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Supporting Bismarck’s idea of the mailed fist; Democracy stems from and is supported by aristocracy.

Why is it that, in the American Republic, there is aversion to acknowledging the services of men sprung from aristocracy, like BismarckAre the facts unrecognized, or is the silence only another form of political quackery?

To bring the matter home, let us ask, “How is it in the[149] United States?” Washington was an aristocrat of fortune, one of the richest men of his time, dispassionate, cold, aloof; Hamilton, an aristocrat of breeding, contributing his quota to democracy, as he saw it; Lafayette, an aristocrat of birth, helped us gain our liberty; and certainly Jefferson, an aristocrat of intellect as well as of fortune, the owner of 185 slaves, and the gifted author of the Declaration of Independence, offered inestimable services to the common people.

Off-hand, the average biographer records this: “Bismarck had no confidence in the common people. He fought a written Constitution. He did not wish to see his King yield an inch to the masses. It was the Crown against the Crowd. Violently reactionary, he blocked progress—for there can be no progress without change. He was trying to force the stream of time backward, instead of going with the tide.”

An American who for the first time follows the history of the Unifier of Germany begins very early in the investigation to have a feeling of apprehension. He is sure that Bismarck is a reactionary; his ideas are so out of “harmony” with the spirit of the times, the air full of the “liberty, equality and fraternity.”

Bismarck’s attempt to sustain the monarchial system, especially the idiotic conception of “Divine-right” of kings, as against the rising tide of “confidence in the people,” has about as much chance for success as that the slavery system could be re-introduced into the United States, after that question had been settled by five years’ war. Thus you conclude, from the American view!

As you read on and on, you feel that on the very next page, Bismarck will surely go to the scaffold, or will fall by the dagger of some “friend of the people,” a thug ever after regarded as the veritable Savior of his country for the assassination of the enemy of the common people.

The much ridiculed “Divine-right” of kings is cognizable as a right based on the survival of the fittest, backed by the[150] sword; filled with human weaknesses and shortcomings, but defensible as a system, withal; just as the real intent of the words “captain of industry” should mean one whose fatherly care over his laborers, his judgment, his risk of capital, his foresight in weathering bad times—redounds to the immediate prosperity of the workers with whom he can have no quarrel.

To those who make light of Bismarck’s theory of blood and iron, in government, it should be pointed out that all governments that endure, regardless of what theory you may work under, in the end fall to the strongest;—just as in a family fight the estate goes to the strongest, or in a partnership fight, or in religion, science, social affairs, love or war, the strong man has his way over the weak; and it is still to be proven that the American democracy, which at best is only another of manifold experiments in self-government, is to survive as long as have in the past royalist ideas—already that have persisted for thousands of years.

So, we have invented Democracy out of a thousand costly expenditures of blood and treasure. We protest that this latest experiment in government is to endure forever more, but not one man in a thousand has any real conception of the Democracy in which all men shall work for a common National end.

Thus, Democracy is fully as large an experiment as any other in the Halls of Time; and today we are still nursing childish ideals, attempting to level men by legislation, and incidentally taking satisfaction in stoning our public servants, decrying wealth, and robbing the individual of any broad conception of responsibility.
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Parallel elements that make for power in America and Germany.

It is difficult for a certain type of American mind to get Bismarck’s point of view. This is because of the failure to recognize that in whatever respect Absolutism and Republicanism[151] may differ, as forms of government, the fact remains that it is society, and not human nature, that has been transformed. The old motives, ambition, love, war, marriage, pride, prejudice, still sum up underlying conditions, however firmly any government may seem to be established, called by whatever name, and led by Crown or Crowd. In addition, all history forecasts the ultimate ruin of any régime founded on human nature.

As between the share which belongs to each man, and the share which does not belong to him but to the body politi............