Excluding our host I do not
believe there was a man present who had passed fifty years of age; but
the General was nearer eighty than fifty, being one of the veterans of
the Franco-Prussian War, whom their Emperor had ordered out of desk jobs
in the first days of August to shepherd his forces in the field. At his
call they came--Von Heeringen and Von Hindenberg and Von Zwehl, to
mention three names that speedily became catchwords round the world--
with their gray heads full of Prussian war tactics; and very soon their
works had justified the act of their imperial master in choosing them
for leadership, and now they had new medals at their throats and on
their breasts to overlay the old medals they won back in 1870-71.
Like many of the older officers of the German Army I met, Von Heeringen
spoke no English, in which regard he was excessively unlike ninety per
cent of the younger officers. Among them it was an uncommon thing in my
experience to find one who did not know at least a smattering of English
and considerably more than a smattering of understandable French.
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