for thrashing him a small body of of France. He asks a party which has made the right trained troops, less, all told, than a Prussian regiment, and duty of self-government its main creed from time was indispensable. Thenceforward all within Sir Gar- immemorial, to hand over for ever the most valuable net's sphere of action went well. He thoroughly under- element in that right of self-government to the disposal stood what he wanted, he asked for nothing to waste.— of a Minister, no doubt brilliant, and an Emperor, no indeed, to be very colloquial, he "cut it a little too fine" ; he doubt powerful and venerable ;—but, of course, they can- provided for the men's health ; he provided for fierce resistance, not help themselves ; they must fret and fume, and should it come ; he carefully informed all men, down to the wish to refuse, even if they do not turn out to have drummers, of the kind of work they might expect ; and then the courage to do so. Prince Bismarck has always over- he plunged into the dreadful belt of tropical jungle—jungle, rated the physical charms of power and success, and underrated not forest—fall of undergrowth and creepers and impassable the severe necessities of moral logic, the claims of a creed over thickets, one hundred and fifty miles broad, which stretches the mind. Hence his miseries, as he tosses on the bed from between the Coast and Coomassie. The commissariat was calcu- which sleep is so often absent, and where the thought of his lated to a week. The transport was improvised out of slave men splendid past achievements seems to convey to the statesman and women with nothing to get either from victory or defeat, arrested in mid-career, and taught by bitter experience what broke down a dozen times, and only got through at last because a little way his prestige will carry him, so little of calm and the West Indian negro soldiers behaved so well, and because permanent satisfaction. Colonel Colley, appointed at the last moment, understood his
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