Excerpt from Moltke: A Biographical and Critical Study Diaboli and he has not the slightest doubt that we are furnished with every single argument against Von Moltke's reputation as a commander. I regret that I cannot return the compliment, and greet him as an able advocatus Dei; as I have pointed out in a note, he has, with extraordinary awkwardness, overthrown an idol which he thinks more worthy of admiration than Napoleon. As to my rare hostile critics, I might pass them over; their Speech bewrayeth them. They are all, or nearly all, soldiers, very possibly good soldiers; but they are not versed in the higher parts of war, or trained to deal with masses of con icting testimony, the dis cipline, beyond everything else, required in the military historian and they are frantic that a mere pekin should invade the sacred domain of pipe clay. Ihave noticed some of their remarks, but persons of sense and experience know the value of the evidence of petty experts in what is essentially a judicial inquiry. One gem of purest ray serene I must save from the dark unfathomed caves of the United Service Magazine. One of its writers has gravely argued that, because a Colonel Mitchell made a silly estimate of Napoleon, therefore, and for that reason, my estimate of Moltke must be ridiculous. Since the Aristotelian Freshman proved a chestnut horse to be a horse chestnut, and vice versd, there has been no more exquisite morsel of logic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."