Chapter I: Front Matter

McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

VOL. XXXI AUGUST, 1908 No. 4

_Copyright, 1908, by The S. S. McClure Co. All rights reserved_

Table of Contents

PAGE
A DISCLOSURE OF THE SECRET POLICIES OF RUSSIA. By General
Kuropatkin. 363
TALKS WITH BISMARCK. By Carl Schurz. 367
THE FOREHANDED COLQUHOUNS. By Margaret Wilson. 378
LAST YEARS WITH HENRY IRVING. By Ellen Terry. 386
THE LOST MOTHER. By Blanche M. Kelly. 399
PATSY MORAN. THE BOOK AND ITS COVERS. By Arthur Sullivan
Hoffman. 401
ARCTIC COLOR. By Sterling Heilig. 411
THE TAVERN. By Willa Sibert Cather. 419
A STORY OF HATE. By Gertrude Hall. 420
HIS NEED OF MIS' SIMONS. By Lucy Pratt. 432
PROHIBITION AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. By Hugo Muensterberg. 438
THE MOVING FINGER WRITES. By Marie Belloc Lowndes. 445
A BUNK-HOUSE AND SOME BUNK-HOUSE MEN. By Alexander Irvine. 455
THE KING OF THE BABOONS. By Perceval Gibbon. 467
ONE HUNDRED CHRISTIAN SCIENCE CURES. By Richard C. Cabot 472
SOUTH STREET. By Francis E. Falkenbury. 476
THE INABILITY TO INTERFERE. By Mary Heaton Vorse. 477
PROHIBITION AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY. By Dr. Muensterberg. 482

Illustrations

General Alexei Nicholaevitch Kuropatkin 363
Kaiser Wilhelm I 369
Prince Otto Von Bismarck 372
Count Hellmuth Von Moltke 373
The Chancellor's Palace on the Wilhelmstrasse 374
The Battle of Koeniggraetz 374
Emperor Napoleon III 376
"Jane and Selina ... Looked at Patient and Nurse with
Disapproving Gloom" 378
"She Could Not Help Seeing That Selina Found Some Strange
Pleasure in all These Incidents of a Last Illness" 382
Ellen Terry as Kniertje in "The Good Hope" 387
John Singer Sargent 388
Sir Edward Burne-Jones 388
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth 389
Peggy, Madame Sans-Gene, Madame Sans-Gene, Cordelia 390
Imogen, Lucy Ashton, Catherine Duval, Lucy Ashton 390
Cardinal Wolsey, Lady Macbeth, Guinevere, Thomas Becket 391
Nancy Oldfield, Hermione, Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire, Lady Cicely,
Wayneflete 391
Miss Ellen Terry 392
Sir Henry Irving 392
Ellen Terry as Queen Katherine in Henry VIII 395
The Book and Its Covers 401
"Pardon Me," He Said, "But What Are You Doing That for?" 402
"Ye'd Better Be Usin' Your Brains to Walk With, and Not
Strainin' Thim Like That" 407
Midnight in the Kara Sea 411
"The Country of the Dead"--A Study of the Kara Sea in August 413
Samoyed Love of Color 414
Painting of a Sledge Set Upon End for the Night, With Skins and
Meat Hung Upon It So as to Be Out of Reach of the Dogs 415
A Study Made in Nova Zembla at the Time of the Complete Eclipse
of the Sun, July 27, 1896 416
Painting of a Church Built by M. Seberjakow 417
In the Midnight Sunshine 418
His Need of Mis' Simons 432
'I Couldn' Git 'Long 'Thout Yer Noways, Could I?' She Say 433
'She Keep on A-Readin', an' I Keep on A-Wukkin' on de Paff' 434
'It's Time Fer You ter Go to Baid, Ain't It, 'Zekiel?' She Say 435
''Tain' Gwine Nobody Else Git--Fru--Dat--Do',' She Say 436
The Bunk-House 459
One Night the Graf Was Prevailed Upon to Tell His Story 461
The Sitting-Room of the Bismarck 462
I Noticed a Profile Silhouetted against the Window 463
St. Francis of the Bunk-House 464
They Sat on Their Rumps Outside the Circle of Kafirs 467

EDITORIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

FIVE ARTICLES

A DISCLOSURE OF THE SECRET POLICIES OF RUSSIA

BY GENERAL KUROPATKIN

Once in a generation the intimate and vital secrets of a great nation may be made public through one of the little circle of men to whom they are entrusted; but rarely, if ever, till the men are dead, and the times are entirely changed. Beginning next month, McCLURE'S MAGAZINE will present to the reading world a striking exception to this rule. It will print for the first time a frank and startling official revelation of the present political plans and purposes of Russia--the great nation whose guarded and secret movements have been the concern of modern European civilization for two centuries.

General Kuropatkin--Minister of War and later Commander-in-Chief of the Russian forces in the great and disastrous Manchurian campaign--became a target for abuse at the close of the Russo-Japanese War. He returned to St. Petersburg and constructed, from the official material accessible to him, an elaborate history of the war, and a detailed statement of the condition, purposes, and development of the Russian Empire. Documents and dispatches endorsed "Strictly Confidential," matters involving the highest officials, information obviously intended for no eyes but those of the innermost government circles, are laid forth with the utmost abandon in this work. No sooner had it been completed, than it was confiscated by the government. Its manuscript has never been allowed to pass out of the custody of the Czar's closest advisers.

An authentic copy of this came into the hands of McCLURE'S MAGAZINE this spring; it is not essential and obviously would not be wise to state just how. George Kennan, the well-known student of Russian affairs, now has it in his possession and is engaged in translating and arranging material taken from it for magazine publication. A series of five or six articles, constructed from Kuropatkin's 600,000 words, will be issued in McCLURE'S, beginning next month. These will contain astonishing revelations concerning matters of great international importance, and accusations that are audacious to the point of recklessness.

LETTERS TO THE CZAR

Remarkable among these are the letters to the Czar. Kuropatkin's correspondence with him is given in detail, documents which naturally would not appear within fifty or a hundred years from the time when they were written. And upon the letters and reports of the General appear the comments and marginal notes of the Emperor. The war was forced against the will of the sovereign and the advice of the War Department. It was ended, Kuropatkin shows, when Russia was just beginning to discipline and dispose her great forces, because of the lack of courage and firmness in the Czar.

Japan certainly would have been crushed, says Kuropatkin, if war had continued. At the time of the Treaty at Portsmouth, the military struggle, from Russia's standpoint, had only begun. She was then receiving ammunition and supplies properly for the first time; her men were becoming disciplined soldiers; and the railroad, whose service had increased from three to fourteen military trains a day, had now, at last, brought the Russian forces into the distant field. For the first time, just when treaty negotiations were begun, Russia had more soldiers in her army than Japan. There were a million men, well equipped and abundantly supplied, under General Linevitch, who succeeded General Kuropatkin as Commander-in-Chief; and he was about to take the offensive when peace was declared.

Beyond the individual conflict General Kuropatkin shows the Russian nation, a huge, unformed giant, groping along its great borders in every direction to find the sea.

"Can an Empire," he asks, "with such a tremendous population, be satisfied with its existing frontiers, cut off from free access to the sea on all sides?"

RUSSIA'S SECRET NATIONAL PROGRAM

There are in existence in the secret archives of the government, Kuropatkin's work discloses, documents containing the definite program of Russia, fixed by headquarters years ago, for its future growth and aggrandizement. Results of campaigns and diplomacy are checked up according to this great program, and decade after decade Russia is working secretly and quietly to carry it out. The Japanese War constituted a great mistake in the development of this national plan.

During the twentieth century, says Kuropatkin, Russia will lose no fewer than two million men in war, and will place in the field not fewer than five million. No matter how peaceful and purely defensive her attitude may be, she will be forced into war along her endless borders by the conflict with other national interests and the age-long unsatisfied necessity of her population to reach the sea.

Russia will furnish in this century the advance guard of an inevitable conflict between the white and yellow races. For within a hundred years there must be a great struggle in Asia between the Christian and non-Christian nations. To prepare for this, an understanding between Russia and England is essential for humanity. Kuropatkin deals with this necessity at length; and the future relations of Russia with Japan and China are treated with an impressive grasp.

His exposition of the sensitive and dangerous situation on the Empire's western border contains matters of consequence to the whole world. The relations he discloses, between Russia, on the one hand, and Austria and Germany on the other, are important in the extreme. Within a fortnight these two latter countries could throw two million men across the Russian frontier, and a war would result much more colossal than that just finished with Japan.

KUROPATKIN'S FORTY YEARS OF SERVICE

General Kuropatkin has had an education and a career which eminently qualify him as a judge and critic of the Russian nation. For forty years, as an active member of its military establishment, he has watched its development, from the viewpoint of important posts in St. Petersburg, Turkey, Central Asia, and the far East.

Kuropatkin was born in 1848 and was educated in the Palovski Military School and the Nikolaiefski Academy of the general staff in St. Petersburg. From there he went at once into the army, and, at the early age of twenty, took part in the march of the Russian expeditionary force to the central Asian city of Samarkand. He won distinction in the long and difficult march of General Skobeleff's army to Khokand. In 1875 he acted as Russia's diplomatic agent in Chitral, and a year or two later he headed an embassy to Kashgar and concluded a treaty with Yakub Bek.

When the Russo-Turkish War broke out in 1877, he became General Skobeleff's chief of staff and took part in the battle of Loftcha and in many of the attacks on Plevna. While forcing the passage of the Balkans with Skobeleff's army, on the 25th of December, 1877 (O.S.), he was so severely wounded that he had to leave the theater of war and return to St. Petersburg. There, as soon as he recovered, he was put in charge of the Asiatic Department of the Russian General Staff, and, at the same time, was made adjunct-professor of military statistics in the Nikolaiefski Military Academy. In 1879 the rank of General was conferred upon him and he was appointed to command the Turkestan rifle brigade in Central Asia. In 1880 he led a Russian expeditionary force to Kuldja, and when the trouble with the Chinese there had been adjusted, he was ordered to organize and equip a special force in the Amu Daria district and march to the assistance of General Skobeleff in the Akhal-Tekhinski oasis. After conducting this force across seven hundred versts of nearly waterless desert, he joined General Skobeleff in front of the Turkoman fortress of Geok Tepe, and in the assault upon that famous stronghold, a few weeks later, he led the principal storming column. After the Turkomen had been subdued, he returned to European Russia, and during the next eight years served on the General Staff in St. Petersburg, where he was entrusted with important strategic work. In 1890 he was made Lieutenant-General and was sent to govern the trans-Caspian region and to command the troops there stationed.

He occupied this position six or eight years, and then, shortly after his return to St. Petersburg, was appointed Minister of War. In 1902, while still holding the war portfolio, he was promoted to Adjutant-General; in 1903 he visited Japan and made the acquaintance of its political and military leaders; and in 1904, when hostilities began in the Far East, he took command of the Russian armies in Manchuria under the general direction of Viceroy Alexeieff. Besides, he has written and published three important books.

No man perhaps, is better equipped, by education and experience, to explain Russia's plans and movements in Asia; to tell the true story of the Japanese war. And probably never, at least in this generation, has an international matter of this magnitude been treated with such frankness by a person so thoroughly and eminently qualified to discuss it.

TALKS WITH BISMARCK

BY CARL SCHURZ

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

In the autumn of 1867 my family went to Wiesbaden, where my wife was to spend some time on account of her health, and I joined them there about Christmas time for a few weeks. Great changes had taken place in Germany since that dark December night in 1861 when I rushed through the country from the Belgian frontier to Hamburg on my way from Spain to America. The period of stupid reaction after the collapse of the revolutionary movements of 1848 was over. King Frederick William IV. of Prussia, who had been so deeply convinced and arduous an upholder of the divine right of kings, had died a helpless lunatic. King William I., afterwards Emperor William I., his brother and successor, also a believer in that divine right, but not to the extent of believing as well in the divine inspiration of kings--in other words, a man of good sense and capable of recognizing the superior ability of others--had found in Bismarck a minister of commanding genius. The sweeping victory of Prussia over Austria in 1866 had resulted in the establishment of the North German Confederacy under Prussian hegemony, which was considered a stepping-stone to the unification of all Germany as a constitutional empire. Several of the revolutionists of 1848 now sat in the Reichstag of the North German Confederacy, and one of the ablest of them, Lothar Bucher, was Bismarck's confidential counsellor. The nation was elated with hope, and there was a liberal wind blowing even in the sphere of the government.

I did not doubt that under these circumstances I might venture into Germany without danger of being seriously molested; yet, as my personal case was technically not covered by any of the several amnesties which had been proclaimed in Prussia from time to time, I thought that some subordinate officer, either construing his duty with the strictness of a thorough Prussian, or wishing to distinguish himself by a conspicuous display of official watchfulness, might give me annoyance. I did not, indeed, entertain the slightest apprehension as to my safety, but I might have become involved in sensational proceedings, which would have been extremely distasteful to me, as well as unwelcome to the government. I therefore wrote to Mr. George Bancroft, the American Minister at Berlin, requesting him if possible to inform himself privately whether the Prussian government had any objection to my visiting Germany for a few weeks, and to let me have his answer at Bremerhaven upon the arrival there of the steamer on which I had taken passage. My intention was, in case the answer were unfavorable, to sail at once from Bremen to England and to meet my family there. Mr. Bancroft very kindly complied with my request, and assured me in his letter which I found at Bremerhaven that the Prussian government not only had no objection to my visiting Germany, but that I should be welcome.

After having spent Christmas with my family in Wiesbaden, I went to Berlin. I wrote a note to Lothar Bucher, whom I had last seen sixteen years before as a fellow refugee in London, and whom I wished very much to meet again. Bucher answered promptly that he would be glad indeed to see me again, and asked if I would not like to make the acquaintance of "the Minister" (Bismarck), who had expressed a wish to have a talk with me. I replied, of course, that I should be happy, etc., whereupon I received within an hour an invitation from Count Bismarck himself (he was then only a count) to visit him at eight o'clock that same evening at the Chancellor's palace on the Wilhelmstrasse. Promptly at the appointed hour I was announced to him, and he received me at the door of a room of moderate size, the table and some of the furniture of which were covered with books and papers,--evidently his working cabinet. There I beheld the great man whose name was filling the world--tall, erect, and broad-shouldered, and on those Atlas shoulders that massive head which everybody knows from pictures--the whole figure making the impression of something colossal--then at the age of fifty-three, in the fulness of physical and mental vigor.

He was dressed in a General's undress uniform, unbuttoned. His features, which evidently could look very stern when he wished, were lighted up with a friendly smile. He stretched out his hand and gave me a vigorous grasp. "Glad you have come," he said, in a voice which appeared rather high-keyed, issuing from so huge a form, but of pleasing timbre.

"I think I must have seen you before," was his first remark, while we were still standing up facing one another. "It was some time in the early fifties on a railway train from Frankfort to Berlin. There was a young man sitting opposite me who, from some picture of you which I had seen in a pictorial paper, I thought might be you."

I replied that this could not be, since at that period I was not in Germany. "Besides," I added--a little impudently perhaps--"would you not have had me arrested as a malefactor?"

"Oh," he exclaimed, with a good, natural laugh, "you mistake me. I would not have done such a thing. You mean on account of that Kinkel affair? Oh, no! I rather liked that. And if it were not that it would be highly improper for His Majesty's minister and the Chancellor of the North German Confederacy, I should like to go with you to Spandau and have you tell me the whole story on the spot. Now let us sit down."

He pointed out to me an easy-chair close to his own and then uncorked a bottle which stood, with two glasses, on a tray at his elbow. "You are a Rhinelander," he said, "and I know you will relish this." We touched glasses, and I found the wine indeed very excellent.

"You smoke, of course," he continued, "and here are some good Havanas. I used to be very fond of them, but I have a sort of superstitious belief that every person is permitted to smoke only a certain number of cigars in his life, and no more. I am afraid I have exhausted my allowance, and now I take to the pipe." With a lighted strip of paper, called in German "Fidibus," he put the tobacco in the porcelain bowl of his long German student pipe in full blast, and presently he blew forth huge clouds of smoke.

This done, he comfortably leaned back in his chair and said: "Now tell me, as an American Republican and a Forty-eighter of the revolutionary kind, how the present condition of Germany strikes you. I would not ask you that question," he added, "if you were a privy counsellor (a Geheimrath), for I know what he would answer. But you will tell me what you really think."

_Bismarck's Sarcastic Humor_

I replied that I had been in the country only a few weeks and had received only superficial impressions, but that I had become sensible of a general atmosphere of newly inspired national ambition and a confident hope for the development of more liberal political institutions. I had found only a few old fogies in Nassau and a banker in Frankfort who seemed to be in a disappointed and depressed state of mind. Bismarck laughed heartily. The disgruntled Nassauers, he said, had probably been some sort of purveyors to the late ducal court, and he would wager that the Frankfort banker was either a member of one of the old patrician families, who thought they were the highest nobility in all the land, or a money-maker complaining that Frankfort was no longer, as it had been, the financial center of southern Germany. Here Bismarck gave full reign to his sarcastic humor. He had spent years in Frankfort as the representative of the defunct "Bundestag," and had no end of funny anecdotes about the aristocratic pretensions of the patrician burghers of that ancient free city, and about their lofty wrath at the incorporation of that commonwealth in the Prussian monarchy.

_Forcing the War with Austria_

Then he began to tell me about the great difficulties he had been obliged to overcome in bringing about the decisive struggle with Austria. One of the most serious of these difficulties, as he said, consisted in the scrupulous hesitancy of old King William to consent to anything that seemed to be in any sense unconstitutional or not in harmony with the strictest notion of good faith. In our conversation Bismarck constantly called the king "der alte Herr"--"the old gentleman," or, as it might also have been translated, "the old master." One moment he would speak of the old gentleman with something like sentimental tenderness, and then again in a tone of familiar freedom which smacked of anything but reverential respect. He told me anecdotes about him which made me stare, for at the moment I could not help remembering that I was listening to the prime minister of the crown, to whom I was an entire stranger and who knew nothing of my discretion or sense of responsibility.

FROM THE PAINTING BY GUSTAV RICHTER _Photographed by the Berlin Photographic Co._]

As if we had been confidential chums all our lives, he gave me, with apparently the completest abandon and exuberant vivacity, inside views of the famous "conflict" period between the crown and the Prussian parliament, when, seeing the war with Austria inevitably coming, he had, without legislative authorization, spent millions upon millions of the public funds upon the army in preparation for the great crisis; how the liberal majority of the chambers, and an indignant public opinion which did not recognize the great object of national unification in view, had fiercely risen up against that arbitrary stretch of power; how the king himself had recoiled from such a breach of the constitution; how the king had apprehended a new revolution which might cost each of them his head--which would possibly have come about if they had failed in the Austrian war; how then he had "desperately used his spurs to make the noble old horse clear the ditch and take the risk"; and how, the victory having been won, on their return from the war they were received by the people with the most jubilant acclamations instead of having their heads cut off, which had pleased the old gentleman immensely and taught him a lesson as to his reckless prime minister.

It was not the cautious and conservative spirit of the king alone that he had occasionally to overcome. Still more was he clogged and not seldom exasperated by what he called the stupid old bureaucracy, which had to be got out of its accustomed ruts whenever anything new and bold was to be done. He fairly bubbled over with humorous anecdotes, evidently relishing, himself, his droll descriptions of the antiquated "Geheimrath" (privy counsellor), as he stared with his bleared eyes wide open, whenever anything unusual was proposed, seeing nothing but insuperable difficulties before him and then exhausting his whole ingenuity in finding the best sort of red tape with which to strangle the project. His patience tried to the utmost, he, the minister would then go to the king and tell him that such and such a rusty official could no longer be got along with and must necessarily give place to a more efficient person; whereupon the "old gentleman," melting with pity, would say, "Oh, he has so long been a faithful servant of the State, would it not be cruel to cast him aside like a squeezed-out orange?--no, I cannot do it." "And there," said Bismarck, "there we are."

I ventured to suggest that an offer to resign on his part, if he could not have his way, might make the king less tender of his inefficient friends in high places. "Oh," said Bismarck with a laugh, "I have tried that so often, too often, perhaps, to make it impressive! What do you think happens when I offer my resignation? My old gentleman begins to sob and cry--he actually sheds tears, and says, 'Now you want to leave me too?' Now when I see him shed tears, what in the world can I do then?" So he went on for a while, from one funny anecdote to another and from one satirical description to another.

_Bismarck's Test of Von Moltke_

Bismarck then came back to the Austrian war and told me much about the diplomatic fencing which led up to it. With evident gusto he related story after story, showing how his diplomatic adversaries at that critical period had been like puppets in his hands, and how he had managed the German princes as they grouped themselves on one side or the other. Then he came to speak of the battle of Koeniggraetz, and especially of that "anxious moment" in it before the arrival of the Crown Prince in the rear of the Austrians, when some Prussian attacks had failed and there were signs of disorder among the repulsed troops.

"It was an anxious moment," said Bismarck, "a moment on the decision of which the fate of empire depended. What would have become of us if we had lost that battle? Squadrons of cavalry, all mixed up, hussars, dragoons, uhlans, were streaming by the spot where the king, Moltke, and myself stood, and although we had calculated that the Crown Prince might long have appeared behind the Austrian rear, no sign of the Crown Prince! Things began to look ominous. I confess I felt not a little nervous. I looked at Moltke, who sat quietly on his horse and did not seem to be disturbed by what was going on around us. I thought I would test whether he was really as calm as he appeared. I rode up to him and asked him whether I might offer him a cigar, since I noticed he was not smoking. He replied that he would be glad if I had one to spare. I presented to him my open case in which there were only two cigars, one a very good Havana, and the other of rather poor quality. Moltke looked at them and even handled them with great attention, in order to ascertain their relative value, and then with slow deliberation chose the Havana. 'Very good,' he said composedly. This reassured me very much. I thought, If Moltke can bestow so much time and attention upon the choice between two cigars, things cannot be very bad. Indeed, a few minutes later we heard the Crown Prince's guns, we observed unsteady and confused movements on the Austrian positions, and the battle was won."

I said that we in America who had followed the course of events with intense interest were rather surprised, at the time, that the conclusion of peace followed the battle of Koeniggraetz so quickly and that Prussia did not take greater advantage of her victory. Bismarck replied that the speedy conclusion of peace had been a great surprise to many people, but that he thought it was the best thing he had ever done, and that he had accomplished it against the desire of the king and of the military party, who were greatly elated by that splendid triumph of the Prussian arms and thought that so great and so successful an effort should have a greater reward. Sound statesmanship required that the Austrian Empire, the existence of which was necessary for Europe, should not be reduced to a mere wreck; that it should be made a friend and, as a friend, not too powerless; that what Prussia had gone to war for was the leadership of Germany, and that this leadership in Germany would not have been fortified, but rather weakened, by the acquisition from Austria of populations which would not have fitted into the Prussian scheme.

Besides, the Chancellor thought that, the success of the Prussians having been so decisive, it was wise to avoid further sacrifices and risks. The cholera had made its appearance among the troops, and so long as the war lasted there would have been danger of French intervention. He had successfully fought off that French intervention, he said, by all sorts of diplomatic manoeuvres, some of which he narrated to me in detail. But Louis Napoleon had become very restless at the growth of Prussian power and prestige, and he would, probably, not have hesitated to put in his hand, had not the French army been so weakened by his foolish Mexican adventure. But now, when the main Prussian army was marching farther and farther away from the Rhine and had suffered serious losses, and was threatened by malignant disease, he might have felt encouraged by these circumstances to do what he would have liked to do all the time.

"That would have created a new situation," said Bismarck. "But to meet that situation, I should have had a shot in my locker which, perhaps, will surprise you when I mention it."

I was indeed curious. "What would have been the effect," said Bismarck, "if under those circumstances I had appealed to the national feeling of the whole people by proclaiming the constitution of the German Empire made at Frankfort in 1848 and 1849?"

"I think it would have electrified the whole country and created a German nation," I replied. "But would you really have adopted that great orphan left by the revolution of 1848?"

"Why not?" said the Chancellor. "True, that constitution contained some features very objectionable to me. But, after all, it was not so very far from what I am aiming at now. But whether the old gentleman would have adopted it is doubtful. Still, with Napoleon at the gates, he might have taken that jump too. But," he added, "we shall have that war with France anyhow."

"_War with France in Two Years_"

I expressed my surprise at this prediction,--a prediction all the more surprising to me when I again recalled that the great statesman, carrying on his shoulders such tremendous responsibilities, was talking to an entire stranger,--and his tone grew quite serious, grave, almost solemn, as he said: "Do not believe that I love war. I have seen enough of war to abhor it profoundly. The terrible scenes I have witnessed will never cease to haunt my mind. I shall never consent to a war that is avoidable, much less seek it. But this war with France will surely come. It will be forced upon us by the French Emperor. I see that clearly."

Then he went on to explain how the situation of an "adventurer on a throne," such as Louis Napoleon, was different from that of a legitimate sovereign, like the King of Prussia. "I know," said he with a smile, "you do not believe in such a thing as the divine right of kings. But many people do, especially in Prussia--perhaps not as many as did before 1848, but even now more than you think. People are attracted to the dynasty by traditional loyalty. A King of Prussia may make mistakes or suffer misfortunes, or even humiliations, but that traditional loyalty will not give way. But the adventurer on the throne has no such traditional sentiment behind him. His security depends upon personal prestige, and that prestige upon sensational effects which must follow one another in rather rapid succession to remain fresh and satisfactory to the ambition, or the pride, or, if you will, the vanity of the people--especially to such a people as the French.

"Now, Louis Napoleon has lost much of his prestige by two things--the Mexican adventure, which was an astounding blunder, a fantastic folly on his part; and then by permitting Prussia to become so great without obtaining some sort of 'compensation' in the way of an acquisition of territory that might have been made to appear to the French people as a brilliant achievement of his diplomacy. It was well known that he wanted such a compensation, and tried for it, and was manoeuvered out of it by me without his knowledge of what was happening to him. He is well aware that thus he has lost much of his prestige, more than he can afford, and that such a loss, unless soon repaired, may become dangerous to his tenure as emperor. He will, therefore, as soon as he thinks that his army is in good fighting condition, again make an effort to recover that prestige which is so vital to him, by using some pretext for picking a quarrel with us. I do not think he is personally eager for that war, I think he would rather avoid it, but the precariousness of his situation will drive him to it. My calculation is that the crisis will come in about two years. We have to be ready, of course, and we are. We shall win, and the result will be just the contrary of what Napoleon aims at--the total unification of Germany outside of Austria, and probably Napoleon's downfall."

FROM THE PAINTING BY FRANZ VON LENBACH _Photographed by the Berlin Photographic Co._]

This was said in January, 1868. The war between France and Prussia and her allies broke out in July, 1870, and the foundation of the German Empire and the downfall of Napoleon were the results. No prediction was ever more shrewdly made and more accurately and amply fulfilled.

FROM THE PAINTING BY FRANZ VON LENBACH _Photographed by the Berlin Photographic Co._]

I have introduced here Bismarck as speaking in the first person. I did this to present the substance of what he said to me in a succinct form. But this does not pretend to portray the manner in which he said it--the bubbling vivacity of his talk, now and then interspersed with French or English phrases; the lightning flashes of his wit scintillating around the subjects of his remarks and sometimes illuminating, as with a search-light, a public character, or an event, or a situation; his laugh, now contageously genial, and then grimly sarcastic; the rapid transitions from jovial, sportive humor to touching pathos; the evident pleasure taken by the narrator in his tale; the dashing, rattling rapidity with which that tale would at times rush on; and behind all this that tremendous personality--the picturesque embodiment of a power greater than any king's--a veritable Atlas carrying upon his shoulders the destinies of a great nation. There was a strange fascination in the presence of the giant who appeared so peculiarly grand and yet so human.

_Photographed by the Berlin Photographic Co._]

While he was still speaking with unabated animation I looked at the clock opposite me and was astounded when I found that midnight was long behind us. I rose in alarm and begged the Chancellor's pardon for having intruded so long upon his time. "Oh," said the Chancellor, "I am used to late hours, and we have not talked yet about America. However, you have a right to be tired. But you must come again. You must dine with me. Can you do so to-morrow? I have invited a commission on the Penal Code--mostly dull old jurists, I suppose--but I may find some one among them fit to be your neighbor at the table and to entertain you."

I gladly accepted the invitation and found myself the next evening in a large company of serious and learned-looking gentlemen, each one of whom was adorned with one or more decorations. I was the only person in the room who had none, and several of the guests seemed to eye me with some curiosity, when Bismarck in a loud voice presented me to the Countess as "General Carl Schurz from the United States of America." Some of the gentlemen looked somewhat surprised, but I at once became a person of interest, and many introductions followed. At the table I had a judge from Cologne for my neighbor, who had enough of the Rhenish temperament to be cheerful company. The dinner was a very rapid affair--lasting hardly three quarters of an hour, certainly not more.

THE DECISIVE BATTLE OF THE SEVEN WEEKS' WAR, BY WHICH PRUSSIA BECAME THE LEADING POLITICAL AND MILITARY POWER IN GERMANY. IN THE CENTER OF THE PICTURE IS SHOWN KING WILLIAM, SURROUNDED BY BISMARCK, VON MOLTKE, AND THE MEMBERS OF HIS STAFF.

_Photographed by the Berlin Photographic Co._]

Before the smokers could have got half through with their cigars, the Minister of Justice, who seemed to act as mentor and guide to the gentlemen of the Penal Code Commission, took leave of the host, which was accepted by the whole company as a signal to depart. I followed their example, but the Chancellor said: "Wait a moment. Why should you stand in that crowd struggling for your overcoat? Let us sit down and have a glass of Apollinaris." We sat down by a small round table, a bottle of Apollinaris water was brought, and he began at once to ply me with questions about America.

He was greatly interested in the struggle going on between President Johnson and the Republican majority in Congress, which was then approaching its final crisis. He said that he looked upon that struggle as a test of the strength of the conservative element in our political fabric. Would the impeachment of the President, and, if he were found guilty, his deposition from office, lead to any further conflicts dangerous to the public peace and order? I replied that I was convinced it would not; the executive power would simply pass from the hands of one man to the hands of another, according to the constitution and laws of the country, without any resistance on the part of anybody; and on the other hand, if President Johnson were acquitted, there would be general submission to the verdict as a matter of course, although popular excitement stirred up by the matter would run very high throughout the country.

The Chancellor was too polite to tell me point-blank that he had grave doubts as to all this, but he would at least not let me believe that he thought as I did. He smilingly asked me whether I was still as firmly convinced a republican as I had been before I went to America and studied republicanism from the inside; and when I assured him that I was, and that, although I had in personal experience found the republic not as lovely as my youthful enthusiasm had pictured it to my imagination, but much more practical in its general beneficence to the great masses of the people, and much more conservative in its tendencies than I had imagined, he said that he supposed our impressions or views with regard to such things were largely owing to temperament, or education, or traditional ways of thinking.

"I am not a democrat," he went on, "and cannot be. I was born an aristocrat and brought up an aristocrat. To tell you the truth, there was something in me that made me instinctively sympathize with the slaveholders, as the aristocratic party, in your Civil War. But," he added with earnest emphasis, "this vague sympathy did not in the least affect my views as to the policy to be followed by our government with regard to the United States. Prussia, notwithstanding her monarchical and aristocratic sympathies, is, and will steadily be by tradition, as well as by thoroughly understood interest, the firm friend of your republic. You may always count upon that."

He asked me a great many questions concerning the political and social conditions in the United States. Again and again he wondered how society could be kept in tolerable order where the powers of the government were so narrowly restricted and where there was so little reverence for the constituted or "ordained" authorities. With a hearty laugh, in which there seemed to be a suggestion of assent, he received my remark that the American people would hardly have become the self-reliant, energetic, progressive people they were, had there been a privy-counsellor or a police captain standing at every mud-puddle in America to keep people from stepping into it. And he seemed to be much struck when I brought out the apparent paradox that in a democracy with little government things might go badly in detail but well on the whole, while in a monarchy with much and omni-present government things might go very pleasingly in detail but poorly on the whole. He saw that with such views I was an incurable democrat; but would not, he asked, the real test of our democratic institutions come when, after the disappearance of the exceptional opportunities springing from our wonderful natural resources which were in a certain sense common property, our political struggles became, as they surely would become, struggles between the poor and the rich, between the few who have, and the many who want? Here we entered upon a wide field of conjecture.

The conversation then turned to international relations, and especially public opinion in America concerning Germany. Did the Americans sympathize with German endeavors towards national unity?--I thought that so far as any feeling with regard to German unity existed in America, it was sympathetic; among the German-Americans it was warmly so.--Did Louis Napoleon, the emperor of the French, enjoy any popularity in America?--He did not enjoy the respect of the people at large and was rather unpopular except with a comparatively small number of snobs who would feel themselves exalted by an introduction at his court.--There would, then, in case of a war between Germany and France, be no likelihood of American sympathy running in favor of Louis Napoleon?--There would not, unless Germany forced war on France for decidedly unjust cause.

Throughout our conversation Bismarck repeatedly expressed his pleasure at the friendly relations existing between him and the German Liberals, some of whom had been prominent in the revolutionary troubles of 1848. He mentioned several of my old friends, Bucher, Kapp, and others, who, having returned to Germany, felt themselves quite at home under the new conditions and had found their way open to public positions and activities of distinction and influence, in harmony with their principles. As he repeated this, or something like it, in a manner apt to command my attention, I might have taken it as a suggestion inviting me to do likewise. But I thought it best not to say anything in response.

Our conversation had throughout been so animated that time had slipped by us unaware, and it was again long past midnight when I left. My old friends of 1848 whom I met in Berlin were of course very curious to know what the great man of the time might have had to say to me, and I thought I could without being indiscreet communicate to them how highly pleased he had expressed himself with the harmonious cooperation between him and them for common ends. Some of them thought that Bismarck's conversion to liberal principles was really sincere. Others were less sanguine, believing as they did that he was indeed sincere and earnest in his endeavor to create a united German empire under Prussian leadership; that he would carry on a gay flirtation with the Liberals so long as he thought that he could thus best further his object, but that his true autocratic nature would assert itself again and he would throw his temporarily assumed Liberalism overboard as soon as he felt that he did not need its support any longer, and especially when he found it to stand in the way of his will.

THE FOREHANDED COLQUHOUNS

BY MARGARET WILSON

ILLUSTRATIONS BY A. E. CEDERQUIST