Some Characteristics of Von Moltke

ABOUT no man of equal eminence has so little been written as of the illustrious chief of the German army. No triumphant general has been so little seen, has so little excited public curiosity, as the victor of Sadowa and Sedan, — the greatest manipulator of legions of his age ; the man who holds the unique position of being one of the most eminent and least prominent figures in the world ; of being a chieftain who has passed most of his life in his study ; of being a conqueror who has always shrunk from the world’s applause ; of being a man of destiny, whose opportunity depended on his being discovered ; of being a humiliator of nations, himself the soul of humility.

“ I cannot see how my life can consist of anything but dates ” were the words with which the great strategist received the enterprising correspondent of the Berlin Tagblatt who was bold enough to seek an interview. He has, in fact, appeared to the public as a cold intelligence, a soulless incarnation of method and routine, rather than a concrete individual, with warmth, and color, and personal interest ; an entity not to be isolated from the awful machine of which he is the soul. To some extent this is true. The “ silent ruler of battles ” is somewhat deficient in color, and indeed does possess less of that human interest than his predecessors. Blücher, or Wellington, or Frederick, the father of his army ; less warmth than his compeer, Lord Wolseley ; but he is nevertheless a keenly differentiated figure, sharply defined like a crystal. He is also a representative man, an epoch-maker in war.

Fully to bring out his military lineaments and determine how he should be classified, we must understand that warriors arrange themselves into two broad and generally exclusive types, which we define as that of the grand strategist and that of the battle-field tactician, Few soldiers in all time have completely realized both ideals ; those who have done so in modern times might be counted on the fingers. Each seems to involve a different mental machinery. Brilliant tacticians on the battle-field are rarely found at the head of an army. In Napoleon and Cæsar these complementary faculties were realized in the highest degree. Von Moltke’s military ancestor, Frederick, was superb on the battle-field, but his grand strategy was all along indifferent, possessing little that is instructive, indicating that the marvelous acuteness which displayed itself in combining and wielding his legions in the moment of conflict partially disappeared in his larger dispositions, as Napoleon’s masterly analysis shows. He may be said to have won his campaigns with his legions, but not with his armies. Stonewall Jackson and Murat were exclusively battle-field officers. Napoleon, in characterizing Massena, painted the ideal of an executive genius : “ The sound of the guns clears his ideas, and gives him penetration.” Von Moltke is all the commander-in-chief : the battlefield is not his arena ; the ladder of his destiny did not rest there ; the front of conflict has usually not known him. In long terms of peace, first as dominus of an insubordinate school, then lucid lecturer, plodding map-maker, occasional whisperer of a master’s council ; dropping here a proposition, there a suggestion ; never opening his mouth but on one subject ; never letting fall one superfluous word ; never speaking but to the point, and to drive home some new bolt of the engine of which he is the soul, gradually the self - concentrated, pensive, bronze-featured man wrought his certificate upon the world in which he moved. He seems from the first to have been one of those men to whom others instinctively appeal ; whose very reserve has weight ; who irresistibly communicate the consciousness of a vast reserve of stored-up force, of giant possibilities waiting only for the door to open, — men who are felt to keep silence overmuch. But to return to the thread of our subject : Von Moltke never shone on the battle-field. The single great executive officer of the German army was the “ Red Prince.” The feat of swiftly and completely changing the dispositions of the first army at Gravelotte, in order to meet the extension of the French right, was a very different achievement from organizing the movement which confronted the French army with double its number of Germans, and forged around it an iron band. The greatest conflict of that tremendous struggle was won, therefore, not by the brilliant strategist, but by the brilliant tactician ; not at the head of the staff, but at the battle front. The limitations of Moltke’s military character may be most decisively displayed by throwing him into comparison with that phenomenon whom Victor Hugo styled “ the archangel of war,” and so striking the uttermost military contrast which the annals of war present. The victor of Jena and the victor of Sedan, stand as far apart from one another as the conditions under which they worked and the methods by which they achieved their results. Napoleon was so placed that he could win his battles only by being far more than a soldier. Moltke’s situation demands the military man, and nothing more. With the Emperor politics were an extension of war ; with the German chief-marshal war is an extension of politics. In Napoleon’s case iron-handed conquest went before velvet-gloved diplomacy. Von Moltke stands behind Von Bismarck.

Of a totally different nature, also, are the relations of the two captains to their forces. Moltke sways by no direct personal effluence ; he is no electrifying presence in the van of his hosts, moving through the soul of his legions like a thrilling force of nature. He does not win the soldier’s heart ; does not conjure up ideal forces, and radiate allurements through the imagination, and gain battles by forces outside the armory of the mere warrior. Neither does he possess to any marked degree the magical power of leading, the power of drawing men after him by an electric chain, vivifying the craven heart. The situation does not demand these ideal possessions. He is a man at the rear of an army ; Napoleon was a man at the front. Moltke’s influence is rather the steady, unobtrusive, impersonal force of method, zeal, and education moving through a system coldly touching the heart, bearing on habit, forming a mould, laying down a groove.

As different are their systems of war. Moltke is solely the scientific warrior. He has carried war as far as cold, deliberative science can take it. But Napoleon fought his campaigns on another and higher plane. More than a scientist, he was an artist ; indeed, a military thaumaturgist. His campaigns were all conceived with reference to complex ideal, moral, and political conditions. The calm German manipulates solely the elements which constitute an armament. Napoleon moved his army from above. Moltke is locked up within his own instrument. It is these circumstances that have led to the conception of his campaigns being laid down in portfolios and arranged ready on shelves.

It is a great mistake to suppose great military designs which worked like clockwork to have consistently borne out a cut-and-dried plan. Operations projected in this spirit invariably fail, as did those under the auspices of the military theorist in the first disastrous stage of the Russo-Turkish war. Theory must shake hands with circumstance, or failure is the result. A strategical scheme is somewhat analogous to a mass of molten metal run into a mould. The operator may determine its quantity and quality, but exigency gives it form. Moltke’s plans are always simple and flexible ; in touch with all conditions ; referent to each contingency ; offering all necessary scope for modification and individual initiative. His plan of invasion in 1870 contrasted strongly in its simplicity with the bizarre designs of the enemy.

We must not, however, forget that the enlarged scope for individual initiative on the part of divisional commanders was introduced under the auspices of, or rather at the instigation of, Prince Frederick Charles. This reform did not originate in Moltke’s brain anymore than some of the most important developments in the new tactics. But, as a rule, tactical modifications are not so much invented by design as evolved by circumstances. To recur to our comparison : Napoleon’s problem always involved an array of vague, shifting factors falling through each vicissitude into new combinations, incompatible with scientific calipers ; Moltke’s problem has always been definite, limited, comparatively simple of solution. Never has he. had, to use Carlyle’s wild image, to balance himself on a system of vortexes ; neither is there anything in his campaigns analogous to the French conqueror’s occasional mysterious evolutions confounding a whole world, and bursting suddenly into startling combinations dazzling the imagination. But, on the other hand, the calm Teuton is incapable of being lured to overreach the scope of the immediate plan, to cast away the victory at hand by grasping at the more that lies beyond.

As an epoch-maker and founder of a school in the art of war, Moltke is the author of the system of invasion by divided forces and concentrating them to attack. He accomplished the victory of ’66 by marching nine corps through the theatre of war, and concentrating upon Sadowa. In the invasion of France three armies crossed the Rhine, The conduct of Napoleon’s campaigns was regulated on the principle of rushing into the enemy’s country en masse, seizing a decisive victory, and as quickly falling back on his grand base. The exigencies of his reign demanded such a method.

Having brought into comparison the representative of the latest phase of war with the founder of the preceding epoch, we will attempt to indicate the essential differences between the German and French soldier. As an officer, the capacity of the German rests more upon education, method, thoroughness, and familiarity with his part ; more on tuition than intuition. He is unquestionably not possessed in any like degree with his neighbor of that vital spark, that spontaneous aptness, which moves to brilliant execution. He is more a made soldier than a born one. Executive instinct is not a German quality. It is in organization, which is another thing, that he is supreme. The French are infinitely more susceptible of military genius, in its true sense, than their enemy. The Frank is a born tactician. Executive cleverness, smart response to circumstance, practical aptness, tact, and adroitness are French qualities. These are just those which the German does not possess. His mental movements are slow and indirect, compelling him to lean more fully than his agile neighbor on knowledge and training. He requires to be thoroughly versed. Let us again lay stress on the truth that German genius is for organization, the French for execution, and that the two are quite distinct. The Teuton will always rise superior in the first, and the Gaul in the second. Unquestionably, what is truly signified by military genius belongs rather to the second than the first, and, other things being equal, the latter is probably a more potent possession than the former. Germany has produced fewer heavenborn soldiers than most countries, fewer executive men of any sort ; France, an unusual number. It is by deliberate and gradually developed method that the German army has become the paradigm of the world. It is not there we must look for spontaneous originality and inspired conceptions.

In time of peace the German officer is still campaigning. The members of the grand central staff are perpetually concentrating their attention upon every possible theatre of war, mentally participating in contemporary conflicts, keenly scrutinizing the acts and capacities of their possible future enemies, and critically studying the military institutions of all probable belligerents. Not an article bearing on the subject in any foreign journal of authority is missed.

The following example of Moltke’s cold method is possibly known to the reader. In anticipation of the outbreak of war with France, a bevy of officers were dispatched into her peace-wrapped territories, where they surveyed future positions of offense and defense, placed imaginary armies in scenes undyed with gore, made their observations, met and compared notes, and returned to make their reports.

And when that terrible event occurred, who would have supposed that such results had been obtained within the walls of a study ? For several years before the note of war sounded, the pensive scholar and mathematician, with a deep intuition of the coming conflict, was already at his work. Nothing was left out of account, nothing held too trivial, nothing unweighed. Every byroad, every telegraph office, every ford, every appropriate camping-ground, every vulnerable point, every contingency, was brought into the problem. In silence and gloom the gigantic army was mobilized in the mind of its chief long before the pulse of war beat in its veins. If I were to seek to convey him in a phrase, I should call him a practical philosopher.

The intellect which has achieved such stupendous results is of the cold, articulate, mechanical order ; constructive, but not creative ; centred upon the instinct for method, precision, and definition ; furnished with a most acute sense for locality, highly developed powers of observation, an infinite capacity for detail, a perfect memory ; a hard, inductional intelligence, with little of the German “ idea sense ; ” an imperturbable routine mind, constituted to move under definite conditions in a fixed groove with a glacial regularity and silence ; revolving upon a single axis, — a narrowly specialized mind, devoid of the higher intuitions ; irresponsive to the larger sympathies ; deficient in imagination ; resting also chiefly on the externals of life, and petrified into established forms ; incapable of those saltations, those vivid fulgurations, which characterize the highest military genius. This is a brain intellect rather than a heart intellect ; nevertheless, Moltke has given many evidences of the possession of a rare penetration, and a prescience higher and deeper in its derivation than mere calculation. He even acknowledges to presentiments. But rare as are the intellectual endowments which have ruled such gigantic forces, nobler far are the moral attributes which have ruled the man. It is not the head, but the heart, which makes the man ; and the same may be said of Germany’s representative warrior as was said of her representative poet, — transferring the name, — “ Moltke’s heart, which few know, is as great as his head, which all know.” After his first grand triumph of ’66, with which he so fervently thanked the God of battles for lighting up the evening of his life, he attributes the scientifically prepared results of his own plans solely to the gift of God, and hurries away to hide himself from applause. “ This fulsome praise puts me out of tune for a whole day,” he is reported to have observed. Still more beautiful in its unique nobility was his reference to his vanquished foe : “ A defeated general ! People little realize what that means. I cannot, I cannot bear to think of that camp above Königgrätz ! Poor Benedek ! So cautious, so deserving, too ! ” It seems strange that such tenderness should pervade the nature of a man whose whole existence has been immersed — and to an unusual extent — in the element of human destruction. But within that hard-featured bronze exterior there beats a heart capable of the deepest and most abiding attachments. Von Moltke is a man of strong domestic affections. He was as remarkable among his early associates for his frank, affectionate nature as for his powers of thought and the encyclopædic knowledge of all appertaining to his profession, which won for him the nickname “ the Military Dictionary ; ” and it is remarked that he never was known to take the slightest advantage of the deference with which, in his probation days, he was regarded by his comrades.

His outward lineaments convey his personality, — a gaunt, shrunken, sinewy figure, all bone and muscle, roundshouldered with study, carrying a highcrowned, symmetrical, and finely poised head, steadily bowed in concentrated thought ; a keenly cut, immobile, impassive, inscrutable face, now wizened with age, Teutonic in its very essence, wearing the constant expression of self-concentration and self-command, sternly conveying in its hard but fine lines German seriousness and rigor, severely exacting, unrelinquishing purpose ; a man who stands sentry over the fortress of his own bosom, and keeps up the drawbridges of the soul, — qualities which have earned for him the title “ the Great Taciturn,” though known more familiarly as " Vater Moltke.” Such is the figure that may be regularly met of an afternoon in the park at Berlin, waving the sentries to dispense, in his instance, with the usual salute.

Having alluded to his influence on the army, I will add a few words on the large and subtle question of the nature and outcome of the influence of the military institutions upon the morale of the people. In a memorable speech which made a strong impression throughout Europe, Moltke repudiated the notion of the school being the mould of German manhood. " It is not the schoolmaster who has won the battles of Germany, but the army. Mere knowledge can never bring the mind to that point at which it is ready to sacrifice itself to an idea, — to duty, obedience, patriotism.” True in every word, and we must recollect that this is the dictum of a Dane rectifying a German view. But this is one side of the question ; there is another, and it is in the limitation of a mind of his order that it cannot perceive that bound up with these wholesome results are others far more momentously inimical than the first are desirable. The good effects are in their nature outwardly perceivable ; the sinister results, lying far deeper and involving far more, will be fully revealed only when, hand in hand with other circumstances. they ultimate themselves in events outside the programme and beyond the control of rulers. Unmistakable to the seeing eye, within the ironbound might of the Germany of to-day, are coiled up forces of disintegration, which means that the present institutions are generating the forces which will eventually sweep them away forever.

It is said of the army that it educates reverence. If so, it is respect for artificial merit, rather than real merit ; superiorities resting on arbitrary distinctions, indicated by garb, insignia, title. True reverence is not thus manufactured.

Far more disastrous is its larger effect upon the moral nature of the people. These military institutions are steadily annihilating individual selfhood, — selfhood, the first and last of all things ; the spring of all abiding strength, and health, and progress ! They have made Germany powerful only by making Germans weak, but it is very evident that strength so founded is merely temporary, and can be maintained only to a certain moment. It is as if the human organism were made strong by the atrophy of its cells. That nation which, measured through long vicissitudes, has wrought the deepest impress on the world will be that in which the individual stood for the most and the institution for the least. Only those institutions confer real strength which make the most of the individual. The present Germany makes the least of the individual, and I believe events well prove that she is merely realizing a militarif moment.

But it is a great mistake to conceive the present state of things as being forced upon the people, except in the sense that the weak side of the German nature has permitted it to be imposed upon its healthy part. Collectivism rests on an inherent weakness of the Germans, — they are inevitably collectivists. Even in Germany’s dark ages the tendency which has generated the present fabric was visible. There is a fatal passivity which draws the German to sink himself in systems ; to mortise himself, so to speak, into the wheel of state, and turn on its axis instead of his own. — diametrically opposite to the AngloSaxon tendency. The entire social fabric of the fatherland is inverted towards nature, and nature is crushed out ; all is. utterly artificial, irretrievably false, entirely unwholesome. Hence the profound pessimism and nihilism of the heart, which deepens every day, expressing itself in a hundred different ways. A deep, helpless recoil against the iron incubus which bears down with great weight is every day gathering strength, and steadily the elements of revolution are moving in the soul of the nation. Yet, looking at the outward fact, who dare surmise that that iron fabric is not a fortress which must endure for ages ? Surely, if any nation is as a pyramid standing on its base, it is the Germany of to-day. The semblance of strength has been taken for strength before, and will be again. There are vague, subtle, incommensurable elements in the problem, which generals frequently do not take into account, and if is on these that the solution often rests. Within the outward drama of history there unfolds itself a vaster drama, unseen ; solving the moral contradictions of the external world, defacing its lineaments, and loosening at their foundation the hard rocks of man’s laying down. Men like Moltke do not move with this larger drama ; they stand fixed, with face turned towards the past, using its forces and breathing its air.

Moltke’s conservatism is not Lord Salisbury’s, however. It rests on no supercilious caste feeling. It is the conservatism of a man who, from constitution and education, associates the old system with order and stability, and rests upon it as the basis of the institution in which he has his being. He is steeped in a belief in absolutism as the only true faith. His intense feudalism of mind was conveyed in a sentence written to his wife, in which, referring to the English aristocracy, he said, “ Here a lieutenant-general without extra military rank stands below a viscount, who may be only an ensign or nothing. Where this is not the case there is no aristocracy, in the true sense of the word.”

As a parliamentary speaker he is perfect in his kind. His addresses are like machines reduced of every superfluous part ; carefully weighed in every detail ; terse, incisive, grave ; each sentence striking home the nail with one sharp blow ; perfectly void of color, or emotion, or adornment. Coming more from the reason than the feeling, his speeches have an eloquence of their own, and they emanate from a mind whose moral platform is elevated ; whose sensibilities, though fettered, are generous and lofty.

As an author, he has written some observations on the last Russo-Turkish campaign, — Observations on the Influence of Arms of Precision on Modern Warfare, which is a model of inductive reasoning ; and also a work modestly styled A Sketch of Polish History, besides some volumes of letters. The History is a work of his early manhood, written in the spare hours of an arduous surveying expedition in the northern part of that country. Its origin is characteristic of the author. He saw a state yield to foreign absorption without displaying any great resistance. Such a phenomenon stimulated him to seek for the causes, and trace them down by definite links of sequence. The mental attitude towards the subject is quite identical with that towards the evolution of tactics. Cold, lucid, and close in argument, without comment or personality, the thought is that of a geometrician ; nevertheless, it exhibits much penetration and a truly philosophic habit of thought. It is a work from which much may be learned.

This brings my remarks to a conclusion ; but let me add finally that he whose character I have attempted to draw possesses private virtues which will never be known, and which, in their environment, have little to call them forth.

Philip Dymond.