Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1898-08-04

2
there were only two classes, the
rulers and the ruled, or the land
graves and the peasantry. Bismarck
belonged TO and was as much the liv-
ing embodiment of the aristocratic
Teuton as is Lord Salisbury of the
Anglo-Saxon today in England. Bis
/ marck's sweep.ug statements were
responsible for this feeling: "All
cities should be swept away; too
many Of these burghers gather in one
place and they become centers of de-
mocracy and of constitutionalism, he
exclaimed, when he heard of the ma
ttonal assembly at Frankfort and Of
the revolution under Hecker and Her.
weigh. Bismarck was then a member
OF the diet and the diet was a parlia-
ment Of princes where the people had
neither rights nor representation.
The growth Of a middle class was a
menace to aristocratic exc-usiveness
and to the perpetuation Of its political
privileges. Hence Bismarck feared
the cities as tn. storm centers of com
mercial activity He viewed cities
only as places where burghers were
bred where they talked and where
they were permitted to disturb the
balance of political power Peasants
surrounded and venerated the owner
of the schloss. They worked his
lands. They rejoiced when an heir
was born to Inherit those feudal priv
iieges which they freely yielded or
they grieved at his decease. But
with the cities it was trade and not
land. They represented an entirely
new order Of things and landgrave
who could control the minds and ac-
lions OF several hundred peasants in
the country, found himself powerless
in the case OF those sturdy burghers
that dominated the commerce OF the
cities. Bismarck, who was a physical
giant, was born in the country. He
loved the country and would preserve
it while sweeping away the city and
with it everything for which the city
stands. If from our wider American
standpoint Bismarck would be con
sidered narrow we must also consider
the conditions into which he was born
If the iron chancellor was afterwards
one of the great master-minds of the
world he was not then in a scholarly
sense a literally educated man. Bis
marck, like Bright. did not get his
education in the universities, but in
the world. Indeed he was no more
highly educated than the average
Notwithstanding country nobleman Of
Europe He then scOrned books and
would while a student fight a mere
bookworm with as much relish as he
would a socialist guilty of lese ma
jeste, He loved his own wife and his
own country better than he loved any
other mans wife or any other coun-
try.
Bismarck differed from other states
men of time chiefly in one re-
specific never humbugged the peo-
pie. His life was seriously threat
ened by Stepson of Kari Blind, a
leader in the revolution of 1913, ana
he was not really popular in any
period of his official life. He did not
attain his extraordinary honors and
eminence through the practice of
political jugglery like Beaconsfield, or
through passing popular measures or
by brilliant scholarship like Glad
stone, or by changing and afterwards
reconstructlng the national govern
ment like Theirs. Bismarck did none
of these things. He did not depress
his country in order TO elevate himself
and is the Brahma rather than the
silva of his people. He never coIrted
popularity or pandered to popular
passions, but he raised Germany from
d recumbent position and babe her
stand erect, united and upon her feet
He snatched his country from a crisis
in which she might have become the
prey Of revolution or the envy Of
ne. ghboring states. He reversed the
march OF the empire from Austria
direction and sent it towards Prussia
detaching the contendng elements Of
a pOiyglot state on one border and
hLmbling her threatening foes on the
other while like a modern Archime-
des lifting the whole Teutonic race
proper into an unparalleled position of
imperial strength in the councils Of
Europe AT the same time like an
other Vulcan he forged upon the an
vii Of high opportunity the various
component states of the Germanic
confederation into one homogeneous
nationality with larger liberties, with
improved systems Of education, more
secure governments, making of al
one people with a common destiny ana
common flag and language, BIS
m7rck may not have been always
Chesterfield TO the psogle--but he was
a beneiaclor. He may not have been
the greatest of modern scholars Lu.
assuredly the first amongst consyra-
tive European statesmen.
Biography in Brief.
Full name. Prince Kar. Otto Won
rC6-SchOeuhausen
Born at Schoenhausea, Prussia
April l. 1915.
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