Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 129, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 May 1916 — VON FALKENHAYN REAL WAR LORD [ARTICLE]

VON FALKENHAYN REAL WAR LORD

Even Kaiser Wilhelm Awaits the Pleasure of His Chief , of Staff. BRAINS OF GERMAN ARMY No Diplomacy, No Government or Administration Influence Haa Any Weight With the Head of the Generalstab. London. Eric von Falkenhayn is the brains of the German army. The “military domination of Prussia,” which Mr. Asquith declared must be “wholly and finally destroyed," has Itp seat and center In the famous “Generalstab,” which 1b quite an exceptional theocracy of war. "In peace time," says Ignatius Phayre, “the Berlin ‘Kriegsministerlum,’ on the Koenigsplatz, near the Austrian embassy, is much like any other war office. But the moment mobilization is complete, and before the first gun is fired, the real war thinkers hurry out to the field and throw off every vestige of civil authority—even that of the imperial throne Itself. —~——

“The kaiser is ‘lnvited’ to grand headquarters at Thielt, in Flanders, or Verdun, In France, when big attacks are to be made, but the emperor is only a visitor. He Is now all-highest In name alone, for the real war lord Is Eric von Falkenhayn, chief of stafT of the German armies and directing brain of all the others from the Balkans to Bagdad. "It is hard to convey an idea of this man’s absolute domination. Von Jagow, the foreign minister, has no control over him, nor has the imperial chancellor, Doctor von Bethmann-Holl-weg. No diplomacy, no governmental or administrative Influence has any weight whatever with the head of the Generalstab. The military tail pow wags the German dog. The central empires and their allies are inexorably ruled from the field, where Falkenhayn and his staff carry out the war in complete strategic supremacy. “Even popular Idols and great leaders like Von Hlndenburg and Von Mackensen —that stern ascetic who taught the crown prince In Danzig—are mere Instruments in the chief’s hands. Falkenhayn is as Infallible as the pope, now that the Kriegschuie Is broken up and the make-believe Kriegspiel translated into the epic arena of real war.

Was an Army Failure. "Von Falkenhayn is easily the youngest of Germany’s military leaders, being barely fifty-four. Yet, like Papa Hindenburg, he was an army failure, and drifted rather aimlessly out to China in search of free-lance opportunity in a troubled lam}. .His chance came with the Boxer rebellion, when his urbane capacity quickly made him German governor of Tientsin after that city was stormed by the allied troops—of course with the Prussian machine ’bossing’ all. Count von Waldersee had supreme command. “Falkenhayn next became president of the provisional government in Tientsin, and began to attract the kaiser’s notice for the first time. Recalled to Berlin, he was reinstated in that rambling pile on the Koenigsplatz, and wore once more the broad red trousers stripe of the general staff. From that time onward the man never looked back, mounting higher and higher in the great machine, and at last succeeding Von Moltke as chief of staff, after that general’s disgrace following on the Marne retreat. "An extraordinary fact of Falkenhayn’s career Is his personal ascendancy. His power over the emperor is a source of continual amazement to civilian Germany. ‘Our sovereign Is hypnotized by this general,’ you will hear people say, and certain it is that the kaiser hunts the grand headquarters with something like nervous fear of the mighty military camarilla within Its humble walls. His Law Is Supreme. "Before me as I write Is a German photograph showing the all-highest

lunching al fresco with the two veteran Silesians, Max von Gallwits and Remus von woyrsch, two of Falkenhayn’s ablest generals, who handle great armies. The kaiser stands cloaked and obviously shivering beside a small camp table in an open yard, while a minor figure of the general staff pours a glass of Rhine wine for his imperial master. One of the strangest phases of the great war, by the way, is the passing of the kaiser’s power into the iron hands of the staff in the field. He goes here and there at their bidding; he waits on Von Falkentayn’s plans ‘like a lost' soul staying for wastage.’ "Falkenhayn’s plan is Napoleon’s own in the face of terrific wastage. ’I took the son of a peasant,’jwas the conqueror’s vaunt, ‘and made him a marshal or a duke when I found he had talents.’ Von Hindenburg is a case in point. He was the comic butt of the army during the autumn maneuvers. Behind his back smarter and younger generals tapped their foreheads with derisive meaning. But Von Falkenhayn knew his man; knew that his home was in the East Prussian marshes; knew that he had made this field of invasion the study of his life, and called him in hot haste from quiet games of .‘skat’ in Hanover, where the old fellow was on the shelf when the Russians broke into Germany.”