nvolved in a great and tragic conflict, and they
expected the Minister to play his part seriously and solemnly; instead
of that they had listened to a series of epigrams with no apparent
logical connection. We know how dangerous it is, even in England, for a
responsible statesman to allow himself to be epigrammatic in dealing
with serious affairs. Much more was it in Germany, where the Ministers
were nearly always officials by training. Bismarck had the dangerous
gift of framing pregnant and pithy sentences which would give a ready
handle to his opponents: _Macht geht vor Recht_; he had not said these
words, but he had said something very much like them, and they
undoubtedly represented what seemed to his audience the pith of his
speeches. And then these words, _blood and iron_. He has told us in
later years what he really meant:

"Put the strongest possible military power, in other words, as
much blood and iron as you can, into the hands of the King of
Prussia, then he will be able to carry out the policy you wish;
it cannot be done with speeches and celebrations and songs, it
can only be done by blood and iron." [7]

What everyone thought he meant was that blood must be shed and iron
used; and perhaps they were not so far wrong.

The attempt at conciliation failed; the report of the Committee was
adopted, and an amendment proposed by Vincke, which Bismarck was
prepared to accept, was rejected. Bismarck warned the House not to push
the conflict too far; the time would come when the prospect of a
peaceful solution would have disappeared; then the Government too would
be prepared to oppose theory to theory and interpretation to
interpretation.

He showed to the President of the House a twig of olive. "I gathered
this in Avignon to bring it to the House; it does not seem to be time
yet."

The Budget was sent up to the House of Lords in the amended form in
which the House of Representatives had passed it; the Lords unanimously
threw it out, as they were legally justified in doing; not content with
that, they altered it to the original form in which it had been proposed
by the Government and sent it down again to the Lower House. This was
clearly illegal. Their action, however, was most useful to the
Government. A conflict had now arisen between the two Houses, and
technically the responsibility for the failure to bring the conciliation
about was taken away from the Government; they could entrench themselves