sing song.  Participial constructions, tending toward brevity, are more in evidence than in ordinary German prose.  Sparingly, but with good reason and excellent handling, periodic structure is employed.  Still another point is significant, showing the writer to be of born artistic instinct.  In a letter to his brother Ludwig, who was to take from Moltke’s overburdened shoulders part of his laborious task of translating Gibbon, he cleverly remarks on the exuberant use of adjectives by the historian as being sometimes more obscuring than elucidating, and he simply advises the omitting of some.  It is a pity that the translation seems to be lost, and with it an insight into Moltke’s elaboration of his style, which a translation would reveal better than original composition.  In one respect these letters about Turkey were never equalled by Moltke.  Henceforth, he turned absolutely matter-of-fact, a military writer 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,