“Waterloo?” I was sick of all his bombast. Mind you, the moment I’d said it, I wished I hadn’t, for he stopped dead and stared at me in silence with those blazing blue eyes. Then he sat back in his chair, and spoke quietly.

“There will be no Waterloo. However, this is academic, and certainly wasted on a mind such as yours. I have said enough, I think, to explain to you the necessity for ensuring that the spread of liberal thought must be checked before it breeds revolution proper. For this, there must be measures, wherever possible, to buttress existing government, and to preserve order. Stability must be maintained wherever seditious influences are at work. And nowhere are they more in evidence than in Schleswig and Holstein.”

“I wondered when we should get back to them,” says I, and glanced at the others to see how they had taken Bismarck’s tirade. Young Rudi was blowing smoke rings at the ceiling, but de Gautet was all ears, and as for Kraftstein, he was pointing like a damned retriever, as though ready to bark in admiration. It occurred to me that if he found Bismarck’s claptrap absorbing, there was probably no lack of other idiots in Germany who would do so too.

“If you care to study the map of Europe above that bookcase,” Bismarck continued, “you will see that at the eastern limit of Holstein, where it adjoins Mecklenburg, there is a small duchy called Strackenz. It, like Schleswig and Holstein, has ties both with Germany and Denmark; like them, also, it is riven internally by contending parties. Being a rural, backward province, it is of less apparent importance than its larger neighbors, but this is an illusion. In fact, it is the spark on the tinder; if the dissension between the contending parties in Strackenz were to erupt into disorder, this would undoubtedly be used by revolutionary elements as an excuse to foment unrest in the neighbouring provinces; Denmark and Germany could become involved—believe me, great wars have begun over smaller matters than Strackenz.

“Is is plain to you that the peace must be kept in this little province? If it is, then given time, German diplomacy will ensure the incorporation of Schleswig and Holstein into the German confederacy, and the process of our national unification will have begun. But if in the immediate future anything should occur to plunge Strackenz into unrest, if the rival factions there should be given any crisis to exploit—then, my work will be ruined before it has been commenced.”

I can’t say I gave a tuppenny damn about his work, or the building of a united German state, and I couldn’t for the life of me see what all this had to do with me. Still, I could only listen. Bismarck was leaning forward again, staring at me and tapping the table.