¶ Look on Bismarck at this moment as one dealing with forces of human nature, the clash of many minds, ending by dominating over one and all, years hence, through his own inherent sagacity as a human being against other and weaker members of his kind--and we get at once a significant conception of the greatness of Bismarck's mentality, also of his innate craft, enabling him to triumph over a thousand oblique forces, many of them firmly entrenched, and from a logical point fully as defensible as were his own peculiar conceptions. ¶ It was not, after all, what this man or that prince or some other ruler thought, but what Bismarck thought, that turned the balance. A hundred instances could be offered to show that the men Bismarck was fighting had the better part of the argument, as mere argument; but between opinion and making that opinion stick is a wide gulf--however logical may be the argument. ¶ Bismarck was for the ensuing twenty years pictured as a noisy disturber, but he was shrewd, very shrewd. He could call a man "liar," "thief," "scoundrel," "impostor," in virile speechmaking, or could pass him up with a shrug, all the while keeping a cold eye on the main chance, and in the end getting his own way because he was strong enough to get his way--and that is all the logic there is in the situation. 31 This miracle he did indeed perform; he turned back the political clock to feudal days and gloriously set up "Divine-right," in the face of the intensely modern cry, "Let the People Rule!" ¶ Bismarck's amazing career affords a classical instance of what a strong man can do, even against the very spirit of his time! So much the worse for that Zeitgeist! The jade had to come to him, at last, completely subdued, as in the "Taming of the Shrew." ¶ As King's Man, Bismarck now preached "Divine-right" in an age of democratic ideas. Thrones were falling everywhere; the inflammatory ideas of the French Revolution had wrested from monarchs the form, if not the substance, of constitutional liberties for the masses. The people were clamoring for they knew not what; at any rate for some new experiment in the quest for happiness, which they believed could be attained through new forms of government. Bismarck fought the new order, and as late as A. D. 1870, restated the seemingly worn-out doctrine of "Divine-right." How did he accomplish this political miracle? ¶ A strong leader, by tireless repetition of some idea, finally brings about faith in that idea. It does not follow that this leader must necessarily be wiser than the masses. It is always his will to power, rather than the inherent validity of his ideas. ¶ First, he stands alone with his idea, whatever it may be. Finally, one person is convinced? This is the beginning. Well, if one, why not two, then ten, then a hundred, or a thousand, or ten thousand? ¶ And so the wonder grows.