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Show tered Into a reorganization. Still the mpreme test had not come. It came at Worth and Sedan and Mete. Equal to any emergency, Moltke handled his vast army, the largest any nation ever put in the field, with the coolness, confidence con-fidence and skill of a mighty mind. v Unlike Frederick the Great, or Bluchei, or any other of the German heroes,' Moltke never excelled in dash or impetuosity. Quiet, calm, but systematic sys-tematic and calculating, he reduced was to a mathematical problem in which rapid mobilization and concentration concen-tration at the critical point form" the main features. When he was informed that Napoleon III. had declared war against Prussia he opened the drawer of his desk, which contained his plans finished in every detail, and unfolding them be remarked quietly: ' "All right, we are ready," and ready he was, as France learned to her sorrow and humiliation. hu-miliation. , . A remarkable man is he whose ninetieth nine-tieth birthday will be celebrated at Berlin Ber-lin to:iiorrow,and the fanie be won will never die. , . MOLTKEVS BINOWN. Tomorrow the silent Moltke will be ninety years old and at the desire of his master the anniversary of the general's birth, though contrary to his own modest mod-est habits, will be celebrated with royal pomp. ! ' Other generals before Moltke have won great victories and other generals will do so long after he is dead, but his renown rests not on the mere fact that he hits won a number of battles nor vet on the fact that he has never lost any, but vastly more on the new system of warfare he has fathered and introduced. Moltke' s first prominence was achieved achiev-ed not in the thick of contending armies but in his library where he recorded his observations on the Turkish war in which he had participated as an interested interest-ed but neutral observer. The book was a revelation and proved a revolution in the science of war aqd secured for the author that prominence which enabled him to lead the allied Austro-Prussian armies against Denmark in 1)04. The result of that campaign wag foreordained foreordain-ed but it gave the goneral an opportunity opportun-ity to test the practical utility of the breech-loading gun with which the Prussian troops had been armed. The surprise of its effective work was no greater, however, than the marvelous marvel-ous facility with which the Prussian army was mobilized in 1800, Before Austria or her allies had time to realize it three different corps invaded her territory ter-ritory from three different directions, and, concentrating by rapid marching at Sadowa, annihilated the power of Austria in one,day. The sluggish commanders com-manders of the other side had depended depend-ed upon their forts to impede the pro. gress of the enemy, but Moltke ignored almost their existenco and invested them only after his main army had safely , passed. The surprise of the Austrians was boundless. Their chiefs were military martinets, more chagrined chag-rined perhaps at the manner than at the fact of their defeat. Not since Napoleon Na-poleon I. entered the valleys of the Po and swooped down upon the whits coats in total defiance of existing tactics were thoy so dismayed as on that fatal day of Sadowa. ' ' Before the matchless contest with France began, all Europe woke up to the faot that a new genius had arisen who dealt in now methods and tactics and arms, and the whole continent en- ! ' ' |