Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 11, 2025
In two congratulatory documents on the occasion of Moltke's ninetieth birthday, Theodor Mommsen, the historian, has summed up the results of the great soldier's life-work in the address presented by the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, and in the honorary tablet of the German cities. These inscriptions may be found in Mommsen's Reden und Aufsaetze.
While Paris is frantically shouting A Berlin!, while all Germany is singing and meaning Die Wacht am Rhein, Moltke's order goes forth into the towns and villages of the Fatherland for the mobilisation of the Reserves. Hans was singing Die Wacht am Rhein last night over his beer; but there is little heart for song left in him as he looks from that paper on the deal table into Gretchen's face.
'Ah, said De Wimpffen, 'your positions are not so strong as you would have us believe them to be. 'You do not know the topography of the country about Sedan, was Von Moltke's true and crushing answer. 'Here is a bizarre detail which illustrates the presumptuous and inconsequent character of your people, he went on, now thoroughly aroused.
I returned to Copenhagen by Stettin in stormy weather, full of the joy of life, and again saw my dear friends, and in a few days set off to Count Moltke's in Funen, there to spend a few lovely summer days. I here received a letter from the Minister Count Rantzau-Breitenburg, who was with the King and Queen of Denmark at the watering-place of F/hr.
At the moment of D'Aurelle's appointment, Von der Tann wished to advance on Bourges, in accordance with Moltke's instructions, and, in doing so, he proposed to evacuate Orleans; but this was forbidden by King William and the Crown Prince, and in the result the Bavarian general suffered a repulse at Salbris, which checked his advance southward.
The Staff left by French at the W.O. may not have been von Moltke's, but they were K.'s only Councillors. An old War Office hand would have used them. But in no case, even had they been the best, could K. have had truck or parley with any system of decentralization of work of semi-independent specialists each running a show of his own.
While Metz exercised this fatal fascination over the protecting army, the First and Second German Armies were striding westwards to envelop both the city and its guardians. Moltke's aim was to hold as many of the French to the neighbourhood of the fortress, while his left wing swung round it on the south.
He traces shadowy analogies between the tactics of Von Moltke's veterans and the warlike customs of the ancient Slavs, and suggests that the basic origin of the Prussian population may lead it to cultivate a Russian alliance rather than an Austrian, forgetting, apparently, that by his own admission the ruling-classes of Prussia are German in origin, ideas and sympathies. While Mr.
Bismarck often looked with anxiety at Moltke's face to see whether he could read in it the result of the battle. The King, too, was getting nervous. Bismarck at last could stand it no longer; he rode up to Moltke, took out a cigar case, and offered it to the General; Moltke looked at the cigars carefully and took the best; "then I knew we were all right," said Bismarck in telling this story.
But in our system of naïve psychology, we ought not to omit such distinctly true remarks as Rabelais' much-quoted words: “The appetite comes during the eating”; or Fox's words: “Example will avail ten times more than precept”; or Moltke's: “Uncertainty in commanding produces uncertainty in obedience”; or Luther's: “Nothing is forgotten more slowly than an insult, and nothing more quickly than a benefaction.” It is Fichte who first said: “Education is based on the self-activity of the mind.” Napoleon coins the good metaphor: “A mind without memory is a fortress without garrison.” Buffon said what professional psychologists have repeated after him: “Genius is nothing but an especial talent for patience.” Schumann claims: “The talent works, the genius creates.” We may quote from Jean Paul: “Nobody in the world, not even women and princes, is so easily deceived as our own conscience”; or from Pascal: “Habit is a second nature which destroys the original one.” Nietzsche says: “Many do not find their heart until they have lost their head”; Voltaire: “The secret of ennui is to have said everything”; Jean Paul: “Sorrows are like the clouds in a thunderstorm; they look black in the distance, but over us hardly gray.” Once more I quote Nietzsche: “The same emotions are different in their rhythm for man and woman: therefore men and women never cease to misunderstand each other.”
Word Of The Day
Others Looking