equal only to the task of organising street demonstrations and abortive mutinies.  It may be that in the future some commanding genius will arise, able to free himself from the paralysing incubus, to fire the dull masses with hope, and to turn the very vastness of the governmental machine into a means of destruction.  But, for that achievement, he will need the magnetism of a Mirabeau, the savagery of a Marat, and the organising powers of a Bonaparte.

CHAPTER XII

THE TRIPLE AND DUAL ALLIANCES

“International policy is a fluid element which, under certain conditions, will solidify, but, on a change of atmosphere, reverts to its original condition.”—­Bismarck’s Reflections and Reminiscences.

It is one thing to build up a system of States:  it is quite another thing to guarantee their existence.  As in the life of individuals, so in that of nations, longevity is generally the result of a sound constitution, a healthy environment, and prudent conduct.  That the new States of Europe possessed the first two of these requisites will be obvious to all who remember that they are co-extensive with those great limbs of Humanity, nations.  Yet even so they needed protection from the intrigues of jealous dynasties and of dispossessed princes or priests, which have so often doomed promising experiments to failure.  It is therefore essential to our present study to observe the means which endowed the European system with stability.

Here again the master-builder was Bismarck.  As he had concentrated all the powers of his mind on the completion of German unity (with its natural counterpart in Italy), so, too, he kept them on the stretch for its preservation.  For two decades his policy bestrode the continent like a Colossus.  It rested on two supporting ideas.  The one was the maintenance of alliance with Russia, which had brought the events of the years 1863-70 within the bounds of possibility; the other aim was the isolation of France.  Subsidiary notions now and again influenced him, as in 1884 when he sought to make bad blood between Russia and England in Central Asian affairs (see Chapter XIV.), or to busy all the Powers in colonial undertakings:  but these considerations were secondary to the two main motives, which at one point converged and begot a haunting fear (the realisation of which overclouded his last years) that Russia and France would unite against Germany.

In order, as he thought, to obviate for ever a renewal of the “policy of Tilsit” of the year 1807, he sought to favour the establishment of the Republic in France.  In his eyes, the more Radical it was the better:  and when Count von Arnim, the German ambassador at Paris, ventured to contravene his instructions in this matter, he subjected him to severe reproof and finally to disgrace.  However harsh in his methods, Bismarck was undoubtedly right in substance.  The main consideration was that