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HOW TO GET STRONG
VON MOLTKE (1800–1891)
The London Times, in its obituary notice of Von Moltke, said: "A great soldier has passed away. A foremost name has faded from contemporary history. The genius and skill of Moltke became apparent to the world only when he was sixty-six years old—for he was born in the first year of this century, and he thus lived into his ninety-first year. His was a long, patient, and silent career of toil and of duty, before suddenly his fame burst forth; and the excellence of his labor was made manifest.… The war of 1866 made Moltke famous. This fame was won through hard work, constant perseverance, and rigid self-denial. Officers of every army can take no brighter example as their model than Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke. His parents were of good family, but poor, and he was their third son. In 1811 he was sent to Copenhagen, and in the following year was admitted as cadet in the Royal military academy there.… This stage of his education was not so happy. In later years he said of it: 'Our boyhood in a foreign city, without relatives or friends, was truly miserable. The discipline was strict, even severe; and now, when my judgment of it is impartial, I must say it was too strict, too severe.' He was chiefly distinguished by a burning desire of knowledge, and an untiring energy for work. His means were small; he had no income beyond his pay. At thirty-two a lieutenant. At thirty-five a captain; he served three years in the East; sent by the Sultan's military adviser to the Euphrates. He wrote Holland and Belgium, about 1830; and his well-known Letters from Turkey, about 1835–1839. Also an important critical military work, The Russo-Turkish Campaign of 1828–9 in European Turkey. In 1856 a colonel. In 1859 he was made Permanent Chief of Staff of the Prussian army. The duty of a Chief of Staff is, above all things, to prepare in peace for war. He organized the system of coast-defence for Prussia. He reduced the mobilization of the Prussian army from twenty-one to ten days; reorganized the army; and planned the operations for the combined Prussian and Austrian armies in 1864. In the war with Denmark he early saw the importance of breech-loaders, and translated various books about them; and gave them to the officers of the Prussian army. A larger field for his strategic genius was opened to Moltke in the war of 1866. By this time he had gained
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