and for the arrangement of conflicting questions in
Africa; men looked to Bismarck to hear what he would say before they
formed their opinion; "I would never have signed the treaty," he
declared. He quickly drifted into formal opposition to the Government;
he even made arrangements with one of the Hamburg papers that it should
represent his opinions. He seemed, to have forgotten his own principle
that, in foreign affairs at least, an opposition to the policy of the
Government should not be permitted. He claimed a privilege which as
Minister he would never have allowed to another. He defied the
Government. "They shall not silence me," he said. It seemed as though he
was determined to undo the work of his life. Under the pretext that he
was attacking the policy of the Ministers, he was undermining the
loyalty of the people, for few could doubt that it was the Emperor at
whom the criticisms were aimed.

In his isolation and retirement, the old uncompromising spirit of his
ancestors once more awoke in him. He had been loyal to the Crown--who
more so?--but his loyalty had limits. His long service had been one of
personal and voluntary affection; he was not a valet, that his service
could be handed on from generation to generation among the assets of the
Crown. "After all," he would ask, "who are these Hohenzollerns? My
family is as good as theirs. We have been here longer than they have."
Like his ancestors who stood out against the rule of the Great Elector,
he was putting personal feeling above public duty. Even if the action of
the new Government was not always wise, he himself had made Germany
strong enough to support for a few years a weak Ministry.

More than this, he was attempting to destroy the confidence of the
people in the moral justice and necessity of the measures by which he
had founded the Empire. They had always been taught that in 1870 their
country had been the object of a treacherous and unprovoked attack.
Bismarck, who was always living over again the great scenes in which he
had been the leading actor, boasted that but for him there would never
have been a war with France. He referred to the alteration in the Ems
telegram, which we have already narrated, and the Government was forced
to publish the original documents. The conclusions drawn from these
disclosures and others which followed were exaggerated, but the naive
and simple belief of the people was irretrievably destroyed. Where they
had been tau