The effect of these speeches was very unfavourable; the very quickness of thought and originality of expression produced a bad impression; even the free indulgence in long foreign words offended patriotic journalists.  They seemed to his audience reckless; what was this reference to the Treaties of Vienna but an imitation of Napoleonic statesmanship?  They had the consciousness that they were making history, that they were involved in a great and tragic conflict, and they expected the Minister to play his part seriously and solemnly; instead of that they had listened to a series of epigrams with no apparent logical connection.  We know how dangerous it is, even in England, for a responsible statesman to allow himself to be epigrammatic in dealing with serious affairs.  Much more was it in Germany, where the Ministers were nearly always officials by training.  Bismarck had the dangerous gift of framing pregnant and pithy sentences which would give a ready handle to his opponents:  Macht geht vor Recht; he had not said these words, but he had said something very much like them, and they undoubtedly represented what seemed to his audience the pith of his speeches.  And then these words, blood and iron.  He has told us in later years what he really meant: 

“Put the strongest possible military power, in other words, as much blood and iron as you can, into the hands of the King of Prussia, then he will be able to carry out the policy you wish; it cannot be done with speeches and celebrations and songs, it can only be done by blood and iron.” [7]

What everyone thought he meant was that blood must be shed and iron used; and perhaps they were not so far wrong.

The attempt at conciliation failed; the report of the Committee was adopted, and an amendment proposed by Vincke, which Bismarck was prepared to accept, was rejected.  Bismarck warned the House not to push the conflict too far; the time would come when the prospect of a peaceful solution would have disappeared; then the Government too would be prepared to oppose theory to theory and interpretation to interpretation.

He showed to the President of the House a twig of olive.  “I gathered this in Avignon to bring it to the House; it does not seem to be time yet.”

The Budget was sent up to the House of Lords in the amended form in which the House of Representatives had passed it; the Lords unanimously threw it out, as they were legally justified in doing; not content with that, they altered it to the original form in which it had been proposed by the Government and sent it down again to the Lower House.  This was clearly illegal.  Their action, however, was most useful to the Government.  A conflict had now arisen between the two Houses, and technically the responsibility for the failure to bring the conciliation about was taken away from the Government; they could entrench themselves behind the impregnable position that the