The Arena | Page 3

of the deed, the framer of the fact that
threatened the world with a new master?
This query was not started for eighteen long years; not until the
catastrophe that threatened the House of Hohenzollern with the loss of
its noblest son, served to recall to the mind of all Europe what a
thorough hero and citizen, what a perfect, undeviating German the
crown prince had always been.
The first emperor of United Germany, the agent of the illustrious
chancellor's will, had gone to his eternal rest when the German mind
began to reflect that only a dying man stood between the late ruler and
a boy emperor! But was not that dying man the creator (if creator there
had been) of the restored Teutonic state? Did not the revived empire
spring from the races in which Prussia was incarnate? was it not in
good earnest the Hohenzollern line, the descendant of the Great Elector
that answered for the regeneration? Thence the dispute between the
partisans of Bismarck and those of Frederick III. Supposing a creation
according to both Heinrich von Sybel and the chroniclers of French
vain-gloriousness, who was the creator? The answer of history was,
"No one." The German nation--or truer still, the thought of all Germany,
for long ages, was the genuine source, it was the very soul of the entire
people that from the ancient Germania of the Roman, breathed anew in

the remnants of its primeval entity and clamored for its old integrity.
But we must not outstrip chronology; the first record of the events of
the war of 1870, and of the mighty changes brought on thereby, is that
of Sybel, not altogether wrongly entitled an "historical monument."
Professor Sybel's five volumes do, assuredly, constitute a history
founded on documentary evidence, if ever such a one existed, but for
that very reason they are, perhaps, somewhat wanting in actual life.
They are fashioned after the methods employed and approved of in
bygone days, and present rather the character of a register than a record
of deeds done by living men. As far as the testimony of hard, dry acts
went, it is probably impeachable; but we then come to the question, Is
documentary evidence in such a case sufficient to give all that is true?
Is not truth, where human impulses and irrationalities are concerned,
derived from sources lying higher than the regions sacred to "Blue
Books"? Whereas it was to the certificates vouchsafed by state papers,
and instruments of such like order, that Sybel's reliability was chiefly
due. Once admit the value of these vouchers (and their corroborative
weight none can deny), and it becomes difficult to overrate the
importance of Sybel's still unconcluded "Begründung des Deutschen
Reiches."
The reader who for the first time takes cognizance of the contents of
these formidable volumes, is overwhelmed by the amount of
attestations they present him with, by his own inability to refute them,
or by counter statements substitute a truer appreciation of what did
really occur. The dry narrative of mere fact is thus, but the impression it
should produce as of a fact lived through is wanting.
This history of Professor Sybel's is a Prussian one; for which it is
obvious that such extraordinary materials would not have been
furnished him had it not been tacitly understood that his final verdict
must be completely favorable to the Emperor Wilhelm I. and his
powerful minister.
In the curious and wide-spreading complications, whence eventually
resulted the Franco-German war of 1870, there are two distinct parts:
the part before hostilities broke out, and the part after the victory of the

Germans might be inevitably foreseen: the first period counts in its
dramatis personæ all the states and all the statesmen of Europe. From
the Crimean War to the cession of Venetia to Italy through France,
there is not an event that is not a connecting link in a long serpentine
chain. At the moment this may have escaped the eye, but, once fixed in
its one perspective of distance, the chain shows unbroken and all is far
less than has been supposed,--occasioned by any arts, manoeuvres, or
intrigues of the chief actors; the vulgar notions of Prince Bismarck's
incessant wiles, or of Louis Napoleon's base designs against his
neighbors may be discarded as relatively subordinate. The incidents
that marked the gigantic game of chess played (not in Europe only)
from the overthrow of the Orleans dynasty to the death of Friedrich III.
and the fall of Bismarck in the winter of last year were neither the
outcome of individual Machiavelianism nor entirely attributable to
chance; both were all but in equal degree cause and effect. The actors
personally in each case replied to the suggestions of circumstances they
had but indirectly helped to bring about.
From 1848-50 to