FALKENHAYN AND VON HINDENBURG

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2910, 24 October 1916, Page 6

FALKENHAYN AND VON HINDENBURG

THE BRAINS BEHIND THE HUN WAR MACHINE

A RECENT DRAMATIC DENOUEMENT

' The fall of Genoral von Falkenhayn and of Marshal von Hindenburg to the Bupromo position on the German.Genoral Staff is the most dramatic event : that lias happened since the fall'of Admiral von Tirpitz. The event is tho more remarkable because of tho extraordinary _ influence which •Falkenhayn had achioved over tho , Kaiser. Falkonhayn is, apart from the | royal leaders, considerably' the youngest of the generals in high position 'in jfche German army. He is 51—the same age as General Haig. Ho is a man whose ambitious are as unlimited, as Ilia powers to achieve them. Five yearß ago he was unknown to the German public, and his promotion from an abscure provincial • command to the position of Prussian Minister of War is • supposed to have been tho result of one of those court intrigues which play so large a part in Prussian publio life. He had family influence in the Kaiser's household, and his advancement was not ■unconnected with that fact.

Falkenhayn the Intriguer.

■But he had brains as well as influence, and an aggressive personality disguised by the arts of the subtle and . far-sighted : intriguer; From his advent to the Ministry of War ho set himself to undermine Moltke. It began to be hinted that Moltke wag/"getting t>H," that-the General Staff needed new and young blood, and so on; and when tie Zabern inoident occurred Falkenhayn made a bid for popularity .•with the army by his emphatic approval of the infamous action of Colonel Tluet'.ter and Lieutenant Forstner. It was. '". his hand more, perhaps, than another that forced the declaration of war prematurely, in face of tho hesitation: of the Kaiser and the opposition of Beth-rnaiui-Hollweg; but when the war camo it. was Moltke who remained in tho position on which Falkenhayn had set ' hij, heart. Tno ambitious Minister waited for his opportunity. Ho had • Moltke's measure, knew that he was /unlikely to survive, opposed his strategy regarding Belgium, and, on the eol- ■ (lapse of the campaign at Ypres,. ho knew that his moment had come.

, In the military sense it seemed that Ms promition was justified by events. A new and more, masterful spirit pervaded German strategy from the moment of his assumption of the control of military policy. There was no longer any sense or confliot between political and military aims, still less of any evidence of the collision of wills. The dis- , tortrous experience of the first four 'Months of the wah. had aged the Kaiser and modified his imperious self-will. He was in the frame of mind to forget that ho was the supreme War Lord and to distrust his own judgment.: and Falkenhayn had tho force and the adroitness to avail himself of this fact. He established over his master an intellectual authority which' left him the prac•'tical dictator of military policy. This ascendency was confirmed by tho success whioh attended his far-reaching and powerful strategy throughout 1915, and in presenting firm with tho Order of tho Black Eagle tfce Kaiser used terms of flattery which almost touched i the level of obsequious reverence. General Falkenhayn fortified his position, by an artful policy of excluding possiblo rivals from access to his master. La an unusually informing analysis of tho forces around the/Kaiser at the present time, published in "Le Temps," Mr. Hendrik Hudson, who, as & neutral, has spent a long time in Germany, declares that. Falkenhayn is the most powerful man in tho country. "The power of General Falkenhayn," he says, "comes from the extraordinary influence, inexplicable even to those who this personage, which he wields over the Emperor. Ho is very jealous of'his authority, and keeps away from headquarters all who he thinks might ■seek to gain tho confidence,of tho Sovereign. This isolation of the Emperor is an important fact, as tho Sovereign learns only what General Falkenhayn wishes him to know. "William II is .the prisoner, of his military camarilla." •ft is not the first time that the Kaiser has been the prisoner (it a camarilla, as the revelations of the Eulenburg case witness. And as in the Eulenburg case he has onco more broken through the web woveu round him, and throwD over his favourite i with brutal disregard for his feelings. *

v Tho NBW Chief. In choosing Von Bindeaburg as the new Chief, the Kaiser has made an obvious bid for papular approval. If Falkonhayn is the least known of tho principal figures in the German army, Hindenburg is easily the best known. His reputation has been tho ono enduring asset of the army, and though it re3ta on » single episode of the early days of the war it is in tho popular lensa still unaffected. His victory m

the Masurian Lakes district was certainly one of the fow decisive incidents: of the'war. It was.a victory in that complete and final sense which .■'. has become so unusual under moderate conditions. It was a viotory, too, duo •entirely to superior Generalship. Hindenburg had been something of an oddity in the army owing to his obsession on tho subject of the military importance of the lake district of East Prussia. When it- was proposed to dram that region he fought- for his marshes as a wild animal for its young, and finally stampeded the. Kaiser himself on the subject by the energy of his advocacy. The region had been his favourite theatre of study, and in tho 'manoeuvres there he unfailingly engineered Ms foe into the- marshes. "We're going to have a bath to-day, was the saying of the solidors when "old Hindenburg" was against them. But when tho war broke out Hindonlurg who had been in retirement for some'time, was neglected, and bis application'for a post was ignored until the Russian invasion of the sacred soil I of, East Prussia spread panic, in the capital and throughout the country. Then the boycott collapsed. "Suddenly," ho said, after he had becomo the national horo, "there came a teleA gram informing me that the Emperor commissioned mo to command'the Eastern Army. I really only had time- to buy some woollen clothing and make my old uniform presentable again. Then camo sleeping cars, saloon cars, locomotives—and so I journeyed to .East Prussia liko a prince.' And so ' far everything has gone Tvell." It had.' On tho ground that ho knew so thoroughly ho manoeuvred Samsohov's army into the swamps mid achieved the most sensational victory of the war. Ho became tho saviour of his country, and in tho popular imagination overshadowed every other figure. ' He had tho whole nation at his feet, arid being rather a breezy, simpleminded man who had never before known what popular acclamation was like,- ho revelled in the sunshine with the frank enjoyment of a schoolboy. Towns and villages were renamed after him • the Hindenburgstrasse became as common as tho Friedrichstrasso; the ■ Universities showered their dig- . nitios upon him; Hindenburg 'marches were composed by the score; hundreds of cigar merchants . implored him to permit them to honour their commodities with his name; gifts, -dignities, telegrams, and decorations defended on him in a torrent. Ho took

everything cheerfully except the remedies for gallstones. "Those gallstones," ho said, "aro the plague of my life. Not a day passes without my getting sovereign remedies for them sent to mo, whereas I nover suffered from them in iny life." Finally there was the famous wooden statlio erected to him in Berlin, into which the gold and silver nails were driven in a strange frenzy of idolworship. His Qualities. But, great as the Masurian achievement undoubtedly was, it was episodic. It deponded upon specific knowledge of a certain theatre of tho war, and not upon an abstract genius for strategy. Its military consequenco in the great field of events ias long since diminished to miscroscopic proportions. It nas a self-contained incident, and left no permanent influence upon the struggle such as that left by tho much less decisive defeat of the Germans on the Marno,' which changed the whole history and movement of tho war. Nothing that he has done since has added to his reputation, and in tho judgment of those-who have studied the campaigns! of the war he has given no indication of the possession of the qualities of a great original strategist. : He is a "thruster," a hard, dogged fighter, but little more, and in expert opinion Mackensen is much better worth study in a military sense. But tho hero-wor-ship of Hindenburg has survived all disappointments, arid with the collapse of the Austriahs in Galicia the magnetism of his name was once more employed to put new heart into the enemy. In appointing him Chief- of Staff tho Kaiser seems to have yielded to a panicstricken desire to be on tho side of popular opinion, and to the desperate nope that the magic of a name will yet reaeem a situation which is plunging | to complete' disaster. ,s