ident of the Ministry since 1862 has
faced, almost alone, the solid phalanx of the Liberals, replying to
their ebullitions of pride and confidence in their own strain, and
answering on the spot and with brilliant presence of mind their
sarcastic and malicious attacks, yes even challenging them with witty
impromptus, and hurting his opponents to the core? Yes, he is the same
man, and occasionally he can be as witty and bitter as he used to be.
But since his great victories he has shown the more serious demeanor
of a statesman. He is calmly objective and conciliatory, as befits his
greatness, which is today universally recognized. The longer he
speaks the more the peculiar attractions of his way of speaking become
manifest. His expression is original and fresh, pithy and robust,
honest and straightforward."

Bismarck did not write out his speeches, and the published accounts of
what he said are copied from the official stenographic reports.
Logically Bismarck never left a sentence incomplete, but grammatically
he often did so when the wealth of ideas qualifying his main thought
had grown to greater proportions than he had anticipated. His diction
was at all times precise, which led to a multiplicity of
qualifications--adjectives, appositions, adverbs, parentheses, and the
like. Desirous of convincing his hearers, he often felt the need of
repeating the same thought in various ways until he at last hammered
it in, as it were, with one big blow--with one phrase easily
remembered and readily quoted. It is these phrases which have given
the names to many of his speeches, namely: "The Honest Broker,"
"Practical Christianity," or "We shall never go to Canossa."

He himself readily quoted from the sayings and writings of other great
men; and was in this respect wholly admirable both for the catholicity
of his taste and the singular appropriateness of his citations. He was
apparently as familiar with the great authors of antiquity as with the
modern German, French and English writers. Nor was he afraid of using
a foreign tongue when no German phrase occurred to him to match the
exact meaning of his thought.

The reader will realize, even more than the hearer, that it was not
the form of Bismarck's speeches which swept his audiences off their
feet, and often changed a hostile Reichstag or Diet into an assembly
of men eager to do his bidding, but that it was his firm grasp on the
realities of life and his supreme command of ever