ter _par excellence_. Even in his letters those nice bits
of humor and incidental manifestations of a subtle and fine nature
sense grow scarcer and scarcer. There are two essays--_The Western
Boundary_, and _Considerations in the Choice of Railway Routes_--both
published in the _Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift_, in 1841, and 1843
respectively, that demonstrate this tendency toward specialization.
The bulk of his writings from then on falls into that technical series
reserved for, and interesting chiefly to, the military man. Even his
speeches in the Reichstag, few and far between, considering the extent
of years over which they are spread, with all their excellent
"Sachlichkeit," their directness and clearness, concern matters and
problems that affect, more or less directly, his comprehensive duties
as chief intellect of the military organization of his country. So,
quite naturally, we see him very reluctantly yield to a gentle but
persistent pressure to use his great literary talent for setting down
some reminiscences from his life. He declined to publish personal
memoirs, however, saying: "All that I have written about actual and
real things ('Sachliches') which is worth preserving is kept in the
archives of the General Staff. My personal reminiscences are better
buried with me." He had turned objective in the highest possible
degree, leaving behind all vanities and petty subjective points of
view. But after his retirement he wrote, in 1887, on the basis of the
great work on that subject by the General Staff and partly managed by
himself, that short _History of the Franco-German War of_ 1870-71,
which his nation cherishes as a precious inheritance. It is "sachlich"
throughout. Starting with a brief reflection on the origin of modern
wars he relates the events from the point of view of the directing
chief of staff of the army, closing the whole by one impressive
sentence: "Strassburg and Metz, estranged from our country in times of
weakness, had been regained, and the German Empire had come to a
renewed existence." The work is a consummation, in literary form, of
his motto "Erst waegen, dann wagen!" From the very threshold of his
death we possess as the sum total of his philosophy of life those
already mentioned _Consolatory Thoughts on the Earthly Life and a
Future Existence_. From the point of composition and style these are
highly interesting because of the fact that, beside the final version,
three extant parallel vers