heart. None has stood more conspicuously for racial aspirations,
passions, ideals.

It is the purpose of the present sketch to bring out a few of these
affinities between Bismarck and the German people.

I

Perhaps the most obviously Teutonic trait in Bismarck's character is
its martial quality. It would be preposterous, surely, to claim
warlike distinction as a prerogative of the German race. Russians,
Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, undoubtedly, make as good fighters
as Germans. But it is not an exaggeration to say that there is no
country in the world where the army is as enlightened or as popular an
institution as it is in Germany.

The German army is not composed of hirelings of professional fighters
whose business it is to pick quarrels, no matter with whom. It is, in
the strictest sense of the word, the people in arms. Among its
officers there is a large percentage of the intellectual élite of the
country; its rank and file embrace every occupation and every class of
society, from the scion of royal blood down to the son of the
seamstress. Although it is based upon the unconditional
acceptance of the monarchical creed, nothing is farther removed from
it than the spirit of servility. On the contrary, one of the very
first teachings which are inculcated upon the German recruit is that,
in wearing the "king's coat," he is performing a public duty, and that
by performing this duty he is honoring himself. Nor can it be said
that it is the aim of German military drill to reduce the soldier to a
mere machine, at will to be set in motion or be brought to a