of the worth of the cause for which Bismarck
battled all his life--the unity and greatness of Germany--it is
impossible not to admire the policy of moderation and self-restraint
pursued by him after every one of his most decisive victories. And
here again we note in him the peculiarly German military temper.
German war-songs do not glorify foreign conquest and brilliant
adventure; they glorify dogged resistance and bitter fight for house
and home, for kith and kin. The German army, composed as it is of
millions of peaceful citizens, is essentially a weapon of defense. And
it can truly be said that Bismarck, with all his natural
aggressiveness and ferocity, was in the main a defender, not a
conqueror. He defended Prussia against the intolerable arrogance and
un-German policy of Austria; he defended Germany against French
interference in the work of national consolidation; he defended the
principle of State sovereignty against the encroachments of the
Papacy; he defended the monarchy against the republicanism of the
Liberals and Socialists; and the supreme aim of his foreign policy
after the establishment of the German Empire was to guard the peace of
Europe.

The third predominant trait of Bismarck's character that stamps him as
a soldier--his unquestioning obedience to monarchical discipline--is
so closely bound up with the peculiarly German conceptions of the
functions and the Purpose of the State, that it will be better to
approach this Part of his nature from the political instead of the
military side.

II

In no other of the leading countries of the world has the _laissez
faire_ doctrine had as little influence in political matters as in
Germany. Luther, the fearless champion of religious individualism,
was, in questions of government, the most pronounced advocate of
paternalism. Kant, the cool dissector of the human intellect, was at
the same time the most rigid upholder of corporate morality. It was
Fichte, the ecstatic proclaimer of the glory of the individual will,
who wrote this dithyramb on the necessity of the constant surrender of
private interests to the common welfare: "Nothing can live by itself
or for itself; everything lives in the whole; and the whole
continually sacrifices itself to itself in order to live anew. This is
the law of life. Whatever has come to the consciousness of existence
must fall a victim to the progress of all existence. Only there is a
difference whether you are dragged to the