Speaking on this subject, August Bebel refers to the hero-worship of Bismarck in Germany: "There is no other person whom the social democracy had so much reason to hate as him, and the social democracy was not more hated by anybody than by just that Bismarck. Our love and our hatred were, as you see, mutual. But one would search in vain the entire social democratic press and literature for an expression of the thought that it would be a lucky thing if that man were removed.... But how often did the capitalist press express the idea that, were it not for Bismarck, we would not, to this day, have a united Germany? There cannot be a more mistaken idea than this. The unity of Germany would have come without Bismarck. The idea of unity and liberty was in the sixties so powerful among all the German people that it would have been realized, with or without the assistance of the Hohenzollerns. The unity of Germany was not only a political but an _economic necessity_, primarily in the interests of the capitalist class and its development. The idea of unity would have ultimately broken through with elementary force. At this juncture Bismarck made use of the tendency, in _his own fashion, in the interest of the Hohenzollern dynasty_, and at the same time _in the interest of the capitalist class and of the Junkers_, the landed nobility. The offspring of this compromise is the Constitution of the German Empire, the provisions of which strive to reconcile the interests of these three factors. Finally, even a man like Bismarck had to leave his post. 'What a misfortune for Germany!' cried the press devoted to him. Well, what has happened to Germany since then? Even Bismarck himself could not have ruled it much differently than it has been ruled since his days."[14]