This trade teaches that one can be as shrewd as the shrewdest in this world and still at any moment go like a child into the dark. One gains no new friends, the old ones die, or back off in disaffection. Furthermore, the cold descends from above β that is the natural history of all rulers, even the best.
Yet every favourable inclination requires reciprocity if it is to last. In short, I am freezing emotionally, and I long for your company and to be with you in the solitude of the country. As God will, it is all merely a matter of time; nations and individuals, folly and wisdom, war and peace, they come and go like waves, and the sea remains.
State socialism is on the march and there is no stopping it. Whoever embraces this idea will come to power. The trouble about politics is that you can never be certain when your policy has been correct.
Perhaps our policy after was in fact mistaken. I am opposed to the notion of any sort of active participation of Germany in these matters, so long as I can see no reason to suppose that German interests are involved, no interests on behalf of which it is worth our risking β¦ the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. They want to urge me into war and I want peace. It would be frivolous to start a new war; we are not a pirate state which makes war because it suits a few.
While Bismarck spoke, his soft gentle voice struck me and those unforgettable eyes ⦠teary but remarkably beautiful from which sudden bolts of lightning would flash⦠On the way home I asked my father about that remarkable, gentle voice. The German nation is sick of principles and doctrines, of literary greatness and a theoretical existence.
