The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-11-23

sion be was defeated, and that August -16
should be credited to Marshal Bagaine, who,
had he had but powder, would have
retained the honors of the day. But gene
ralship must be judged by its results, aud
judging by results, no sovereign ever had
such q servant as General Won Moltke, who,
having first reorganized an army in which no
soldier had ever seen q shot fred, having
formed school of generals and remade the
scientific services, so guided that army as in o
campaign of seven weeks to strike down the
Austrian Empire, and then in a campaign of
three months to subjugate the greatest of
military monarchies. So far as close and
scientific observers can detect, General Won
Moltke has been in this tremendous cam
paign the Providence of the German army,
has planned everything, foreseen everything,
has never thrown away a life, and never
missed q spring. His single brain has
been worth hundred thousand men, worth
all Napoleon was to the French army, and on
his seventieth birthday the King of Prussia
makes his mighty general Count, promotes
him one step in the social hierarchy, as it
were in recognition en- pGSsant of sound ad-
vice lent to him, the King, in his manage
ment of the war. few days afterwards he
makes two Princes of his own blood, who
doubtless have fought we'll and succeeded,
but who are nevertheless only efficient in
struments in Won Moltke's hands, Field Mar
shnls, the superiors in the military hierarchy
of the genius who has led them to victory
and empire. In that realm of thought which
of all others he understands, in the very mo-
ment of supreme triumph, with bis whole soul
subjected to the advice which yet he will not
reward, the greatest Prince in the world
coldly and deliberately prefers to the claim of
genius that of blood, and signifies to man.
kind that if his generals master EARTH they
remain his family servants still
There is something CALLING to men who be-
lieve that the tools should 60 to the workmen
in such a distribution of honor, but while we
protest, we are not blind to the strength
manifest in such acts. They show that the
terrible weakness of all new governments, the
necessity of buying support, is absent from
the Prussian monarchy. The State, and the
King as its representative, have no need to
conciliate any individual, not even the man
who seems to work out victory as if it were
a problem in the Calculus. He is bidden to
work it out, and what higher inducement
could there be? Had Republic employed
Won Moltke, it must have dreaded his ambi-
ton. Had he served Napoleon, Napoleon
must have loaded him down with honors
and wealth and territories, have filed him fat
with spoil to bind him to his side, and even
then must have dreaded in him rival, foe,
or successor. The King quietly admires
and trusts. He has no need to bribe. He
can be endangered by no rival, threatened by
no enmity, undermined by no individual
opponent. He is there, master by right of
birth, in victory as in defeat, too strong for
even the semblance of hostility, as far beyond
assault as if hispower were self-derived, able to
acknowledge aid, or to reward high service,
or to abstain from rewarding them, and sure,
whichever he does, to be held to have acted
as became a king. If he hangs up his worn.
out sword in the place of honor, 10! what a
gracious king; if he filings it away, 10! what
master of the severest statecraft. Won
Moltke has done his duty, and what can king
say more ? 1t is difficult to read of this
countship without slight feeling of con-
tempt for such niggardliness in the bestowal
even of honors, or without deep respect
for the organization which is SO strong that il
need scarce be just to a soldier at whose
name the fighting world grows pale.