The Arena | Page 7

strange change of tonality, of sound, and
significance that superposed the patriotism of the South to that of the

North was a mere inharmonic change, and that according to the rotation
of the two circles, each, in reality, underlay the other in turn.
It would be a fatal mistake to imagine that M. von Bismarck allowed
himself to be led into the Danish campaign. He did nothing to bring it
about, but the instant it showed itself on the cards he took advantage of
it in the most predetermined, authoritative way, leaving his Austrian
accomplice and victim no possibility of escape. From the hour when, in
1853, he boarded Count Richberg on the Carlsbad Railroad, and forced
his enemy of the Francfort Bund to become his humble servant and
carry out all his designs, to the hour when, in 1865, he drove Franz
Joseph to sign the Condiminium on what he knew was a mere waste
paper, he was resolved to turn to account the extraordinary opportunity
offered him by the incredible blindness and insensate terror of
revolution of his allies. In the Austrians, the dread of what the smaller
States, encouraged by Hungary, might attempt, paralyzed every other
consideration, and besides that, the abortive little plans of Count Beust,
in Saxony, served to point out to him what other Germans were, in a
purely German sense, thinking of, and he decided that the grand
historic game thrust upon his perceptions and waited for by all around
him, should be played by himself alone. Then he played it, not before
seeing at once what it must entail, but by no means assured that he
could win.
And then, they who watched him nearest and knew him best, know
how he played that game, mindful of every event that filled the long
history of the past, living over again all the struggles, all the glories and
defeats of all the European nations far or near, finding examples both to
imitate or avoid, losing sight of nothing, from Gregory VII. to
Gutenberg, from papal obscurantism to the Reformation's blaze of light;
from Wallenstein's murder to the treaty of Utrecht; from Richelieu to
the scaffold of Louis XVI., and while calculating every catastrophe,
keeping steadily on his way.
This, the fearful period between the Crimean War, when first Cavour
stepped forth to the incident of Ems, when the die was cast, this was the
really magnificent passage in the great chancellor's career, for this was

the time of possible doubt when responsibility lay so heavy that to
elude it might be called prudence, and which to have survived is
already a proof of superiority over common humanity.
And here we assert the true grandeur of the precursor,--of the one
whom we have called the inventor, and who undeniably was so--of
Cavour! There can be no question that his own intimate familiarity with
the details of the Bond of Virtue and the War of Freedom[7] of the
glorious epoch when modern Germany headed and achieved the
victorious movement against the world's debasement,--brought
distinctly to Bismarck's mental vision the splendor of Cavour's
impossibly unequal contest for Italian freedom! The situations were
essentially much alike, but so much grander for the Italian statesman,
Italy's odds being so immeasurably longer! But still the likeness came
out, and the future chancellor could in no way aspire to be an initiator.
The end was still a gigantic one, and one to which no true, brave patriot
dared be false as an ideal,--but how as to the execution? As to the
practical means of carrying out conceptions that might daily be doomed
to alteration?
[7] The celebrated victory of the Great Elector, that made Prussia into a
kingdom.
There it was again that the figure of Cavour arose supreme; his long,
inexhaustible patience, his undying hopes, his sacrifices day by day of
the very springs of life for a self-imposed duty,--these were his titles to
immortal fame, these constituted his sovereign right to success. But
was not the worst probation over when Waterloo was won, and was it
not an accepted theory that the Vienna Congress had settled all the
vexed questions of ancient Europe? Any further movement, therefore,
might seem merely a disturbance. This, for conservative statesmen
above all, was a dilemma.
Germany had liberated not Germany only, but the world in 1813, and
had already had her Cavours!
There was no denying it: the Cavour of Germany was Stein. But was
the work done? Had the Congress of Vienna settled anything, for was

that still left to do without which the independence and well-being of
forty millions of Germans was unguaranteed, and the peace of all
Europe uninsured? If so, what remained to be achieved? to complete
what the German Cavour, the Precursor Stein, had begun, to embody
and make real