6 Strong animal basis of Bismarck's rise to Power--The story is always the same, "Fight, or die like a dog!" ¶ Thus, from time immemorial, the fighting Bismarcks wrote their title to a share of this earth with the sword, which in spite of all Hague Conferences remains the best sort of title man has been able to devise. As time sped and what is called Civilization grew somewhat, men took on chicken-hearted ways; and in every pinch appealed to courts for decisions formerly decided by individual brawn; till finally, as in these latter degenerate days, if a fight becomes necessary, society hires policemen to stop the row. ¶ Klaus von Bismarck preferred to do his own murdering, and consequently, Klaus stood first in the eyes of honest men of his own generation; but in this Twentieth Century, instead of putting incompetents to the test of the sword, society, committed to the soft doctrine that all life is sacred, burdens itself with lengthening the days of the daft. A far cry that from the ideals of the early Bismarcks! It is well to keep these facts in mind, in contemplating the extraordinary career of the great Otto von Bismarck, king-maker and unifier of Germany. * * * * * ¶ Modern timid-hearted folk, reading of the desperate makeshifts of the old Bismarcks to get on in the world, would say off-hand, "There must be a strain of madness in the Bismarck brain?" ¶ Unquestionably! This fighting family in each generation had its born revolutionists, its enormous egotists, its men who lived what orthodox opinion calls "godless lives"--although in their own philosophy the Bismarcks are always preaching that God is on their side. When the Elector decided to steal Burgstal forest, the Bismarcks set up this pious plea: "We wish to remain in the pleasant place assigned to us by the Almighty." Four hundred years later we find Otto von Bismarck using again and again this peculiar reasoning, to justify, at least to explain, his own career: "If I were not a Christian, I would not continue to serve the King another moment. Did I not obey my God and count on Him, I should certainly take no account of earthly masters." ¶ In three great wars of ambition in which 80,000 perished, he repeated this solemn formula about God; he repeated it on the blood-drenched field of Koeniggraetz; he repeated it in the Holstein war, and he repeated it again at Sedan and at Gravelotte.