At the very beginning of his career, we find Bismarck ringing the solemn changes on "Christian," and we behold him in a characteristically unamiable mood over "Jews." Yet all the time he was endeavoring to lay down the dogma that the proper aim of the state is the realization of the Christian ideal! ¶ If now you can understand this mental contradiction, you are in a position to grasp one of the strange paradoxes with which Bismarck's life is literally filled. You see here, at once, why he has been so often accused of double-dealing, of stacking the cards, of changing his mind, of going ahead by going backwards, winning ultimately by fair means or by foul. * * * * * ¶ And now for the sequel. Many years later, Bismarck was exceedingly glad to be guided by the advice of Jews, more especially the Jewish banker Bleichroder. On one side of the table sits Bismarck, the Pomeranian Junker, and on the other side the sallow-faced, undersized Jew, Bleichroder. Great friends they are today, to be sure; and between them is a mound of treasury reports, telling in minute detail the financial resources of Louis the Little, now a helpless prisoner of war. France is at the Prussian's mercy, and a Jew is called in--a despised Jew! Bleichroder and Bismarck coolly examined the balance sheets of France, the present state of her debts. The money cost turns out to be the stupendous sum of five thousand millions of francs. * * * * * ¶ Literary and journalistic France, in book, editorial and oration made a great outcry at the moment, declaring dramatically that Prussian barbarians had decided "to bleed France white"--attributing to Bismarck a figure of speech borrowed from the butcher's block! Well and good, but France paid the indemnity in surprisingly short time; and had many millions left to go on her way rejoicing, had it not been for the miserable obsession, "Ravanche!" that kept her in hot water for years. ¶ Bismarck was correctly quoted in this respect: That gold is as necessary in war as gunpowder; and the best way to keep a quarrelsome would-be Napoleon out of war is to empty his pockets. ¶ The Jewish feature, however, shows Bismarck, through and through; and we could not present him without this surprising scene. Make the most of it. * * * * * ¶ "I do not much like the piety that proclaims itself," said Louis XIII. A similar remark may be made concerning Bismarck's life-long belief that the Lord was on Bismarck's side--Jew-baiter and all. ¶ "The longer I work in politics," he once remarked, summing up his many political difficulties, "the smaller my belief in human calculation. I look at the affair according to my human understanding, but gratitude for God's assistance so far raises in me the confidence that the Lord is able to turn our errors to our own good; that I experience daily, to my wholesale humiliation."