The characters also of the two men were different.  Bismarck’s was the result of civilian training; the Emperor’s of military training.  Bismarck had small regard for manners, and would have scoffed had anyone told him “manners makyth man”; the Emperor is courtesy itself, as every one who meets him testifies.  Bismarck was fond of eating and drinking, with the appetite of a horse and the thirst of a drayman, until he was nearly eighty, and smoked strong cigars from morning to night—­a very pleasant thing, of course, if you can stand it.  The Emperor has never cared particularly for what are called the pleasures of the table, is fond of apples and one or two simple German dishes, and has never been what in Germany is called a “chain-smoker.”  Bismarck appears not to have had the faintest interest in art; the Emperor, while of late disclaiming in all art company his lack of expert knowledge, has always found delight in art’s most classical forms.

Yet the two men had some deeply marked traits of character in common.  The Emperor, as was Bismarck, is Prussian, that is to say mediaeval, to the core, notwithstanding that he had an English mother and lived in early childhood under English influences.  He has always exhibited, as Bismarck always did, the genuine qualities of the Prussian—­self-confidence, tenacity of purpose, absolute trust in his own ideals and intolerance of those of other people, impatience of rivalry, selfishness for the advantage of Prussia as against other German States, as strong as that for the newly born Empire against other countries.  Finally, the Emperor is convinced, as Bismarck was convinced, that in the first and last resort, a society, a people, a nation, is based on force and by force alone can prosper, or even be held together.  Neither Bismarck nor the Emperor could ever sympathize with those who look to a time when one strong and sensible policeman will be of more value to a community than a thousand unproductive soldiers.

Long before he became Imperial Chancellor Bismarck had done masterly and important work for the country.  In 1862 he began his career by filling the post of interim Minister President of Prussia at a time when the present Emperor was still an infant.  It was on taking up the position that he made the celebrated statement that “great questions cannot be decided by speeches and majority-votes, but must be resolved by blood and iron.”  Born in April, 1815, two months before the battle of Waterloo, at Schoenhausen, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, not far from Magdeburg, he studied at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin and passed two steps of the official ladder—­Auscultator and Referendar—­which may be translated respectively protocolist and junior counsel.  His parliamentary career began in 1846, two years before the second French Revolution.  At that time Prussia was an absolute monarchy, without a Constitution or a Parliament.  There was no conscription, that foundation-stone of Prussian power and of the modern