The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-23
COUNT VoN MOLTRE.
From the London Spectator.


The immense, and, as It were self-depen-
dent strength of the Prussan monarchy is
shown in nothing so clearly as in the way the
Hohenzollerns have maintained the tradition
of thriftness in the bestowal of rewards.
They have never had to buy anybody. From
first to last, from the first King to the first
Emperor, the sovereigns of Prussia have
been exceptionally independent within their
dominions-have been as individuals wealthy,
and have followed bold, far-reaching, and
ambitious line of policy. With territories
little larger than Holland, and country far
less rich. they claimed and maintained posi-
tion among the mightiest potentates
of the world, resented the faintest
slight to an Ambassador, and
scarcely acknowledged precedence even
in the Emperor of Germany. They have
occupied precisely the position which tempts
men to spend most lavishly, yet they have
maintained for $50 years, through six genera
tions-in their official policy as in their
household management-a tradition of
thrift, pushed often to cheeseparing parsi-
mony. One man in the line was a kind of
Northern Bourbon, wasting wealth in sterile
magnifcence and coarse voluptuousness; but
he did not break the tradition, and to this
hour the Hohenzollerns are served better
than any Princes of Europe, and give their
servants smaller rewards. Nobody In Prussia
is paid anything like the worth of his
work. The whole aristocracy is drawn
into the army by salaries which
would disgust English bank clerks,
while the elite of the cultivated, men
usually without means, are formed into an
effective bureaucracy, and paid less than
English clergymen. general is paid like
an English captain, and prefect like q su-
perior clerk, while the majority of the bu-
reaucracy, which initiates and directs and
moderates all things in Prussia, which gov
erns in the highest sense of that misused
word, are compelled to practise an economy
which English Dissenting ministers or Scotch
schoolmasters would deem painful. A rigid,
unsparing economy pervades every depart
ment, and has so penetrated officials as to be-
come q kind of point Of honor, as if waste or
even expensiveness we're in themselves
just a little discreditable. To this hour,
the King who has become by sue
cessive accretions of wealth one of the
richest princes in Europe-perhaps the
richest in personal income-thinks it
no shame to send to a city in distress which
he keenly desires to conciliate 5000 thalers,
or ESQ, and would feel genuine surprise if
informed that the sum was not very great.
In the midst of ineessant battles with Parlia-
ment for money, the Schloss treasure
$1,000, ,000-hss never been touched except
for war, and the State commences a grand
campaign. the greatest of our century, with a
and forget in q day. The extra amount of
public money expended as yet in this war by
Germany is not G20,O00 600, and though
e1G,000,O O00 more were recently asked for
the departments have found time to reduce
the demand to twelve. Part of this economy
is due, 10 doubt, to the practice
of levying acquisitions, taught by the
First Napoleon to Germany; but its
main support is thrift SO determined that
the plunderers have given up the. game in
despair and as a Prussian official once said
to the writer, "Our treasury is not afraid even
of docllyard." This rigor not only con-
tinues under the present administration, but
is slightly intensified, "many small pecula-
tions having been suppressed" and pushed
in some departments almost into cruelty.
The Prussian hospital service, for example, ID
penurious to an unjust degree. There are
not enough surgeons, no comforts are al
lowed, not even hospital clothes, men with
broken limbs still wearing their cheap rough
uniforms. Quinine, chloral, good wine,
everything that costs money, is always, the
international surgeons report, wanting, and
the disuse of chloroform is partly due to a
dislike for an expense which little more
ffortitude' in the victims of war would
sender needless. No General however high,
makes fortune; Baron Won Dreyse receives
modest wage and we doubt if Sir Joseph
Whitworth would reckon Krupp as rich.
The State In Prussia accepts your services,
il does not buy them and yet those services
are exceptionally well rendered There is not,
SO far as we know, an instance in Prussian
history of State servant having been re-
waxded as Marlborough was or Wellington,
or even Lord Hardinge or Lord Dalhousie
sum voted after Sadowa to the King,
to distribute among his highest servants; but
Count Bismarck, who had given Prussia the
supremacy in Germany, received only an
estate large indeed in acreage, but not
worth f5O,0 900 in open market; and Baron
Won Moltke still less, sum, if We remember
rightly, of about f15,000.
Nor is this cbariness of money made up by
any lavishpess of honors or carelessness in
social discipline. The King is in the last
resort master of every man, and accounts
have been published, obviously correct, of
the great Chsncellors dangers from group
of legitimist old ladies who constantly, by
their influence with the King, thwarted his
best-laid plans. If the world is not utterly
misinfornled, he has had to resign once OF
twice, and even now he remains just what he
was, Count Bismarck Schonhausen-msster
an one way of the world, but hopelessly
unable to contend with the stern old officer
who is indebted to him for supremacy in
Europe. for a position which fulfils the
dreams of German legend makers, and might
make Frederick the Great leap under his
stone shroud with exultation-ch among the
statesmen of Europe, but still the 'faithfu
servant of my august" and not very intellec
tnal master" It was widely rumored after
Sadowa that Count Bismarck would receivs
the little enclave which is still, we believe
kept in some way separate from Prussia, anG