The Price of Power

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 20, 1882

The Price of Power.

PRINCE BISMARCK, the dreaded German Chancellor, who may be said for years to have held the destinies of Europe in his hand, is, it seems, by no means, a happy man. He is rendered uneasy by his conscience, devoured with melancholy, laments his destiny, which he feels to be an unpropitious one, notwithstanding his splendid political successes. “In satisfying my ambition,” he is reported to have lately said at Varzin, “I have made nobody happy. What a number of people I have cast into misery! Without me three great wars would have been avoided; eighty thousand men—nay, much more, would not have been killed, and such numbers of families, of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and wives, would not have been plunged into mourning. However, that account is to be settled between God and myself so far as the hereafter goes. What happiness have I derived from all my successes? Little or none; and I have reaped endless worry, vexation, hatred, pain, grief, over-work, and care.”