The Arena | Page 2

where serious
literature does not reap renown quickly. M. M. Lairesse De Vogüé,
Bourdeau, Sorel, all welcomed it as a revelation, in the Débats, Revues
des Deux Mondes, and elsewhere, and its real title was awarded it in the
Temps, by M. Albert Sorel, whose experience and competence as an
historical critic has never been denied, and who unhesitatingly
proclaimed it, Le Fuit et l'Idée, namely, the announcement of the ruling
national idea whence the fact of German unity was immediately
derived.
The public of the whole universe will remember that at the time of the
Emperor Frederick's death the great question first arose as to who was
the initiator (or inventor) of the "United German Empire," and from all
sides poured forth the declarations of eye and ear witnesses; this was
the moment of the Gessellen-incident, and the outbreak of hostility
between Prince Bismarck and Baron de Rozzenbach and Gustav Freitag,
the novelist, and the celebrated jurisconsult for whose illegal
imprisonment the high-handed chancellor had later to atone. But there
apparently resulted from all these disputes that, as the glory of "priority
of invention" was so eagerly sought for, there must have been an
"inventor!" That was in reality the point on which Sybel "spoke," and
he therefore entitled his "history" that of the "Creation of the German
United Empire, by William I."
This it was not; but this was at the same time the view it suited the
vanity of the French nation to take of it; accordingly, Sybel's theory
was rapidly accepted, and French public opinion did its utmost to cause
the unity of Germany, as recognized in 1871, to be regarded as an

accident, the creation of one man, promoted, for that matter
ungrudgingly, to the rank of the "greatest European statesman," but
whose work, being that of an individual, and therefore accidental,
might quite conceivably be eventually undone. Sybel's theory, being
official and Bismarckian, puts forth in truth the French conception, and
is, as a matter of fact, the very opposite of the national German one.
The Germans who agreed with Sybel were the men of the old regime,
with far less, be it said, of the "cute" chancellor himself, than of
Marshal Moltke, the chancellor being far more distant from the
materialism of the "Grand Fritz" with his "big battalions" than were the
veterans (however glorious) of the drilled and disciplined Prussian
army. Bismarck was divided between two creeds: he knew too much
psychology to believe solely in the supremacy of pipeclay, but he was
at the same time not averse to the creation of a revived German empire
by his own genius.
Hence chiefly the confusion; for men's minds were confused,--in
France determinedly, and even in Germany, (owing to the still enduring
force of obsolete opinions and antiquated habits of thought and action)
uncertain.
When the war had once clearly shown what its end would be, they were
few who could appreciate it. In France where were they who had ever
heard the truth about "1806 and Jéna"? or who, after the 4th September,
'70, were capable of realizing that the just retribution for Jéna was
Sédan? All glory was given to one man--to Bismarck. For the six long
months, till March, '71, he was the arch-destroyer--nothing else was
taken into account; if he chose to establish a new holy Roman empire,
of course he could do it; but it would be the work of his Titanic will,
and nothing on earth could resist--since France could not! Thus
reasoned French vanity, and if this curious condition of the public mind
in France be not understood, the reconstitution of united Germany into
a great cohesive state will never be rightly attained as a matter of fact.
France, therefore, continued (and did so until quite lately) to hold to the
individual or accidental theory of a military unity achieved by
fortuitous victories, to which the constant agitations of a whole people

for hundreds of years, were in no sense conducive. Another fact that
must also be acknowledged is, that this theory once firmly established,
any remorse for the mysterious crimes of Napoleon I. was diminished if
not erased. On the contrary, his conquests, his violent despotism, his
wonderful supremacy--unjust in every sense, immoral, tyrannical,
equally acquired and forfeited by the Corsican Invader, was regarded as
an example; when defeat had to be recognized as undeniable, the
national delusion soon came to take the form of retrieval, and the
notion gained ground that what la chance or the luck of a great
statesman had put together, might, from the same cause, be taken to
pieces again!
Granted the principle of personal intervention, of the success of either
one man or of even a group of two or three leading spirits, who was the
original inventor, who the doer