Fitting tributes of respect and admiration were paid to the aged field-marshal on the occasion of his celebrating his ninetieth birthday, on October 26, 1890. Telegrams from all sorts and conditions of men poured in upon him, including, among the princes and sovereigns of Europe, one from Queen Victoria, who held Count von Moltke in high esteem. The 26th falling upon Sunday, the schools throughout the length and breadth of Germany were closed on the previous Saturday to enable the scholars to add their quota to the general rejoicing. In Berlin a torchlight procession of vast extent, composed of 20,000 students, artists, members of trades and guilds, marched with banners and groups of historically dressed personages and impersonifications, from the old gray Schloss down the Linden, through the Brandenburg Gate to the Koenigsplatz, where are situated the buildings of the Grand Staff. Here addresses were presented to Von Moltke. On the following day, in the Conference Hall of the General Staff, the emperor, surrounded by the military magnates of the Reichsrath, the generals of the twenty army corps specially summoned to be present, the officers of the General Staff, Chancellor von Caprivi, successor to Prince Bismarck, the King of Saxony, the grand dukes and the Duke of Connaught, addressed the marshal in the following terms: "I thank you in the name of those who have fought together with you, and whose most faithful and devoted servant you have been. I thank you for all you have done for my House and for the greatness of the Fatherland. We greet in you not only a Prussian leader who has won for the army the reputation of being invincible, but one of the founders of the German Empire. The presence of the King of Saxony, who has made a point of personally congratulating you, recalls the time when he and you fought for Germany's greatness. The distinctions conferred upon you by my grandfather leave nothing in which I can personally show my thanks to you.... I call upon all those present to express their feelings of gratitude that Field-Marshal von Moltke has known how not to stand alone in his greatness, but to form a school of leaders of the army for time to come, and for all future generations, by giving cheers for his excellency." This, the last occasion on which public honors were accorded to the field-marshal during his life, appropriately emphasized the universal esteem in which "Father Moltke," as he was affectionally designated by the army, was held as one of the founders of the German Empire. GEORGE DEWEY By MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER (Born 1837) [Illustration: George Dewey. [TN]]