B1SMARK-SCHONHAUSEN, OTTO EDUARD LEOPOLD, VON. 



79' 



declined to discuss either proposal in the confer- 

 ence, suggesting that the Belgian Government 

 would have a better prospect of effecting a com- 

 promise by means of diplomatic correspondence 

 with his Government. The Russian delegate hav- 

 ing expressed similar views, it became evident that 

 a prolongation of the conference at the moment 

 would not lead to any general understanding. The 

 final meeting was held on June 25, and it was 

 agreed that the Belgian Government should pursue 

 tiic subject through the diplomatic channel, and 

 that, if a satisfactory result could be obtained, the 

 conference should be convoked again later. In 

 accepting this proposal the British delegate reserved 

 for his Government entire liberty of action in re- 

 gard to any measures which the development of 

 the sugar question might render necessary. 



The proceedings of the conference showed that 

 Austria-Hungary, Germany, Belgium, and the Neth- 

 erlands desired a complete abolition of the bounties, 

 and that no opposition to an arrangement to this 

 effect was to be apprehended from Spain and 

 Sweden. France, however, while willing to abolish 

 the direct bounty on export, wished, to retain the 

 advantage of the indirect bounty created by her 

 internal law ; and Russia declined even to discuss 

 whether her existing system amounts to a bounty 

 on export or not. Germany grants only a direct 

 export bounty, which is about equal to the direct 

 bounty given by the French law of 1897, and, al- 

 though producing sugar more cheaply than France, 

 she could not be expected to abolish the whole of 

 her bounty while France retains that created by 

 the law of 1884, which is about three times as much 

 as the direct export bounty granted under the law 

 of 1897. Austria-Hungary contended that the 

 Russian system amounted to a bounty, and, unless 

 Russia, her principal competitor in the markets of 

 Italy and the Levant, consented to modify that 

 system, the Austro-Hungarian Government was not 

 prepared to give up its bounties. If no satisfactory 

 modifications or limitations in the French and 

 Russian systems could be obtained, another method 

 of securing the suppression of the bounty system 

 \\as by a convention between a certain number 

 of sugar-producing states providing for the sup- 

 pression of their own bounties and engaging that 

 they will impose countervailing duties on bounty- 

 fed sugar or will prohibit its entry altogether. The 

 United States market is already rendered unprofita- 

 ble by this means, and the sugar-producing states 

 of the Continent of Europe reserve their home 

 markets to their own producers by means of 

 customs duties and internal regulations. The 

 English, and to a rapidly increasing extent the 

 Indian, market has become essential for the surplus 

 sugar production of European countries. It rests 

 therefore in the power of Great Britain, by taking 

 measures to exclude bounty-fed sugar, to bring 

 about the speedy abolition of the bounty system. 

 The indefinite adjournment of the conference 

 caused consternation in the British West Indies, 

 whose sugar industry, Mr. Chamberlain had prom- 

 ised, would not be allowed to be ruined by the 

 operation of hostile bounties, which, according to 

 the report of the British Sugar Commission, were 

 largely contributing to the extinction of this in- 

 dustry. 



mSMARCK-SCHONHAUSEN, OTTO ED- 

 UARD LEOPOLD, von, Prince, a German states- 

 man, born in Schonhausen, April 1, 1815 ; died 

 iu Friedrichsruh, July 30, 1898. He was descended 

 from a noble Brandenburg family, whose members 

 had aided the fortunes of the house of Hohenzol- 

 leni as soldiers and diplomatists. His own father 

 lived quietly on the hereditary estates at Schon- 

 hausen and in Pomerania, and" the force and gen- 



ius of the son seemed to come from his mother, 

 Luise von Menken, an earnestly religious and high- 

 ly educated daughter of a statesman. Otto was 

 placed at the age of six in a private school in Ber- 

 lin, and at twelve entered the Friedrich Wilhelm 

 Gymnasium there. His mother looked after his 

 early education, and had him learn French and 

 English well, having marked him for a diplomatist 

 already. His father inured him to hardy field 

 sports and stimulated a vigorous and healthy 

 physical development and a love of Nature. As 

 a schoolboy he was dutiful and studious. The 

 hardest lessons cost him no great effort, and in no 

 degree damped his redundant vitality. From the 

 Berlin gymnasium he went to the University of 

 Gottingen, where his exuberant animal spirits 

 flourished in the congenial nidus of the aristo- 

 cratic student corps. Tall and powerfully built, 

 with a constitution of iron, he plunged gayly and 

 recklessly into the excesses of student life, and 

 became the deepest drinker, the readiest swords- 

 man, so wild in his behavior, the author of such 

 extravagant pranks, that he earned for himself the 

 sobriquet of " mad Bismarck." This rollicking, 

 carousing, fighting manner of living did not, how- 

 ever, half fill up the measure of his academic ex- 

 istence at Gottingen and afterward at Berlin. He 

 was a companion of the serious and intellectual 

 students as well as of the careless spendthrifts of the 

 nobility. With the American Motley, for instance, 

 he formed a lifelong friendship. He attended lec- 

 tures and applied himself to the routine studies 

 well enough to pass a creditable examination, and 

 he delved deep in the study of history and de- 

 veloped into a political thinker of independent 

 views strongly held. At the age of twenty he ob- 

 tained his degree in jurisprudence and was sworn 

 in as Auscnltator, or examiner, in the Berlin law 

 courts. The future German Emperor, then Prince 

 Wilhelm, remarked his stalwart form, the picture 

 of a guardsman, when he was presented at the 

 palace. An example of his audacious wit was rel- 

 ished by other young subordinates of the judicial 

 hierarchy. When the trial judge rebuked him for 

 infringing on his own authority by threatening to 

 pitch out a recalcitrant witness, he retorted a few 

 minutes later by telling the same witness that if he 

 did not answer properly he would have the judge 

 pitch him out. 



The wearisome drudgery and routine, the rigid 

 formalities and humble subservience of Prussian 

 officialism could not fetter long his restless spirit. 

 He learned to detest the town and all the condi- 

 tions of official life. In the barracks of the Jager 

 guards, with whom he performed his military du- 

 ties, he was more at home, and most of all among 

 the hunting, fighting, drinking nobility of the Alt 

 Mark and Pomerania, who at least led a fresh, 

 untrammeled existence. In sportsmanship and 

 daring and in dissipation and wild escapades he 

 outlived them all, and he was glad enough to quit 

 his petty office in 18:39 and take up the free and 

 unsophisticated life of a country nobleman and 

 agriculturist. His help was needed at home, as his 

 father had been a careless financier and a poor 

 farmer, and was in sadly embarrassed circumstances. 

 Young Bismarck applied himself faithfully to the 

 task before him, developed the shrewd business 

 tact and knowledge of men that worked his success 

 later as a diplomatist, the provident calculation 

 and discriminating enterprise that enabled him to 

 control the finances of a nation, the habit of organ- 

 izing, schooling, and commanding others that gave 

 him his unquestioned and self-reliant authority as 

 the chief of a government. Withal, he acquired a 

 practical knowledge of farming, of soils and crops, 

 planting, fertilizing, draining, which in time, after 



