VON MOLTKE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5118, 18 August 1877, Page 1 (Supplement)

VON MOLTKE.

The following very interesting sketch of Von Moltke is' the work of a -Frenchman, and of course Bhould be taken cum grano salis: — : Von Moltke was born in Mecklenburg, and is of just the same age as the present century. Of Danish origin, he has been instrumental in the cutting down and humiliation of Denmark. In 1824 he entered the service of Prussia. Without fortune, and although, a gentleman by birth, having no aristocratic connections, he served for many long years in the inferior grades. But he commenced at once a system of observation which led in time to create, through a pure eclecticism, from tho best materials and systems afforded by every country, the enormous military edifice of Prussia. The recent publication of the works of the chief of the staff and the private letters of the FieldMarshal complete the labors of Von Moltke and enable the world to estimate his exact value.

Having been sent to the Orient to organise the Turkish army, he addressed from thence a series of letters to Mrs. Bute, his sister, who was married to an Englishman—the series whose publication has achieved a grand success. In the case of the present publication it is probably the fact that the Field-Mar-shal has revised and corrected the work of the Captain. Nevertheless, people can recognise in these early efforts his keen unemotional glance and the vigorous sobriety of his manner. ;

After having seen his first efforts evolving brightness through the crudity of the Orient, he went to Holstein to rest for a while at the house of his sister, He there met a young girl not yet quite sixteen years old, the daughter of a former marriage, of Bute, the husband of his sister. She alreadly loved blindly and from afar the soldier who had penned such interesting letters from the Orient. Until then Von Moltke had never seen among women any who could influence the even tenor of his methodic life. Jj ,t when a man of more than forty years is loved by a young girl of sixteen he finishes by falling in love. When such a one comes he is lost.

It can be said of him that he has been a man of but one woman, as he has been of but one idea. When Countess Von Moltke, nee Mary Bute died, the Field-Marshal could say that his life as to woman was ended. From that time there remained only the soldier. It was the latter whom we saw, two years later in France, hard, dark, bitter, cold, taciturn. He interred his wife in his park in Siberia. Upon the white marble is chiselled in black letters the sentence, "Love is the fulfilment of the: law." This word love at the end of this military life makes itself heard like the giant of a: nightmare at evening from a field of battle. The war broke out between us and him. Von Moltke had been ready for it two years. However, he was not the man, sure of victory, that was. conspicuous in 1866. He had visited on foot what ho believed would be the future field of battle. It was upon Prussian soil! He calculated that the French army, badly balanced, would march rapidly, like a man who runs because he is too light to walk._ He counted upon a system which consisted in reviewing the same battle. He said : " The French have; not breath enough to us three times the same day." All this was given in a conversation which he had at that time with an English statesman. At the outset he manoeuvred behind a curtain, which reminds one of those tapestries of the harem behind which the women can see without being seen. He above all estimated as supreme the value of the moral effect. Against all military principles the great strategist wished at the cutset to receive the attack. King William opposed. He labored for victory at the beginning. That was everything, as he well knew. If we had gained the first battle we would also have gained the last. It has been said that our army could no longer march, because it had no military music. It was then that France entered upon the real current of. the maelstrom. But what name as victor will be signod in history to these results ? Will it be that of Von Moltke? No ; because he was only the manager of the great war-making firm. The conqueror of France is a collective arid impersonal being. It was the stature of King William, the lungs of Bismarck, the arms of the Prince Imperial and Prince Frederick Charles, and the head of Von Moltke. This epoch of slaughter— donna ignuda, chi manda, luomo, sotto terra— for so many of our people shall not be charged to any Bingle German name. Von Moltke cannot alone subscribe to a victory, as Napoleon could to Austerlitz. Even Bismarck cannot subscribe to this Prussian accomplishment, as Uorneillo signed " The Old." Surely, no one more than myself feels the common wound. It opens yet every time that the armies pass beneath my windows. How.

ever, I believe that I should be engaged in petty work wore I to endeavor to dwarf Von Moltke because he was a conquerer. One should not hide a heart wounded with patriotic griefs any more than he should conceal a standard which has been cut and torn by the thunderbolts of an honorable battle. I take it to be a more exact estimate to say that Von Moltke resembles less Ciesar than the famous Labourdonnais, who could play five games of chess at once without seeing anyone of the boards. He has neither the oversight nor the swiftness necessary for an actual battle. He is not an improvisator of war. The slowness of his late victories will astonish history much more than will the rapidity of his early ones. The siege of Paris reflected no more honor upon him than did its defence upon the city, which, although badly directed, preserved intact the national genius." Victor Emmanuel was right when he said of Von Moltke, "He is the topography of genius. I will add that he is superior to Bismarck in the weight of his temperament. Never has there been any one who united in himself so intimately the synthetic force and that of analysis. But he is not of that "divine race of commanders" spoken of by Bossuet. The colossal Krupp guns found in him an artillerist who was competent to handle them.

One saw him last winter at Berlin, tall and bent, pacing alone TJuter den Linden. Clad in a long military overcoat, whose high collar came up to his ears, with his hands locked behind his back, he astonished strangers, who saw officers and soldiers stop and salute respectfully this curious being. One would have Raid he was some genius whose glance transformed men into wood.

In the morning, at his own house, he gives audience to his soldiery, of whom, like Caesar, he knows the names. At the Reichstag he listens. If anyone attacks the army or its discipline he speaks. Then his voice, hollow and distinct, breaks with rugged monotony on the ears of his auditory—like a sledge-hammer upon a post—hurling weighty aphorisms of that contemporary logic Force. During the summer he becomes a gentleman farmer, as was Cavour. His private modus vivendi is identical with that of Gortehakoff and Thiers. Next, closely buttoned in his uniform, which he never lays aside; loving his superb horses, which he visits each morning in their elegant stables, above everythirg a soldier. Bismarck seems more a statesman than a soldier. The iron face of the Chancellor strikes the observer with force. That of the Field-Marshal is one which he retains without losing. Von Moltke has preserved a grievance against France, It is my task to explain this grievance. When before Paris he selected a point of observation of which no one has ever spoken. It was at Montretoul, near the location of a battery. At the junction of the main route was a small cross road which descends to Versailles. This point, which was under' the fire of Mount Valerian, was abandoned by both parties. The Field-Marshal went there often. He examined often and at great length the city which was extended before him. Behind him, to the left, was Mount Valerian, the lightning rod of Paris. Below him was the cupola of the Invalides, which, said Bismarck, resembles the guilded Prussian helmet. In the distance were occasional cannon shots, which were lightly borne to the ear by the echo, like the barking of some enormous dog which dreams. In the same way Meyerbeer selected an extreme arm-chair, in the third floor of the old Opera, in order to listen to the performance of his works. It was thus also that Moses, from a high mountain, looked over the promised land. Von Moltke could not enter this promised land. He had to stop his horse before the obelisk of Luxor, which rose before him like a boundary of chalk. He has never forgiven the ill-fortune which prevented him from entering the glorious city whose sunrises and sunsets he had watched so long from the heights of Montretoul.