Yet the two men had some deeply marked traits of character in common. The Emperor, as was Bismarck, is Prussian, that is to say mediaeval, to the core, notwithstanding that he had an English mother and lived in early childhood under English influences. He has always exhibited, as Bismarck always did, the genuine qualities of the Prussian--self-confidence, tenacity of purpose, absolute trust in his own ideals and intolerance of those of other people, impatience of rivalry, selfishness for the advantage of Prussia as against other German States, as strong as that for the newly born Empire against other countries. Finally, the Emperor is convinced, as Bismarck was convinced, that in the first and last resort, a society, a people, a nation, is based on force and by force alone can prosper, or even be held together. Neither Bismarck nor the Emperor could ever sympathize with those who look to a time when one strong and sensible policeman will be of more value to a community than a thousand unproductive soldiers. Long before he became Imperial Chancellor Bismarck had done masterly and important work for the country. In 1862 he began his career by filling the post of interim Minister President of Prussia at a time when the present Emperor was still an infant. It was on taking up the position that he made the celebrated statement that "great questions cannot be decided by speeches and majority-votes, but must be resolved by blood and iron." Born in April, 1815, two months before the battle of Waterloo, at Schoenhausen, in the Prussian Province of Saxony, not far from Magdeburg, he studied at the universities of Gottingen and Berlin and passed two steps of the official ladder--Auscultator and Referendar--which may be translated respectively protocolist and junior counsel. His parliamentary career began in 1846, two years before the second French Revolution. At that time Prussia was an absolute monarchy, without a Constitution or a Parliament. There was no conscription, that foundation-stone of Prussian power and of the modern German Empire. Then came the agitated days of 1848, the sanguinary "March Days" in Berlin. Frederick William IV was on the throne, and in 1847 permitted the calling of a Parliament, the forerunner of the present Reichstag; but only to represent the "rights," not the "opinions," of the people. "No piece of paper," cried the King, "shall come, like a second Providence, between God in heaven and this land!" That, too, was Bismarck's sentiment, courageously expressed by him when the Diet was debating the idea of introducing the English parliamentary system, and proved by him in character and conduct until the day of his death. He would have made a splendid Jacobite!