Thus the modern German nation has been at bottom the work of admirable leadership on the part of officially responsible leaders; and among those leaders the man who planned most effectively and accomplished the greatest results was Otto von Bismarck.
* * * * * It requires a very special study of European history after 1848 to understand how bold, how original, how comprehensive, and how adequate for their purpose Bismarck's ideas and policy gradually became; and it requires a very special study of Bismarck's own biography to understand that his personal career, with all its transformations, exhibits an equally remarkable integrity.

The Bismarck of from 1848 to 1851 is usually described as a country squire, possessed by obscurantist mediaeval ideas wholly incompatible with his own subsequent policy.

But while there are many superficial contradictions between the country squire of 1848 and the Prussian Minister and German Chancellor, the really peculiar quality of Bismarck's intelligence was revealed in his ability to develop a constructive German national policy out of the prejudices and ideas of a Prussian "junker." Bismarck, in 1848, was primarily an ardent Prussian patriot who believed that the monarchy was divinely authorized to govern the Prussian people, and that any diminution of this responsibility was false in principle and would be baleful in its results.

These ideas led him, in 1848, to oppose the constitution, granted by Frederick William IV and to advocate the repression of all revolutionary upheavals.

He never essentially departed from these principles; but his experience gradually taught him that they were capable of a different and more edifying application.