GENERAL VON MOLTKE, CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE GERMAN ARMIES

Moltke, being chief of staff at the time, had the disposition and direction of the German forces at the outbreak of the war, but after several months was displaced and a little more than a year afterward was in his grave. He was four years older than his French antagonist, Joffre, and looked what he was, a typical product of German militarism, his face like a mask, rigid, formal, official. He was known as a "Kaiserman," that is to say, he was, and for many years had been, a favorite, holding his position by a combination of favor and ability-altho rumor had several times declared that his star at court had grown dim and only the Kaiser's inability to find a suitable successor had kept him where he was. When his uncle, the famous Field-Marshal, died in 1891, he became aide-de-camp to the Kaiser and had been Chief of the General Staff of the army since February, 1904.

The younger Moltke did not show himself a great military genius. Many believed him less able than others in the German Army, among them von der Goltz. Ilis promotion as Chief of Staff caused a good deal of unfavorable comment, which, however, disappeared with time after he had given evidence of being able to do an extraordinary amount of work. Probably he owed his capture of "the blue ribbon" more to possession of a great name than to eminent military abilities. It well might have flattered the Kaiser's martial pride to have another Moltke at the head of his army, but many writers felt that really able soldiers had been displaced in order to make room for him. Altho he had Bismarckian bulk, he was never genuinely popular with army officers because of an alleged softness in his nature. German martinets preferred a man with square head and bulldog physiognomy, such as Hindenburg possest, that idol of East Prussia, who once said he had never wasted an hour on light literature and ascribed his prowess to the fact that his mind had never been poisoned by anything so corrosive as poetry and romance.

The dismissal of Moltke, which was officially announced early in November, 1914, produced a significant effect on Berlin. Nobody believed he had left his post on account of ill-health, as the authorities declared. There had been a rupture between him and the Kaiser. His illness, perhaps, was not wholly a myth, but the true reason for his dismissal probably lay in court intrigues and disputes, including a desire by the Crown Prince to act on his own initiative, and to the autocratic ways of the Kaiser. Recent failures in theaters of war had contributed in no small degree to the Kaiser's decision. Moltke

died of heart disease or apoplexy during a service of mourning in the Reichstag for von der Goltz.

F. W. Wile, writing in the London Daily Mail, said he could testify to the literal accuracy of a piece of history which identified Moltke with a military clique in Berlin which on August 1, 1914, induced the Kaiser to abandon all his remaining doubts as to the wisdom of declaring war. On the afternoon of that fateful Saturday, Moltke's wife paid a visit to a certain home in Berlin "in a state of irrepressible excitement." "Ach! what a day I've been through," she said to Mr. Wile's informant. "My husband came home just. before I left, almost the first I've seen him in three days and nights. He threw himself on a couch, a complete physical wreck, and said he had finally accomplished the hardest task of his life. He had helped to induce the Kaiser to sign the mobilization order."

During the fall of 1914 there had been repeated announcements. of Moltke's illness, and it was said that he had been removed. These reports proved for the time false, but in December he actually retired, failing health having prevented him from returning to the front. Falkenhayn was appointed in his place in the following January. Moltke was born in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, and at the outbreak of war was in his sixty-seventh year. He had served as adjutant to his distinguished uncle from 1881 until the old man's death. While the Field-Marshal was being taken to his grave, Emperor William had informed the younger Moltke that he had decided to elevate him to the rank of personal aide-de-camp, and in that position he had served for five years. Moltke also held regimental and divisional commands in the Guards, and in 1914, when the Emperor created the position of Quartermaster-General on the General Staff, a place that formerly had been filled only in war time, he designated Moltke for the post. Two years later he succeeded Count Von Schlicffen as Chief of the General Staff.

Moltke's career up to that time had therefore been exceptional. As a young man during the Franco-Prussian war he had won an Iron Cross, and in 1902 was made a Lieutenant-General. When appointed to succeed Schlieffen, men in the army and in civil life said he owed the prize primarily to the Emperor's passion for the picturesque, to a desire to have the magic name of Moltke at the head of the army. Moltke was often called "Count," but that title, conferred on his uncle in 1870, on the day Metz fell, was inherited by his elder brother, General Count Wilhelm von Moltke, and had ceased with his death a few years before the war began. Moltke, after his fall, still retained the confidence of the German people. When first appointed to the post they had distrusted and ridiculed him, but the vigorous way in which he put through revolutionary ideas about

"preparedness" forced them to change their minds. The rapidity and smoothness of the German mobilization at the beginning of the war was largely credited to him. He was held responsible, however, for the retreat of Kluck's army from before Paris, altho many believed the blame should have been laid elsewhere. A cloud of mystery pervaded the question as to why the German army retired as it did.27

THE GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE RUSSIAN ARMIES

Altho he was nearing his sixtieth year when the war began, and suffering from a reaction against him in the mind of the Czar and his court, the Grand Duke Nicholas was a logical necessity. Russia really had to entrust her destinies to him and nobly did he justify his command in those first years of the war, even after he was relieved of his command and sent to the Caucasus, there to startle the world by taking Erzerum and Trebizond. He was the one man of genius in the Russian royal family. He manifested military genius, not only in the boldness of his strategy and the success with which he realized his aims, but in a subtle influence called personality. He had the piety of genius, its reverence and mystical tendencies, its energy, and its decision of character. Russian reserve, as reflected in official communications, was seen in this Grand Duke, but in spite of that he permitted journalists to follow his armies with a freedom at which the French and British stood amazed. He was audacious in decision and rapid in thought.

Behind the Grand Duke were years of the hardest work. He had spent his young manhood in comparative poverty on remote frontiers, where he had acquired a mastery of his profession on its technical side such as made him the finest cavalry officer in Europe. He had never been the slave of vodka or of ballet-dancers. His piety was no less striking than his lofty stature. Those who studied him at close range saw a Grand Duke tinged with that western culture which was dear to a certain type of Russian. In temperament he was conspicuously a Slav, for he had the fatalism, poetic melancholy and characteristic spirituality of his race. He always distrusted the tendency of his countrymen to adopt western manners and methods in society as things remote from the spirit of the Russian race. His idea always was that Holy Russia embodied a genius capable of developing best along lines of her own, spontaneously, organically, without the adventitious aid of outside culture. This attitude explained his reputation as a reactionary.

27 Based on articles in The World's Work and The Times (New York).

Nothing could have been more humanly conspicuous than the Grand Duke as he strode at his gigantic height among throngs of worshippers at St. Isaac's, in Petrograd. His vein of mysticism made his religion the most emotional thing about him. He would stand like a man in a dream before the model of the holy sepulcher in that vast edifice. His sternly fanatical type of faith found expression in the campaigns he directed, which was done as if he were engaged in a crusade. The singing of hymns as troops went into battle, the carrying of images in camp and strict observances of feasts as well as fasts, were all due to him. He resembled Cromwell in admiration for the soldier who prayed.

Infinite gossip was circulated in newspapers regarding the relations between him and the Czar. Obscurity and disgrace seemed at times to threaten him. He would be missed from Tsarskoe Selo for weeks, and then in a trice would return and regain favor. When his wealthy wife died in Moscow he contracted a somewhat hasty second union with one of the daughters of Nicholas, the King of Montenegro, who was a Slav to the marrow, physically big, famed for a somewhat odalisque type of beauty, all imagination and fire, no thinker, but intuitive, subtle, wedded to weird superstitions, and even given to seeing ghosts. The shadow over her life was her failure to give birth to a child. To the influence of this new Grand Duchess over the Czarina was ascribed the rise of Nicholas to supremacy in the councils of Nicholas II. But for her he might have been sent into permanent exile, and yet he was the one great man in the Imperial family.

He was a soldier of the intellectual, executive type, capable of infusing his personality into a whole staff until it burned with energy. He inspired a devotion that did not shrink from death, had the magnetism of Ney, compelled confidence by the example of efficiency that he set, by his knowledge of his profession and his incorruptible nature. No financial scandal ever affected the repute of the Grand Duke-not even in a court notorious for corruption. He was most Russian in his comradeship with the men whom he commanded. This took the form of a spontaneous display of affection, a spiritual understanding, a unity like that of primitive Christians. Only a Slav could commune with Slavs on such a basis. The soul of the Grand Duke was simple, like a child's, sympathetic, capable of revealing itself without shame. In Petrograd, shortly after the Russian-Japanese War, Sir Ian Hamilton was watching the arrivals at a ceremonial occasion, he being there as a distinguished British general, when suddenly he ejaculated, "By Jove, who's that?" pointing to a towering figure, at least six feet four in height, with closecropped black hair shot through with gray, short, pointed Vandyke

beard, keen eyes, extraordinary length of limb, but lean and graceful, with exceptional ease and power of movement—a magnificent figure. It was the Grand Duke.

The Grand Duke was born the year after the Crimean War and so was fifty-seven in October, 1914. His grandfather was the son of Czar Nicholas I. Altho his military career had attracted little attention outside of Russia, largely because he had concentrated wholeheartedly on each task as he met it, his supreme command was the logical result of a consistent rise through all ranks. It was not because, but almost in spite of, his imperial blood. His rise began under his father, also a Grand Duke Nicholas, who commanded the Russian Army of the Danube in the Turkish War of 1877-78. The younger Nicholas was then about twenty-one, a junior officer of a hussar regiment, the uniform of which he took pride in wearing, when on the staff of General Radetzky. For gallantry in action at the Shipka Pass and the siege of Plevna, he was decorated. He was a fine horseman, hunted keenly, and gave the Czar instructions in military riding. His seat was quite peculiar to himself. His legs were enormously long and yet, whether for power or comfort, he rode with what for him were short stirrups. He sat back in the saddle and almost slouched, his feet stretched far forward, his knees sagging outward. The result was not easily described, but it was distinctly individual. In appearance he was the embodiment, on a gigantic scale, of a certain dashing type inseparably associated in the popular mind with heroic cavalry leaders.

None of the imperial family was assigned to high command in the Japanese War, which was the reason given for the Grand Duke Nicholas having stayed in Petrograd. But when the war was over, it found in the person of the Grand Duke one of the keenest minds in Russia as a student of its lessons. He was made President of the Council of Defense in 1905, and next year took command of the military district of Petrograd, which included not only the great garrison of the capital, but forces in Finland and in the vast stretch of territory northeastward to Archangel, the premier military district of Russia. Until 1906 he was known only as a cavalryman. He had been the only member of the imperial family to adopt a military profession as his chief purpose, with the possible exception of the Grand Duke Sergius, who became an artillery expert.

When he relaxed none could be more charming than Nicholas. He made it a practise to dine frequently at mess with his officers. Like many Russians he spoke several languages, including English. His position as the Czar's cousin and the dominant military figure in the imperial family relieved him of the political intrigues and jealousies which had nullified the genius of Kuropatkin in the