The Arena | Page 4

1889-90, observe the rapid succession of so-called
"unexpected" events: The rise to the rule of Democracy in France; the
restoration to power of the despotic Bonapartist empire, whence issued
the revival of the nationalistic theory, leading on one side to revolution,
on the other to conservative resistance and the supremacy of a warlike
state like Prussia. We need go no further for the determining cause of
the two sovereign influences! Cavour and Bismarck, the two men who
predominate our half century, spring from a common necessity, and in
reality emerge from the conference of 1856, misnamed the "Crimean
Race!"
"I was the egg," the chancellor was wont to say, "whence my royal
master foresaw that unity might perhaps be hatched;" and on Orsini's
scaffold the Piedmontese seer knew full well that the Corsican
Carbonaro could not elude the fate lying in wait for him, disguised in
the freedom of Italy. You can dissever none of these facts one from the
other, and we now approach the "one man principle." The protagonists
stand face to face, rather than side by side, but both are equally the
unconscious promoters of that antagonism between Germany and

France which, in fact, has shaped, and still shapes, the whole policy of
Europe.
From this single grand outline, all the minor lines either start, or
towards it tend, indirectly, in convergent curves.
From the vast system formed by the monster-questions--United
Germany, the Latin races, the East, the future of catholicism and the
papacy, the strife of liberty against despotism--from all these parent
problems you can detach none of the smaller incidents of the age; you
are obliged to take count of the little Danish Campaign, which taught
Prussia those deficiencies, impelling her directly to the attainment of
her future military omnipotence, and which, under the abortive
attempts of the Saxon minister, M. de Beust,* gave a timid reminder to
Germany of what her unity had been and might once again be. Each
incident, however local or however remote, formed a feature of the
whole; between 1854 and 1870, you cannot ignore the would-be
secession of the Southern Confederates, which ended in making "all
America" the counterpoise to our older world--neither dare you neglect
the Indian meeting whence England issued, clad in moral as in political
glory, and gave the noblest sign of the Christian significancy of the
Victorian Era; all holds together, men and facts succeed each other in
quick alternation; the light that fades on one hand shines with dazzling
glare on the other. Cavour dies. Greatest of all, and genuine creator,
with his disappearance the equilibrium is endangered. Right ceases to
reign, force asserts itself, and Bismarck, ironhanded, invincible, holds
sway over a scared, unresisting, one may say a soulless world.
This is the turning-point. The one man theory apparently endures; but
physically and morally, the vision of disintegration rises, threatening all;
and whence the "New Order" is to come, above all morally, none
divine.
We reach here the close of the preliminary period. Up to the 4th of
September, 1870, and for a few years beyond, State policy is the proper
name for whatever occurs; we deal to a large extent with mathematical
quantities, with impersonal obstructions. Statesmen and statecraft are in
their place, and fill it; individuals, however distinguished, are, as it

were, sheathed in collective symbols and represented by principles.
Documentary evidence suffices now! Treaties, minutes, diplomatic
reports, instruments of all descriptions, are really the requisite agents of
this inanimate diplomatic narration. State papers are the adequate
expression, the exclusive speech of mere states, and of this speech
Heinrich v. Sybel is one of the foremost living masters.
It would be next to impossible to find anywhere a loftier, clearer, or
more minutely correct record of what preceded and caused the war of
'70, than in the earlier volumes of Sybel's "History"; for up to the
reverses of France, and the substitution of German for French
predominance, we are still--in all connected with Germany,--in
presence of the Prussia of the past, of the Prussia whose social
conditions were fixed by Frederick the Great. Men are simply pawns
upon the board; their fate has no influence on others--the fate of kings,
queens, and high chivalric orders, is alone of any import to the
constituted realm. Nations obey and question not. They are represented
by mouldy, defunct formulæ, and as yet no living popular voice, save
that of the revolution of 1789, has been raised to ask where was the
underlying life of the innominate crowd? But the revolution spoke too
loudly, and like the tragedy queen in Hamlet, "protested too much."
In external Europe, and mostly in over-drilled Prussia, the élite only
spoke, and under strict military surveillance, exercised by privilege of
birth, the officer's uniform remained the sign of all title to
pre-eminence.