Book Description

Excerpt from The Life of Prince Otto Von Bismarck Bismarck's memoirs, although his advanced age is sometimes perceptible in them, contain a mine of wisdom for the practical statesman; and yet they are not in the true sense an autobiography, for they are not a record of the man's own life. Likewise there are valuable incidents in Dr. Busch's voluminous sketches of the German chancellor; but Dr. Busch's acquaintance with his employer only began in 1870, and he makes no attempt to explain Bismarck's policy or how he accomplished his mighty work. Mr. Lowe's larger English life of Bismarck is a dignified study of the subject, but it was published many years before his death, and is written too much from the English Tory and monarchical stand-point to please American readers. Von Sybel's history of the foundation of the new German empire contains the only adequate statement of Bismarck's statecraft between 1862 and 1870; but the period comprising the last twenty-five years of his life was hardly less important than that which immediately preceded it. What Americans now require is a clear statement of the character of the man, the principal events of his life, and an explanation of his policy as related to the historical events of his time. This is what I have undertaken to give in the present volume. In order to do Bismarck justice, however, we should divest ourselves for the time of our national antipathy to royalty. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.