And now what shall we conclude as to Bismarck himself? The magnitude of his work no man can dispute. For centuries Europe awaited the unification of Germany, as a necessary step in the organic growth of both. Feudalism was the principle which bound Christendom together during the Middle Age; afterward, the dynastic principle operated to blend peoples into nations; finally, in our time, the principle of nationality has accomplished what neither feudalism nor dynasties could accomplish, the attainment of German unity. In type, Bismarck belongs with the Charlemagnes, the Cromwells, the Napoleons; but, unlike them, he wrought to found no kingdom for himself; from first to last he was content to be the servant of the monarch whom he ruled. As a statesman, he possessed in equal mixture the qualities of lion and of fox, which Machiavelli long ago declared indispensable to a prince. He had no scruples. What benefited Prussia and his King was to him moral, lawful, desirable; to them he was inflexibly loyal; for them he would suffer popular odium or incur personal danger. But whoever opposed them was to him an enemy, to be overcome by persuasion, craft, or force. We discern in his conduct toward enemies no more regard for morality than in that of a Mohawk sachem toward his Huron foe. He might spare them, but from motives of policy; he might persecute them, not to gratify a thirst for cruelty, but because he deemed persecution the proper instrument in that case. His justification would be that it was right that Prussia and Germany should hold the first rank in Europe. The world, as he saw it, was a field in which nations maintained a pitiless struggle for existence, and the strongest survived; to make his nation the strongest was, he conceived, his highest duty. An army of puny-bodied saints might be beautiful to a pious imagination, but they would fare ill in an actual conflict with Pomeranian grenadiers.