The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1915. BISMARCK’S POLICY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 66, 20 March 1915, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1915. BISMARCK’S POLICY.

In tlio year 1867 Bismarck gave the correspondent of a leading English paper an interview which was recently reprinted. Commenting on this, in the light of recent doings, the London Leader says that how far Bismarck was speaking his innermost mind, and how far talking to create an impression, is a question to be decided by the reader in the light of his interpretation of German history and Bismarck’s part in it. Still there are points in this statement of Bismarck’s which he almost certainly meant, and by which his successors would have done well to have taken guidance. When Bismarck gave his word of honor that Russia would never join France against Germany, we must not see in that a prediction which most distinctly missed the mark. It was a cardinal principle of the first Chancellor’s foreign policy to keep on good terms with Russia, and he made great sacrifices to that end. Again when—speaking, it will be remembered, before the Franco-Rrussian war—ho assorts that Germany “could not decently take Alsace, for the Alsatians are become Frenchmen and wish to remain so,” we need not see hero, just a piece of hypocrisy. Bismarck, there is good reason to believe, did not want to take Alsace, but gave way I to the military men urging strategical, considerations. Finally there is his warning that Belgium is guaranteed, by England, and can be attacked only! at the risk of bringing England in as an enemy. The present-day German j diplomatists have violated some fun-, damental maxims of Bismarck’s policy, and, as eyery German would ac*mit, the price is heavy. Yet perhaps they could plead in extenuation that Bismarck siiowed the way to blundering as well as to prudent direction. The essential vice of contemporary German policy has been to allow the military men to dictate. Bismarck by yielding in the matter of Alsace may be charged with having establi -U----bd the ascendency of the military men.