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Bismarck's Forecast.

[CHAP.

unfit for work. Why should the regular soldier, disabled by war, or the official, have a right to be pensioned in his old age, and not the soldier of labour? This thing will make its own way; it has a future. When I die, possibly our policy will come to grief. But State Socialism will have its day; and he who shall take it up again will assuredly be the man at the wheel."

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CHAPTER VI.

BISMARCK AS AN ORATOR AND HUMORIST.

ELOQUENCE-the gift or art of expressing one's thoughts correctly, fluently and effectively-the faculty of exercising a persuasive and decisive influence upon the feelings, convictions and resolves of others has been variously judged. D'Alembert remarks :- "The miracles often wrought by the eloquence of an individual and the effects thus produced by it upon an entire nation constitute perhaps the most brilliant testimony to the superiority of one human being to others." Such, also, is the opinion of the American philosopher Emerson, who says: "Eloquence is the appropriate organ of the highest personal energy;" by which he probably means that no exertion of the human mind calls for a rarer combination of capacities than that of the orator in its highest developments. Although there is a good deal to be said against this view of the subject-as, for instance, no one could rank a great general or statesman upon a lower level of intellectual energy than a great orator, inasmuch as the demands made by circumstances upon the former are much more momentous than those to which the latter's powers are subjected—the value of oratory as an active power is more questionable than its importance as a gift. Probably no people has ever been stirred to more vehement emotion in connection with State affairs than

234

The Value of Oratory.

[CHAP. were the Athenians by the orations of Pericles; and was not the decline of Athens mainly due to the eloquence of that great speaker? Was Demosthenes, no less oratorically gifted, able to avert its fall? Mirabeau's surpassing eloquence was incapable of laying the maleficent spirits of the 1789 Revolution. In the Frankfort Paulskirche were gathered together greater numbers of talented orators than the British Parliament had produced since the days of Pitt and Burke; and what was the result? Ephemeral successes culminating in a miserable fiasco. George von Vincke was an able speaker and ready debater; of what use was he to the State, or even to his own party? He talked the latter down by degrees, until, from having been the most powerful fraction in the Upper House, it ended by only disposing of about a dozen votes.

Macaulay, in his "Gladstone on Church and State," asserts that active political life is scarcely compatible with intellectual profundity, and observes :-"The politician is constantly bound to speak and act without reflection and study. He may be very badly informed upon a subject, his acquaintance with which is perhaps vague and superficial; but he must speak upon it, and, if he be a man of talent, tact and determination, he will soon discover that it is possible to speak successfully, even under those circumstances. He will become aware that the effect of words written down and polished up in his quiet library is very different from that of words spoken to the ear, with due accompaniment of gesture and emphasis. He will find that he may make mistakes without risk of detection and draw sophistical conclusions unrebuked. It will become apparent to him that, in connection with complicated commercial or legal questions, he may earn enthusiastic plaudits and produce the impression of having made an

VI.]

Bismarck no Orator.

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admirable speech, without having read ten pages or thought quietly for ten minutes upon the matter."

German thinkers of the first class have gone even further than this. Immanuel Kant has stigmatised eloquence as a traitor, because it secures the last word for æsthetic feeling in questions which require to be settled by common sense. Goethe, in one of his letters from Venice (1786) declares himself "a mortal foe to wordiness." The German Chancellor, too, is no great admirer of rhetorical arts; nor is the Muse who patronises and confers them particularly well disposed towards him. Of this he is well aware.

no orator.

In reply to Dr. Gneist he once said in the Lower House (February 4, 1866), "I have already pointed out that I am I cannot work upon your feelings or render facts obscure by playing with words. My speech is simple and plain."

After the debate in the Reichstag (February, 1870) on the admission of Baden to the North German Confederation, he observed to me, referring to Deputy Lasker :-"These eloquent gentlemen are like a good many ladies with small feet, who always wear shoes too small for them and stick out their feet to be looked at. When a man has the misfortune to be eloquent, he makes speeches too often and too long."

In Versailles, a year later, he said to us:-"The gift of eloquence has done a great deal of mischief in Parliamentary life. Too much time is wasted because everybody who fancies he knows anything will insist upon speaking, even if he has nothing new to say. There is too much empty loquacity, and too little is said to the point. Everything that is really to be done is settled beforehand in the fractions, and the speeches in the House are delivered for the public, in order to show what you are capable of, and still more for

236

Bismarck on Eloquence.

[CHAP.

the newspapers, in the hope that they may praise you. It will come to this that eloquence will be regarded as a misdemeanour, and long speeches will be punishable by law. There is the Federal Council, now, which makes no display of eloquence and yet has done more than anybody for the cause of Germany. I remember that at first it made some experiments in that direction; but I cut them short by saying: 'Gentlemen, there is nothing to be achieved here by eloquence or persuasive speeches, because every one of you brings his convictions along with him in his pocket, that is, his instructions. Oratory is only a waste of time. Let us limit ourselves to statements of fact.' And they did so. Nobody made a long speech after that; and so we got on quickly with our business."

At an earlier date (May 12, 1869) he had alluded to the shady side of eloquence, whilst protesting against investing deliberating Assemblies with too much power, influence and importance. Upon that occasion (in the North German Parliament) he said: "Under the influence of the magnificent speech to which we have just listened you are about to come to a decision in the excitement of the moment; whereas, if you were to read that speech at home or to listen to its controversion by a speaker as ingenious as the last, you would probably hesitate and think to yourselves. 'There is, after all, a good deal to be said on the other side.' The gift of oratory is a very dangerous one; it carries people away, like music and improvisation. There must be something of a poet in every orator capable of moving his audience. But is the poet or improvisatore exactly the sort of man to whom the helm of the State, which requires cool, considerate manipulation, should be confided? And yet it is he upon whose eloquence Parliamentary decisions are immediately dependent; this is the case in any receptive