shambles like a beast with
bandaged eyes, or whether, in full and joyous presentiment of the life
which will spring forth from your sacrifice, you offer yourself freely
on the altar of eternity."

Not even Plato and Aristotle went so far in the deification of the
State as Hegel. And if Hegel declared that the real office of the
State is not to further individual interests, to protect private
property, but to be an embodiment of the organic unity of public life;
if he saw the highest task and the real freedom of the individual in
making himself a part of this organic unity of public life, he voiced
a sentiment which was fully shared by the leading classes of the
Prussia of his time, and which has since become a part of the
political creed of the Socialist masses all over Germany.

Here we have the moral background of Bismarck's internal policy. His
monarchism rested not only on his personal allegiance to the
hereditary dynasty, although no medieval knight could have been more
steadfast in his loyalty to his liege lord than Bismarck was in his
unswerving devotion to the Hohenzollern house. His monarchism
rested above all on the conviction that, under the present
conditions of German political life, no other form of government would
insure equally well the fulfilment of the moral obligations of the
State.

[Illustration: PRINCE BISMARCK _From the Painting by Franz von
Lenbach_ COURTESY OF MR. HUGO RESINGER NEW YORK]

He was by no means blind to the value of parliamentary institutions.
More than once has he described the English Constitution as the
necessary outcome and the fit expression of the vital forces of
English society. More than once has he eulogized the sterling
political qualities of English landlordism, its respect for the law,
its common sense, its noble devotion to national interests. More than
once has he deplored the absence in Germany of "the class which in
England is the main support of the State--the class of wealthy and
therefore conservative gentlemen, independent of material interests,
whose whole education is directed with a view to their becoming
statesmen, and whose only aim in life is to take part in public
affairs"; and the absence of "a Parliament, like the English,
containing two sharply defined parties whereof one forms a sure and
unswerving majority which subjects itself with iron discipline to its
ministerial leaders." We may regret that Bismarck himself did not do
more to develop parl