THE BATTALION
3-3
About the time when ;i young Corsican was completing his
■studies at a military academy, there was being educated at
the University of Strasburg, a young Austrian—who was to
shape the secret springs that would snap the honor and glory
■of the greatest military commander the world has ever known
—if a military school had nursed the genius of a Napoleon,
the university had trained the talents of a Mitternich—a
crafty, far-seeing statesman—conniving with the Emperor’s
ambition to form a marital alliance with the House of Haps-
burg—and whose unseen hand was encouraging the campaign
of Russia and marshaling the armies for the defeat of Leipsic.
Just before this time, when in the most humiliating con
dition, Prussia had established the University of Berlin. To
this university were gathered as teachers, the most learned
men of the nation, and .-tudents from all her territory came to
drink of her empyrean waters. It was the capstone to a sys
tem of education that 50 years later, furnished an army, rank
and file, that levied tribute at the battle of Sedan and at the
siege of Paris. Since which time, it has been accepted almost
as an axium, that even in warfare, the best enlisted soldier is
the best educated one. Von Moltke had won a fame that will
last through the shining centuries yet to come.
After this siege, and only about 25 years ago, occurred
that most memorable session of the F.ench assembly. After
being in a horrible uproar for more than three days and no
•decision reached, with the fate of a helpless host of people
resting upon the decisions of a wild, disorder,y body, while
the guns of the victorious Prussians were pointed at the heart
of the nation, and the proudest people on earth seemed upon
the abyss of utter destruction, relief came from a little
wrinkled, shrill voiced man, who, with a commanding wave
•of his hand, hushed into silence that hooting rabble, and
boldly pointed to what must be done. It was not only a col
lege-bred man, but one that was termed a literary statesman.
M. Adolphus Thiers—he alone gathered the shattered frag-
enents of the First Emperor’s once glorious nation, and
evolved from the ruins a great republic.
Who shall undertake to measure the influence of Oxford