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nation before other powers may be able to proclaim that the necessity of having Rome as the capital is recognized by all the nation. I think I am justified in making this appeal even to those who, for reasons which I respect, differ with me on this point. Yet more; I can assume no Spartan indifference in the matter. I say frankly that it will be a deep grief to me to tell my native city that she must renounce resolutely and definitely all hope of being the seat of government.

Yes, gentlemen, as far as I am personally concerned, it is no pleasure to go to Rome. Having little artistic taste, I feel sure that in the midst of the splendid monuments of ancient and modern Rome I will lament the plain and unpoetic streets of my native town. But one thing I can say with confidence: knowing the character of my fellow-citizens; knowing from actual facts how ready they have always been to make the greatest sacrifices for the sacred cause of Italy; knowing their willingness to make sacrifices when their city was invaded by the enemy, and their promptness and energy in its defence; knowing all this, I have no fear that they will uphold me when, in their name and as their deputy, I say that Turin is ready to make this great sacrifice in the interests of united Italy.

I am comforted by the hope—I may even say the certainty—that when Italy shall have established the seat of government in the eternal city, she will not be ungrateful to this land which was the cradle of liberty; to this land in which was sown that germ of independence which, maturing rapidly and branching out, has now reached forth its tendrils from Sicily to the Alps.

I have said and I repeat: Rome, and Rome only, should be the capital of Italy.

PRINCE OTTO VON BISMARCK (1815-1898)

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THE MAN OF BLOOD AND IRON

EVER has Europe had a political magnate of more dictatorial disposition, indomitable persistence, and devotion to one idea, than the great German Chancellor, Otto Edward Leopold, Prince Von Bismarck-Schönhausen. We give his full title, but Bismarck alone is the name by which he is and is destined to be known. His one idea was to revive the German Empire, under the leadership of Prussia. The Holy Roman Empire, once a very powerful organization, under German supremacy, had passed from existence during the Napoleonic period. Bismarck did not wish to revive this, but to form an empire confined to the German States. Appointed Primeminister in 1862, he brought about the war with Denmark in 1864, and with Austria in 1866, followed by alliances between Prussia and the other large German States, and the North German Confederation, composed of twenty-two States. Then, in 1870, came the war with France, followed by the union of all the German States under King William of Prussia, who was crowned Emperor of Germany at Versailles in 1871. Such was the great work of Bismarck's life. Created Prince and Chancellor in 1866, he remained Chancellor of the Empire till 1890. But the new Emperor, William II., was not the man to submit to a dictator, and Bismarck resigned, to dwell in private life for a number of years, a caustic critic of the imperial measures. A formal reconciliation between the Emperor and the "Man of Blood and Iron" took place in 1894.

LOYALTY TO PRUSSIA

[The Imperial crown had been offered to the King of Prussia at an earlier date, but declined. This was after the revolution of 1848, when a German parliament was established and a feeble form of union formed. In the following year the crown

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was offered to Frederick William IV., then the Prussian King. Bismarck, then a member of the Prussian Chambers, opposed the project, unless Prussia, as a kingdom, should benefit by it. We append a characteristic extract from his speech.]

I am more inclined to believe that Frederick II. would have turned, for a solution of the question, to the most prominent characteristic of the Prussian nation,-its warlike element,—and not without success. For he would have known that now, too, as in the days of our fathers, the sound of the trumpet summoning all to the standard of their sovereign lord has not yet lost its charm for the Prussian ear, be it for the defence of our own frontiers or for the glory and greatness of Prussia. After the rupture with Frankfort he would have had the choice of allying himself with Austria, his old comrade-in-arms, and of assuming the brilliant role played by the Emperor of Russia in assisting Austria to annihilate the common foe, revolution; or it would have been open to him, after rejection of the Imperial Frankfort crown, by the same right as that by which he had conquered Silesia, to decide for the Germans in the matter of their Constitution at the risk of his casting the sword into the scale. That would have been a national Prussian policy. In the former case community with Austria, in the latter her own exertions, would have given Prussia the proper position for helping Germany to be the Power in Europe which it ought to be. But the draft Constitution annihilates specific Prussianism, which has saved the country from the revolution and almost alone survived it. . It was a Prussian regiment which on the 18th of September, 1848, saved us from the Frankfort Parliament conjured up against us... It was the attachment of the Prussian people to their ruling house-it was the old Prussian virtues of honor, loyalty, obedience and bravery, which permeate the army from its framework, the corps of officers, to the youngest recruit. This army cherishes no Tricolor enthusiasm. In it, as among the rest of the people, you will not find any longing for national regeneration. It is content with the name of Prussian, and proud of it, too. These hosts will follow the black and white banner, but not the Tricolor, and under the former gladly die for their country. Nay, since the 18th March, they have come to regard the Tricolor as the badge of their opponents. Familiar to and beloved by them are the strains of the "Prussian Air," the "Old Dessauer" and the "Hohenfriedberg" marches, but I have never yet heard a Prussian soldier sing "What is the German's Fatherland?" The people from whom this army is drawn, and who are most truly represented by it, have no desire to see their Prussian kingdom melt away in the putrifying ferment of South German anarchy. Their loyalty does not cleave to an imperial paper presidency, nor to a princely board of six, but rather to a free and living King of Prussia. the

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heir of his forefathers; and what this people wills we also wish with it. We all desire to behold the Prussian eagle spread its protecting and controlling pinions from the Memel to the Donnersberg; but free we wish to see it, not fettered by a new Diet of Ratisbon, and not clipped in the wings by that equalizing hedgehook whereof we well remember that it was first at Gotha converted into an instrument of peace, while but a few weeks previously in Frankfort it was brandished as a threatening weapon against Prussianism and the ordinances of our King. Prussians we are, and Prussians we will remain. I know that in these words I but express the creed of the Prussian army and of the majority of my countrymen; and I hope to God that we shall also remain Prussians long after this bit of paper [the German Constitution] has moldered away like a withered autumn leaf.

PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CONSTITUTION

[The Constitution adopted by the revolutionary German Parliament was by no means satisfactory to Bismarck, who did not hesitate to express his opinion of it in plain words.]

Gentlemen, it has pained me to see Prussians here, and not only nominal Prussians, who adhere to this Constitution and warmly defend it; it has been humiliating to me, as it would have been to thousands and thousands of my countrymen, to see the representatives of Princes, whom I honor in their lawful sphere, but who are not my sovereign lords, to see them invested with supreme power; and the bitterness of this feeling was not softened at the opening of this Assembly by my seeing the seats on which we sit adorned with colors which were never the colors of the German Empire, but, for the last two years, rather the badge of rebellion and barricades-colors which, in my native country, apart from the democrats, are only worn in sorrowful obedience by the soldier. Gentlemen, if you do not make more concessions to the Prussian, to the old Prussian spirit,— call it what you will,-than you have hitherto done in this Constitution, then I do not believe in its realization; and if you attempt to impose this Constitution on this Prussian spirit, you will find in it a Bucephalus* who carries his accustomed lord and rider with daring joy, but will fling to the earth the presuming Cockney horseman, with all his trappings of sable, red and gold. But I am comforted in my fear of these eventualities by the firm belief that it will not be long before the parties come to regard this Constitution as the two doctors in Lafontaine's fable did the patient whose corpse they had just left. "He is dead;"' said one, "I said he would die all along." "Had he taken my advice," quoth the other, "he

would be still alive."

* The war horse of Alexander the Great, which none but he could mount or ride.

FRANCESCO CRISPI (1819-1901)

AN ITALIAN STATESMAN AND PREMIER

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RANCESCO CRISPI filled the double role of statesman and soldier. In 1848 he was concerned in the revolution at Palermo and had to flee for his life. In 1859 he organized a new and successful movement, and went as major under Garibaldi in his invasion of Sicily. In the new Italian kingdom he became deputy and minister, and was prime minister of the kingdom 1887-91 and 1894-96; the Italian disasters in Abyssinia finally forcing him to resign. His powers as a statesman and his talent in oratory gave him great weight in the Italian governmental affairs.

THE RELATION OF THE POPE TO THE STATE

[At the unveiling of the Garibaldi monument at Rome during the fetes of 1895, Crispi delivered the principal oration. In his remarks he diverged from the main subject to define the relation of the Pope to the State.]

The enemies of Italian unity have endeavored to prove that the present celebration is an insult to the head of the Catholic Church. Their object is to excite conscientious scruples against our country. But the common sense of the people is proof against such tricks, because we all know that Christianity is a divine institution, which is not dependent upon earthly weapons for its existence. The religion of Christ preached by Paul and Chrysostom was able to subdue the world without the aid of temporal arms, and we cannot conceive that the Vatican should persist in wishing for temporal sovereignty to exercise its spiritual mission. The Gospel, as we all believe, is truth. If it has been disseminated by apostolic teachings, such teachings are sufficient for its existence.

It is not really for the protection and prestige of religion that our adversaries demand the restoration of the temporal power of the Holy See, but for worldly reasons, from lust of power and from earthly covetousness,

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