REMINISCENCES OF THE GERMAN EX-CHANCELLOR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XL, Issue 9027, 9 March 1891, Page 4

REMINISCENCES OF THE GERMAN EX-CHANCELLOR.

Prince Bismarck, who, in his old age, is very respectable, was, it appears, unruly in his youth. The certificate, which was given him on his departure from the University of Gottingen, has been discovered and printed by an anti-Bismarckian German journalist ; and this shows that the great Leopold Edward Otto never worked for more than five hours a day, and that on three separate occasions he suffered imprisonment, or seclusion, for infractions of the university rules. Once he "got ten days" for having been present at a duel with pistols ; on another occasion he " got three days" for having been present at a second duel; and finally he was sentenced to fourteen days' rigorous . confinement for some unspecified, but doubtless, very awful breach of the regulations of the " Itoyal Great Britannic Hanoverian George Augustus University." It is unkind of the journalist to revive these old reproaches. We were all very wicked when we were boys ; but it would be cruel to taunt Mr. Gladstone with having robbed an orchard, or the Archbishop of Canterbury with having fought a butcher's boy sixty or seventy years ago ; and it is equally cruel to rake up Prince Bismarck's little youthful peccadilloes. Long after the day when he was a student, duelling was winked at by all Germans save university dons ; and we may be sure that, although the dons affected to be shocked, most of 'them had themselves not only been present at, but actually fought, duels in their youthful days.