Bismarck, "primarily demands in the ruler impartiality, honesty,
devotion to duty, energy and inward humility." If I may be allowed to
make one more quotation on this subject, I will cite from the speech of
the German Emperor at Coblenz, in which he spoke of "Kingship, by the
grace of God, with its heavy duties, its tremendous responsibility to
the Creator alone, from which no man, no minister, no parliament, can
release the monarch."

We knew Benevolence was a tender virtue and mother-like. If upright
Rectitude and stern Justice were peculiarly masculine, Mercy had the
gentleness and the persuasiveness of a feminine nature. We were warned
against indulging in indiscriminate charity, without seasoning it with
justice and rectitude. Masamuné expressed it well in his oft-quoted
aphorism--"Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness;
Benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness."

Fortunately Mercy was not so rare as it was beautiful, for it is
universally true that "The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the
daring." "_Bushi no nasaké_"--the tenderness of a warrior--had a sound
which appealed at once to whatever was noble in us; not that the mercy
of a samurai was generically different from the mercy of any other
being, but because it implied mercy where mercy was not a blind impulse,
but where it recognized due regard to justice, and where mercy did not
remain merely a certain state of mind, but where it was backed with
power to save or kill. As economists speak of demand as being effectual
or ineffectual, similarly we may call the mercy of bushi effectual,
since it implied the power of acting for the good or detriment of the
recipient.

Priding themselves as they did in their brute strength and privileges to