¶ This idea is precisely what extremists like Roosevelt set up (1915), battling against "trusts," endeavoring to make them audit their books on the curbstone! So, what is new under the sun? 37 Ox-like patience of Prussian peasantry sorely tried--The incessant call for the strong man to end political miseries. ¶ As the result of all this deep study, Bismarck came to the conclusion that Prussia in the great moral idea of a United Germany could win, only by fighting Austria. We might as well get at the core of this thing, in short order. The complications are amazing; but the more we probe into Bismarck's gigantic problem, the larger grows the stature of our modern German giant. ¶ From this time till the hour of his death, many years later, Bismarck remains the one great central will power of Germany, the source of political legitimacy, dealing out with his brawny hands favors where they would do the most good, setting men up or casting them down; and in the end, through a series of profound political combinations the inner currents of which to this hour no human being has been able to chart and classify, our strong man at last is to set up his United Germany, placing the imperial crown on William's head in the palace of the French kings, at Versailles. ¶ Oh, how unforgivable all this is to the French. Not only that defeat should come in '70, but that the palace of the Bourbons, costing some $200,000,000, should be used in solemn mockery by the super-man Bismarck, as the stage-setting whereby to complete the imperial German holiday! Centuries must pass before this, the profound mortification to French feelings, is forgotten. That is to say, the worst thing you can do to a man is to hurt his pride. Had the German Empire come to pass without wounding French pride (not to add the French pocketbook) the French would long since have gone on their way in peace, rejoicing in German prosperity. Why not? The French are Christians, not the slightest doubt of that; and as Christians do not envy the German ox, ass or maid-servant. Indeed, that is as it should be in a Christian world. * * * * * ¶ At home, up in Prussia, Bismarck's sullen glances surveyed Europe afar, and in the '50's, of which we are writing, this is his problem: