He was guided by the same motive; as war had then been for the benefit of Germany, so now was peace.

He had never loved war for the sake of war; he was too good a diplomatist for this; war is the negation of diplomacy, and the statesman who has recourse to it must for the time give over the control to other hands.

It is always a clumsy method.

The love of war for the sake of war will be found more commonly among autocratic sovereigns who are their own generals than among skilled and practised ministers, and generally war is the last resource by which a weak diplomatist attempts to conceal his blunders and to regain what he has lost.
There had been much anxiety in Europe how the new Empire would deport itself; would it use this power which had been so irresistible for fresh conflicts?
The excuse might easily have been found; Bismarck might have put on his banner, "The Union of All Germans in One State"; he might have recalled and reawakened the enthusiasm of fifty years ago; he might have reminded the people that there were still in Holland and in Switzerland, in Austria and in Russia, Germans who were separated from their country, and languishing under a foreign rule.

Had he been an idealist he would have done so, and raised in Germany a cry like that of the Italian Irredentists.