Even if the action of the new Government was not always wise, he himself had made Germany strong enough to support for a few years a weak Ministry.
More than this, he was attempting to destroy the confidence of the people in the moral justice and necessity of the measures by which he had founded the Empire.

They had always been taught that in 1870 their country had been the object of a treacherous and unprovoked attack.
Bismarck, who was always living over again the great scenes in which he had been the leading actor, boasted that but for him there would never have been a war with France.

He referred to the alteration in the Ems telegram, which we have already narrated, and the Government was forced to publish the original documents.

The conclusions drawn from these disclosures and others which followed were exaggerated, but the naive and simple belief of the people was irretrievably destroyed.

Where they had been taught to see the will of God, they found only the machinations of the Minister.