Note 23 — Chapter II · GERMAN DIPLOMACY AND STATECRAFT

The study which follows is based on cosmopolitan materials: The reader must exercise great caution in using political memories such as those of Bismarck. In autobiography, of all forms of history, as Goethe observes in the preface to Wahrheit und Dichtung, it is supremely difficult for the writer to escape self-deception; he is so apt to read himself backwards and to mistake society’s influence upon him for his influence upon society. In the case of Bismarck in particular, his autobiography often took the form of apologetics, and he invests his actions with a foresight which they did not always possess, while, on the other hand, he is so anxious to depreciate his rivals (particularly Gortchakoff) that he often robs himself of the prestige of victory. Hohenlohe is, in this respect, a far safer guide. He was not as great a man as Bismarck, but he was an infinitely more honest one.