We had to win our national independence in difficult wars.  The preparation, the prologue, was the Holstein war.  We had to fight with Austria for a settlement; no court of law could have given us a decree of separation; we had to fight.  That we were facing a French war after our victory at Sadowa could not remain in doubt for anyone who knew the conditions of Europe.  It was, however, desirable not to wage this war too soon nor before we had garnered to some extent the fruits of our North-German union.  After the war had been waged everybody here was saying that within five years we should have to wage the next war.  This was to be feared, it is true, but I have ever since considered it to be my duty to prevent it.  We Germans had no longer any reason for war.  We had what we needed.  To fight for more, from a lust of conquest and for the annexation of countries which were not necessary for us, always appeared to me like an atrocity; I am tempted to say like a Bonapartistic and foreign atrocity, alien to the Germanic sense of justice.

Consequently since we rebuilt and enlarged our house according to our needs, I have always been a man of peace, nor have I shrunk from small sacrifices.  The strong man can afford to yield at times.  Neither the Caroline Islands nor Samoa were worth a war, however much stress I have always laid on our colonial development.  We did not stand in need of glory won in battles, nor of prestige.  This indeed is the superiority of the German character over all others, that it is satisfied when it can acknowledge its own worth, and has no need of recognition, authority, or privilege.  It is self-sufficient.  This is the course I have steered, and in politics it is much easier to say what one should avoid than to say what one should do.  Certain principles of honesty and courage forbid one to do certain things, just as the access to certain fields is interdicted in the army maneuvers.  But the decision as to what has to be done is a very different matter, and no one can be sure of it beforehand, for politics are a task which can be compared only to the navigation of unknown waters.  One does not know what the weather will be or how the currents will flow, nor what storms will be raging.  There is in politics this additional factor of uncertainty that one is largely dependent on the decisions of others on whom one has counted and who have failed.  One never can act with complete independence.  And, when our friends whose assistance we need, although we cannot guarantee it, change their minds, our whole plan has failed.  Positive enterprises are, therefore, very difficult in politics, and when they succeed you should be grateful to God who has given His blessing, and not find fault with details which one or the other may regret, but accept the situation as God has made it.  For man cannot create or direct the stream of time.  He can sail on it and steer his craft with more or less skill, be stranded and shipwrecked, or make a favorable port.