Chapter VII: The Distaff Side (3)

Germany has 4,570 miles of frontier to guard, to begin with, and her total area is 208,780 square miles, or an area one fourth less than that of our State of Texas, with a population per square mile of 310.4. Of this population 1,000,000, roughly, are subjects of foreign powers. Five hundred thousand are from Austria-Hungary, 100,000 each from Finland and Russia, nearly 100,000 from Italy, some 17,000 Americans, and so on. In 1900 the population speaking German numbered 51,000,000.

This compact little country is the very heart of Europe, surrounded by Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and, across the North Sea, England. In the case of trouble in Europe, Germany is the centre. Nothing can happen that does not concern her, that must not indeed concern her vitally. She has fought at one time or another in the last hundred years with Russia, Austria- Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and England, and the various German states among themselves; or her soldiers have fought against their soldiers, whether or not the various countries named were geographically and politically then what they are now.

Russia's population in 1910 was 160,748,000, and including the Finnish provinces, 163,778,800. Since 1897 the population of Russia has increased at the annual rate of 2,732,000. The boundaries between Russia and Germany are mere sand dunes, and by rail the Russian outposts are only a few hours from Berlin. France is only across the Rhine, and it is no secret that some months ago Great Britain had worked out a plan by which she could put 150,000 troops on the frontiers of Germany, at the service of France, in thirteen days. Germany's ocean commerce must pass through the Straits of Dover, down the English Channel, within striking distance of Plymouth, Portsmouth, Dover, Brest, and Cherbourg. France, which has been looked upon as a somewhat negligible quantity, has taken on a new lease of life. When Napoleon died, in 1821, he left France swept clean of her fighting men, whose bones were bleaching all the way from Madrid to Moscow. France has recuperated and is almost another nation to-day from the stand-point of virility. She far surpasses Germany in literature, art, and science, and is taking her old place in the world. She led the way in motor construction, in field-artillery, in aviation, and now she is producing a champion middle-weight sparrer, and, marvel of marvels, has actually beaten Scotland at foot-ball! She has always had brains, and now her stability and virility are reviving. This has not passed unnoticed in Germany. No wonder Germany looks upon her navy as something more than a Winstonchurchillian luxury!

One may understand at once from this situation, and from her past history, that Germany has the sound good sense not to be influenced by the latest school of sentimentalists, who pretend to believe that the world is a polyglot Sunday-school, with converted millionaires as teachers therein; or, if not that, a counting-house, where all questions of honor, race, religion, love, pride, all the questions which bubble their answers in our blood, are to be settled by weighing their comparative cost in dollars. We do not realize how new is this word sentimental. John Wesley, writing of this word "sentimental" as used in Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," says: "Sentimental, what is that? It is not English, it is not sense, it conveys no determinate idea. Yet one fool makes many, and this nonsensical word (who would believe it) is become a fashionable one."

Germany has been taught by bitter experiences, and harsh masters, that the ultimate power to command must rest with that authority which, if necessary, can compel people to obey. They recognize, too, the mawkish mental foolery of any plan of living together which ignores the part which physical force must necessarily play in any political or social life which is complete. They agree, too, as does every intelligent man in Christendom, that the appeal to reason is far preferable to an appeal to war. But, pray, what is to be done where there is no reason to appeal to? Are reasonable men to strip themselves of all armor, and suffer unreason to prevail?

An army or a fleet is no more an incitement to war among reasonable men, than a policeman is an incentive to burglary or homicide. An army is not a contemptuous protest against Christianity; it is a sad commentary on Christianity's failure and inefficiency. An army and a fleet are merely a reasonable precaution which every nation must take, while awaiting the conversion of mankind from the predatory to the polite.

As yet the Germans have not been overtaken by the tepid wave of feminism, which for the moment is bathing the prosperity-softened culture of America and England. It is a harsh remedy, but both America and England would gain something of virility if they were shot over. We are all apt enough to become womanish, agitated, or acidulous, according to age and condition, when we are reaping in security the fields cleared, enriched, and planted by a hardy ancestry of pioneers. There were no self-conscious peace-makers; no worshippers of those two epicene idols: a God too much man, and a man too much God; no devotees of third-sexism, in the days of Waterloo and Gettysburg, when we had men's tasks to occupy us.

We are playing with our dolls just now, driving our coaches over the roads, sailing our yachts in the waters, eating the fruits of the fields that have been won for us by the sweat and blood of those gone before. Germany has no leisure for that, no doll's house as yet to play in, and she is perhaps more fortunate than she knows.

One can understand, too, that Germany has little patience with the confused thinking which maintains that military training only makes soldiers and only incites to martial ambitions; when, on the contrary, she sees every day that it makes youths better and stronger citizens, and produces that self-respect, self-control, and cosmopolitan sympathy which more than aught else lessen the chances of conflict.

I can vouch for it that there are fewer personal jealousies, bickerings, quarrels in the mess-room or below decks of a war-ship, or in a soldiers' camp or barracks, than in many church and Sunday-school assemblies, in many club smoking-rooms, in many ladies' sewing or reading circles. Nothing does away more surely with quarrelsomeness than the training of men to get on together comfortably, each giving way a little in the narrow lanes of life, so that each may pass without moral shoving. There are no such successful schools for the teaching of this fundamental diplomacy as the sister services, the army and the navy.

My latest visit to Germany has converted me completely to the wisdom of compulsory service. Nor am I merely an academic disciple. I have had a course in it myself, and were it possible in America I should give any boy of mine the benefit of the same training. In Germany, at any rate, no student of the situation there would deny that, barring Bismarck, the army has done more for the nation than any other one factor that can be named. Soldiers and sailors train themselves, and train others, first of all to self-control, not to war. It is a pity that "compulsory service" has come to mean merely training to fight. In Germany, at any rate, it means far more than that. Two generations of Germans have been taught to take care of themselves physically without drawing a sword.

It is rather a puzzling commentary upon the growth of democracy, that in America and in England, where most has been conceded to the majority, there is least inclination on their part to accept the necessary personal burden of keeping themselves fit, not necessarily for war, but for peace, by accepting universal and compulsory training. The only fair law would be one demanding that no one should be admitted to look on at a game of cricket, foot-ball, or base-ball who could not pass a mild examination in these games, or give proof of an equivalent training. That would be honorable democracy in the realm of sport.

There formerly existed in Bavaria a supplementary tax on estates left by persons who had not served in the active army. It was done away with at the formation of the empire. There is a proposal now to vote such an additional tax for all Germany, and a very fair tax it would be.

I am not discussing here the question of compulsory service in England. It is not difficult to see that part of England's army must of necessity be a professional army, which can be sent here and there and everywhere, and that conscription would not answer the purpose, for compulsory conscription could hardly demand of its recruits that they should serve in India, in Canada, or in Bermuda or Egypt, for the length of time necessary to make their service of value. Conscription, too, on a scale to make an army serviceable against the trained troops of the Continent is out of the question. Therefore, so far as compulsory service for military duty only is concerned, I see no hope for it in England. But in a land of free men such as is, or used to be, England, and in America, compulsory service ought to be undertaken with pride and with pleasure, as a moral, not as a military, duty for the salvation of the country from internal foes, and as a nucleus around which could rally the nation as a whole in case of attack from external foes. Patriotism among us has come to a pretty pass indeed when the nation is divided into two classes: those growling against the taxation of their surplus; and those with their tongues hanging out in anticipation of, and their hands clutching for, unearned doles. And now, the more shame to us, must be added a third class who use public office for private profit. What if we all turned to and gave something without being forced to do so? Where would the "Yellow peril" and the "German menace" be then? We should have much less exciting and inciting talk and writing if our nerves and digestions were in better order. Nothing calms the nerves, increases confidence, and lessens the chance of promiscuous quarrelling better than hard work.

Even if what the German army has accomplished along these lines were not true, there can be no freedom of political speculation or experiment, no time to make mistakes and to retrieve the situation, when one is surrounded on all sides by overt or potential enemies. Germany must have a powerful army and fleet, must have a strong and autocratic government, or she is lost. "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland." She can permit no silly, no stupid, no excited majority to imperil her safety as a nation. If Germany were governed as is France, where they have had nine new governments since the beginning of the twentieth century, and forty-four since the republic replaced the empire forty-one years ago -- not counting six dismissals of the cabinet when the prime minister remained -- or fifty changes of government in less than that number of years, Germany would have lost her place on the map. France remains only because, so far as defence is concerned, France is France plus the British fleet.

Political geography is the sufficient reason for Germany's army and navy. Let us be fair in these judgments and admit at once, that if Japan were where Mexico is, and Russia where Canada is, and Germany separated from us by a few hours' steaming, certain peace-mongers would have been hanged long ago, and our cooing doves of peace would have had molten tar mixed with their feathers. An Italian proverb runs, "It is easy to scoff at a bull from a window," and we indulge in not a little of such babyish effrontery from our safe place in the world. Germany, on the other hand, looks out upon the world from no such safe window-seat; she is down in the ring, and must be prepared at all hazards to take care of herself. That is a reason, too, why Germany offers little resistance to the ruling of an autocratic militarism. The sailors and the stokers would rather obey captain and officers, however they may have been chosen for them, than to be sunk at sea; and nowadays Germany is ever on the high seas, battling hard to protect and to increase her commerce abroad, and to protect her huge industrial population at home. Germany can take no chances for the moment, for only "Wer sich regiert, der ist mit Zufall fertig."

One wishes often that one's lips were not sealed, one's pen not stayed by the imperious demands of honor, to abstain from all mention of discoveries or conversations made under the roof of hospitality, for nothing could well be more enlightening than a description of a chat between the great war-lord of Germany and a leading pacifist: the one completely equipped with knowledge of the history, temper, and temperament of his people; the other obsessed by a fantastic exaggeration of the power and influence of money, even in the world of culture and international politics, and preaching his panacea in the land, of all others, where even now mere money has the least influence, all honor to that land!

Spinoza, the greatest of modern Jews, and the father of modern philosophy, writes: "It is not enough to point out what ought to be; we must also point out what can be, so that every one may receive his due without depriving others of what is due to them." And in another place: "Things should not be the subject of ridicule or complaint, but should be understood." Those who know little of the history of the development of Germany, and particularly of Prussia, cannot possibly understand another reason for the political apathy of the Germans and their pleased support of their army. It is this: they have been trained in everything except self-government, in everything except politics. Perhaps their governors know them better than we do. Their progress has come from direction from above, not from assertion from below. The art or arts of self-government, throughout their development as a nation, have been forcibly omitted from their curriculum. Every step in our national progress, on the contrary, has been taken by the people, shoulder to shoulder, breaking their way up and out into light and freedom. There is little or no trace of any such movement of the people in Germany, and there is little taste for it, and no experience to make such effort successful. We, who have profited by the teaching of this political experience, do not realize in the least how handicapped are the people who have not had it.

One hundred years ago half the inhabitants of Prussia were practically in the toils of serfdom. It was only by an edict of 1807, to take effect in 1810, that personal serfdom with its consequences, especially the oppressive obligation of menial service, was abolished in the Prussian monarchy. Caste extended actually to land. All land had a certain status, from which the owners and their retainers took their political position and rights. The edict of 1807 was in reality a land reform bill, and gave for the first time free trade in land in Prussia. It was vom Stein, a Bismarck born too soon, who induced Frederick William II, King of Prussia, and grandson of the Great Elector, to abolish serfdom, to open the civil service to all classes, and to concede certain municipal rights to the towns. But vom Stein was dismissed from the service of his weak-kneed sovereign on the ground that he was an enemy of France, and was obliged to take refuge in Russia. Like other martyrs, his efforts watered the political earth for a fruitful harvest.

It is well to know where we are in the world's culture and striving when we speak of other nations. What were we doing, what was the rest of the world doing, in those days when the Hanoverian peasant's son, Scharnhorst, and Clausewitz were about to lay the foundations of this German army, now the most perfect machine of its kind in the world? These were the days prepared for by Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau; by Pitt and Louis XV, and George III; the days of near memories of Wolfe, Montcalm, and Clive; days when Hogarth was caricaturing London; days when the petticoats of the Pompadour swept both India and Canada into the possession of England. These names and the atmosphere they produce, show by comparison how rough a fellow was this Prussia of only a hundred years ago. He had not come into the circle of the polite or of the political world. He was tumbling about, un-licked, untaught, inexperienced, already forgetful of the training of the greatest school-master of the previous century, Frederick the Great, who had made a man of him.

We were already politicians to a man in those days, and the Englishman Pitt was map-maker, by special warrant, to all Europe.

When the Prussians were serfs politically, our House of Representatives, in 1796, debated whether to insert in their reply to the President's speech the remark that "this nation is the freest and most enlightened in the world." It is true that this was at the time when Europe was producing Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Mozart, Haydn, Herschel, and about ready to introduce Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Shelley, Heine, Balzac, Beethoven, and Cuvier; when Turner was painting, Watt building the steam-engine, Napoleon in command of the French armies, and Nelson of the British fleet; but this bombastic babble of ours harmed nobody then, and only serves to show what a number of intellectual serfs must have been members of that particular House of Representatives.

We have not overcome this habit of slapdash comparative criticism, for only the other day a distinguished American inventor left Berlin with these words as his final message: "We have nothing to learn from Germany." But in the nineteenth century, where does the American of sober intelligence, if Lincoln be omitted, find a match for Bismarck as a statesman, Heine as a wit and song-writer, Wagner, Brahms, and Beethoven as musicians, Goethe as a man of letters and poet, the still living influence of Lessing and Winckelmann as critics, Fichte as a scholarly patriot, Hegel and Kant as philosophers, von Humboldt, Liebig, Helmholtz, Bunsen, and Haeckel as scientists, Moltke and Roon as soldiers, Ranke and Mommsen as historians, Auerbach, Spielhagen, Sudermann, Freytag, "Fritz" Reuter, and Hauptmann as novelists and dramatists, Krupp and Borsig as manufacturers, and the Rothschilds as bankers? Lincoln, Lee, Sherman, Jackson, and Grant may equal these men in their own departments, but aside from them our only superiority, and a very questionable superiority it is, lies in our trust-and-tariff- incubated millionaires. Let us try to see straight, if only that we may learn and profit by the superiority of others.

These explanations that I have given, historical, political, external, and internal, offer reasons worth pondering both why we do not understand Germany's huge armament and why Germany looks upon it as a necessity.

However much the expenditure on fleet and army may be disguised, the burden is colossal. In the year 1878 the net expenditure, ordinary and extraordinary, for purposes of defence, for army and navy and all other military purposes whatsoever including pensions, amounted to 452,000,000 marks; in 1888, to 660,000,000 marks; in 1898, to 882,000,000 marks; and in 1908, to 1,481,000,000 marks.

The total expenses, net, of the empire in 1908 were 1,735,000,000 marks, showing that only 254,000,000 marks out of the grand total of 1,735,000,000 were spent for other than military purposes. As the army and navy now stand at a peace strength of some 700,000 men, and as these men are all in the prime of their working power, the loss in wages and in productive work may be put very conservatively at 600,000,000 marks, which brings the cost of the support of the military establishment of Germany up to 2,000,000,000 marks and more per annum, or $500,000,000.

Many Americans were dismayed when our total national expenditure reached the $1,000,000,000 point, and the Congress voting this expenditure was nicknamed the "Billion-dollar Congress." What would we say of an expenditure of half a billion dollars for defence alone! With what admiration, too, must we regard 65,000,000 people, living in an area one quarter smaller than Texas, on a by-no-means rich or fertile soil, who can bear cheerfully the burden, each year, of half our total national expenditure, merely on the military and naval barricade which enables them to toil in peace and security.

Humanity has, indeed, made but a poor zigzag progress from the gorilla; Christianity, just now engaged in blessing the rival banners of warriors setting out for one another's throats, has failed ignominiously to bring the wolf in man to baptism, when the central state of Christian Europe must arm to the teeth one in every eighteen of her adult male inhabitants, and spend half a billion dollars a year, to protect herself from assault and plunder.

If the hairy, skin-clad cave-dwellers, or the man who left us the Neanderthal skull, could have a look at us now, here in Berlin, in many ways the centre of the most enlightened people in the world, they would undoubtedly go mad trying to understand what we mean by the word ''progress.'' And yet we smile indulgently at the poor farmers in Afghanistan who till their fields with a rifle slung across their shoulders. What is Germany doing but that! And an enormously heavy rifle it is, costing just seven times as much as all other national expenditures together; in short, it costs seven marks of soldier to protect every one mark of plough. I admit frankly the horror and the absurdity of all this; but as an argument for disarmament, "it does not lie," as the lawyers phrase it. It is a criticism, and an unanswerable one, of our failure as human beings to enthrone reason and to tame our passions; but it is a veritable call to arms to protect ourselves, not a reason for not doing so. Let the international gluttons overeat themselves till they are seriously ill; but it would be madness to starve ourselves in the meantime, and yet that is the grotesque logic of certain of our preachers of disarmament.

At the moment of writing there are 1,000,000 men at each other's throats in the Balkans, there is a revolution in Mexico, and incipient anarchy in Central America; as an emollient to this, Great Britain is about to present a bust of the late King Edward to the Peace Palace at the Hague! I can imagine myself saying "Pretty pussy, nice pussy," to the wild-cats I have shot in Nebraska and Dakota, but I should not be here if I had; and however small my value to the world I live in, I estimate it as worth at least a ton of wild-cats.

I am bound, however, in fairness to call the attention of the unwary dabbler in statistics to a point of grave importance in dealing with German finances. The German Empire, so far as expenditure and income are concerned, is merely an office, a clearing-house so to speak, for the states which together make up the empire. The expenses of the empire, for example, in 1910 were $757,900,000 and of the army and navy, including extraordinary expenditures, $314,919,325; this does not include pensions, clerical expenses, interest, sinking-fund, and loss of productive labor, as did the figures on a preceding page. To the ignorant or to the malicious, who quote these figures to bolster up a socialist or pacifist preachment, this looks as though Germany had spent one half of her grand total on the army and navy. But this is quite wrong. In addition to the expenditures of this imperial clearing-house called the German Empire, there was spent by the states $1,467,325,000: the so-called clearinghouse bearing the whole burden of expenses for army and navy, the separate states nothing except the per capita tax, called the matriculation tax, of some 80 pfennigs. To make this matter still more clear, as it is a constant source of error not only to the foreigner but to the Germans themselves, the income of the empire for 1910 was $757,900,000, the income of all the states $1,463,150,000, or of the empire and the states combined $2,221,050,000. In the same way the debt of the empire in 1910 stood at $1,224,150,000, and the debt of the states of the empire at $3,856,325,000, or a grand total outstanding indebtedness of all Germany of $5,080,475,000.

Of late years the imperial expenditure of Great Britain, for example, has amounted to some $935,000,000 a year; but various local bodies spend also some $900,000,000 a year. Some of this is cross-spending, but the grand total amounts to some $1,500,000,000 a year.

Before writing or speaking of Germany it is well to know at least what Germany is. To pick up a hand-book and to quote therefrom the figures relating to the German Empire, as though these covered Germany, as is often done, is as accurate and helpful to the inquirer, as though one should take the figures of the New York clearing-house as accurate descriptions of the total and detailed business of all the New York banks and trust companies. A clearing-house is merely a piece of machinery for the adjustment of differences between a host of debtors and creditors. The comparative cost of the German army and navy can only be figured properly against the income and expenditure of the total wealth of all Germany. And all Germany is something more than the German Empire, which in certain respects is only a book-keeper, an adjuster of differences.

"Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland? Ist's Preussenland? Ist's Schwabenland? Ist's wo am Rhein die Rebe blueht? Ist's wo am Belt die Moeve zieht? O nein! O nein! O nein! Sein Vaterland muss groesser sein.

"Des ganze Deutschland soil es sein! O Gott vom Himmel, sieh' darein, Und gib uns rechten deutschen Muth; Dass wir es lieben treu und gut! Des soil es sein! des soil es sein! Des ganze Deutschland soll es sein!"

The official title of the sovereign is not Emperor of Germany, or Emperor of the Germans, but German Emperor. Thus the territorial rights of other heads of states are safeguarded. Even the popularity of the first Emperor, who wished to be named Emperor of Germany and who disputed with Bismarck for hours over the question, could not bring this about, and he was proclaimed at Versailles merely German Emperor.

However heavy the burden of armament may be, we must be careful to put such expenditure in its proper perspective and in its proper relations, not only to the German Empire, which for official, clerical, and statistical matters is quite a different entity, but to "das ganze Deutschland." The German Empire is the clearinghouse, the adjutant, the executive officer, the official clerk, the representative in many social, financial, military, and diplomatic capacities of Germany; but it is not, and never for a moment should be confused with, what all Germans love, and what it has cost them blood and tears and great sacrifices to bring into the circle of the nations, the German Fatherland!

In 1910 the total funded debt of the empire amounted to 4,896,600,000 marks, and the debt in 1912 had risen to 5,396,887,801 marks. In the six years ending March, 1911, Germany's debt increased by $415,000,000.

In 1910 the funded debt of Germany (empire and states) was $4,896,600,000; of France $6,905,000,000; of England $3,894,500,000, and of Russia $4,880,750,000. It is a curious psychical and social phenomenon that, though we are as suspicious as criminals of one another's good faith in keeping the peace, we are veritable angels of innocence in trusting one another financially, for back of these huge debts we keep in ready money, that is, gold, to pay them: Germany at the present writing $275,000,000 in the Reichsbank; France $640,000,000 in the Bank of France; England a paltry $175,000,000 in the Bank of England; and Russia $625,000,000 in the Bank of Russia. We all live upon credit, an elastic moral tie which seems to be illimitably stretchable, and both a nation's and an individual's wealth is measured not by what he has, but by what he is, that is to say, by his character or credit. It is startling to find how we distrust one another along certain lines and how we trust one another along others. The total amount of gold in these four countries would just about pay the interest at four per cent. for two years on their total indebtedness!

From what we have seen of the proportion of expenditure that goes to military purposes, it cannot be denied that Germany is increasing her liabilities at an extraordinary rate, and largely for purposes of protection. In the last two years the interest on her increased debt alone, at four per cent., amounts to $5,000,000; while the interest at four per cent. upon military expenditures of all kinds amounts to the tidy sum of $20,000,000 per annum. The German, however, faces these facts and figures, not as a matter of choice, not as a matter of insurance wholly, but as a hard necessity. It is what the delayed conversion of the world is costing him, not to speak of what it costs the rest of us. He is surrounded by enemies; he is not by nature a fighting man; his whole industrial and commercial progress and his amassed wealth have come from training, training, training; and he sees no alternative, and I am bound to say that I see none either, but a nation trained also to defence, cost what it may.

The last German estimates (1912) balance with a revenue and expenditure of $671,222,605. The naval expenditure is put at $114,306,575; the army expenditure is put at $192,627,080. Both the army and navy are being largely increased. In the year 1916 the strength of the navy is expected to be about 79,000 men, and of the army and navy combined 767,000. In the last ten years two nations have almost doubled their naval personnel: Germany has increased hers from 31,157 to 60,805, and Austria-Hungary from 9,069 to 17,277. In Great Britain the increase has been about one seventh, and this one seventh is about equal to the present strength of Austria.

The gross naval expenditure, estimated, of the United States for 1912 amounts to $132,848,030, and the number of men 63,468. The gross naval expenditure of Great Britain, estimated, for the same year is put at $224,410,235, and the number of men 134,000. The gross naval expenditure of Germany is put at $114,306,575, which includes $489,235 for air-ships and experiments therewith, the number of men 66,783. France proposes to spend, plus an addition due to operations in Morocco, $90,000,000, number of men 58,404; and Japan $44,309,145, number of men 49,389. Two new corps have been voted for the German army, to be numbered 24 and 25; one is for the Russian frontier, with head-quarters at Allenstein, and the other for the French frontier, with head-quarters at Sarrebourg or Mulhouse. A German army corps on a war footing comprises about 52,000 men, with 150 guns and 16,000 horses. The reader should notice, as a reminder of the still latent jealousies of the different states of the German Empire, that the three army corps raised in Bavaria are not numbered consecutively, twenty-one, twenty-two, and twenty-three, but one, two, and three!

To the American the pay of the German troops, officers and men, is ludicrously small. It is evident that men do not undertake to fit themselves to be officers, and to struggle through frequent and severe examinations to remain officers, for the pay they receive. A lieutenant receives for the first three years $300 a year, from the fourth to the sixth year $425, from the seventh to the ninth year $495, from the tenth to the twelfth year $550, and after the twelfth year $600 a year. A captain receives from the first to the fourth year $850, from the fifth to the eighth year $1,150, and the ninth year and after $1,275 a year. Of one hundred officers who join, only an average of eight ever attain to the command of a regiment. In Bavaria and Wuertemberg, promotion is quicker by from one to three years than in Prussia. In Prussia promotion to Oberleutnant averages 10 years, to captain or Rittmeister 15 years, to major 25 years, to colonel 33 years, and to general 37 years. It would not be altogether inhuman if these gentlemen occasionally drank a toast to war and pestilence!

A commanding general, or general inspector of cavalry or field artillery, receives $3,495; a division commander, or inspector of cavalry, field and heavy artillery, $3,388; a brigade commander, $2,565; commander of a regiment, or officer of the general staff of the same rank, $2,193. There are various additions to these sums for travelling, keep of horses, house-rent, and the like. All soldiers and officers travel at reduced rates on the railways, and are allowed a certain amount of luggage free. It is a commentary upon the three nations, that in Germany the soldier receives a reduced rate when travelling, in England the golfer pays a reduced rate, and in America, until lately, the politicians were given free passes. One could almost produce the three countries from that limited knowledge.

At the cadet school at Gross Lichterfelde there are a thousand pupils. They are taught riding, swimming, dancing, French, English, mathematics, and of course receive technical military instruction. The fee is $200, but for the sons of officers, and according to their means, the fees are reduced to $112, $75, and even as low as $22, and in some deserving cases no fee at all is charged.

There is no professional army in Germany, as in England and in America. Every German who is physically fit must serve practically from the age of seventeen to forty-five. Those in the infantry serve two years; those in the cavalry and horse artillery and mounted rifles, three years. About forty-eight per cent. who are examined are rejected as unfit, not necessarily because they are incapable of service, but because the expense of training all is too great. These men receive 40 pfennigs a day, 27 pfennigs being deducted for their food.

There are some 40,000 men who join the army voluntarily for a term of two or three years, and who re-enlist and become non-commissioned officers, and if they remain twelve years they are entitled to $200 on leaving the service, and head the lists of candidates for the railway, postal, police, street-cleaning, and other civil services. Some 10,000 men who have passed a certain examination serve only one year and are entitled to certain privileges.

Each man in the infantry serves 2 years in the active army, 5 years in the active reserve, 5 years in the first division of the Landwehr, 6 years in the second division of the Landwehr, and 6 years in the Landsturm. Colonel Gaedke calculates that Germany has now under arms not less than 714,000 soldiers and sailors, and that 4,800,000 can be put into the field if wanted out of the 6,000,000 who have done service with the colors. Out of this enormous total, practically none, according to the last census, is illiterate. Our American census of 1910 gives the number of men of militia age in New England as 1,458,900, and in the whole country 20,473,684.

Promotion from the ranks, as we understand it, is practically unknown. The German officers pass through the ranks, it is true, as part of their education at the beginning of their military career, but those who do so join in the beginning as candidates for commissions, and have been provisionally accepted by the commander and officers of the regiment they propose to join, as must every candidate for a commission in the German army. If the candidate is not wanted, it is hinted to him that this is the case, and he must go elsewhere, as this decision is final. Every German regiment's officers' mess is thus in some sort a club.

Officers are supplied from the cadet corps, and from those who join the ranks as candidates for commissions. All cadets must pass through a war-school before obtaining a commission. Of these there are 10 in Prussia, Wuertemberg, and Saxony, and 1 at Munich in Bavaria. They there receive their commissions as second lieutenants. There are 9 Prussian schools, the Hauptkadettenanstalt at Gross Lichterfelde, and 8 Kadetten-Haeuser; and 1 at Dresden and 1 at Munich. Some of these I have visited, and been made at home with the greatest courtesy and hospitality. These German cadet schools are to a great extent charitable institutions for the sons of officers and civilian officials. The charges range, as I have indicated above, from $200 a year to nothing at all.

There are in addition schools of musketry, a school for instruction in machine-gun practice, instruction in infantry battalion practice, a school of military gymnastics, of military equitation, officers' riding-schools, a military technical academy at Charlottenburg, where officers may study the technical engineering and communication services, an artillery and engineer school at Munich, a field-artillery school of gunnery, a foot-artillery school of gunnery, a cavalry telegraph school, and the staff colleges.

Of technical military matters I know nothing. I have some experience in handling horses in harness and under saddle, and on subjects with which I am familiar I venture to pass judgments in the class-room. I have visited many of these class-rooms, and listened to the teaching and lectures in French, English, strategy, and political geography, and kindred topics, and if the rest of the instruction is on a par with what I heard there is no criticism to be made. I may not say where, but one of the instructors in French was a real pleasure to listen to.

The courses and examinations which lead up, in the Kriegesakademie, or staff college, to the grade of fitness for the general staff, or the technical division of the general staff, or administrative staff work, or employment as instructors, are of the very stiffest. An officer who succeeds in reaching such proficiency, that he is sent up to the general staff must be a very blue ribbon of a scholar in his own field.

The quarters, the food, the training, are Spartan indeed at the cadet schools, but how valuable that is, is shown in the faces, manners, physique, and general bearing of the picked youths one sees at the Kriegesakademie in Berlin. No one after seeing these fellows would deny for a moment the value of a sound, hard discipline. The same may be seen at our own West Point, where the transformation of many a country bumpkin, into an officer and a gentleman, in four years is almost unbelievable.

The truth is that most of us suffer from lack of discipline, and the intelligent men of every nation will one day insist that, if the state is to meddle in insurance and other matters, it must logically, and for its own salvation, demand compulsory service; not necessarily for war, but for social and economic peace within its own boundaries. It is a political absurdity that you may tax individuals to provide against accident and sickness to themselves, but that you may not tax individuals by compulsory service to provide against accident and sickness to the state. There can be nothing but ultimate confusion where the state pays a man if he is ill, pays him if he is hurt, pays him when he is old, and yet does not force him to keep well, and thus avoid accident and a pauper's old age by obliging him to submit to two or three years' sound physical training. Whether the training is done with a gun or without it matters little. Most men of our breed like to know how to kill things, so that a gun would probably be an inducement.

The more one knows of the severe demands upon the officers of the German army and of their small pay, the more one realizes that if they are not angels there must be some further explanation of their willingness to undertake the profession. First of all, the Emperor is a soldier and wears at all times the soldier's uniform. Further, he gives from his private purse a small allowance monthly to the poorer officers of the guard regiments. A German officer receives consideration on all sides, whether it be in a shop, a railway-carriage, a drawing-room, or at court.

To a certain extent his uniform is a dowry; he expects and often gets a good marriage portion in return for his shoulder-straps and brass buttons; and in every case it gives him a recognized social position, in a country where the social lines are drawn far more strictly than in any other country outside of Austria and India. This constant wearing of the sword is no new thing. Tacitus, who would have been an uncompromising advocate of compulsory service had he lived in our time, writes: "A German transacts no business, public or private, without being completely armed. The right of carrying arms is assumed by no person whatever till the state has declared him duly qualified." It is the recognized occupation of the nobility, and, in very many families, a tradition. In the army of Saxony, on January 1, 1911, out of every hundred officers of the war ministry, of the general commands, and of the higher staff, 44.33 per cent. were noblemen; of the officers of the infantry, 26.19 were noblemen; of the cavalry, 60.92 were noblemen; and of the officers of the entire army, all arms, 24.98 were noblemen.

It is worth chronicling in this connection, for the benefit of those who wish a real insight into German social life, that few people discriminate between the old nobility, or men who take their titles from the possession of land and their descendants, and the new and morbidly disliked nobility, who have bought or gained their patents of nobility, as is done often enough in England, by profuse contributions to charity or to semi-political and cultural undertakings favored by the court, or by direct contributions to party funds, by valuable services rendered, or by mere length of service. This new nobility, anxious about their status, satisfied to have arrived, jealous of rivals, are the dead weight which ties Germany fast to bureaucratic government and to a policy of no change. They represent, even in educated Germany, a complacent mediocrity; indignant at rebuke, indifferent to progress, heedless of experience, impatient of criticism, haters of haste, and jealous of superiority. Even Bismarck, the creator of this bureaucracy, lamented the insolence and bad manners of the state servants.

The essential and ever-present quality of the real aristocrat and of a real aristocracy is, of course, courage. It may dislike change, but it is not afraid of it. The real gentleman, of course, does not care whether he is a gentleman or not. The characteristic of an artificial, tailor-made aristocracy is timidity and a shrinking from change. This new nobility, created because it is carefully charitable, or serviceable, or long in office, is not only in possession of the civil service, but occupies high posts in the army and navy. While not minimizing its value, it is everywhere maintained in Germany that it acts as a bulwark against progress. They are a nobility of office-holders, and they partake of the qualities and characteristics of the office-holder everywhere. They sometimes forget the country in the office; while the older nobility, which made Germany, despises the office except as an instrument or weapon to be used for the welfare of the country. The political pessimism in Germany to-day is caused by, and comes from, this army of the new nobility.

Americans and English both write of Germany, and speak of it, as being in the grip of a small group of aristocrats. Not at all; it is in the shaky and self-conscious control of men whose patents of nobility were given them with their office, a titled bureaucracy, in short. Let us prove this statement by running through the list of the chief officers of the state. Of the officials of the German Empire: the chancellor's grandfather, Bethmann-Hollweg, was a professor, and afterward minister of education; the secretary of state's father was plain Herr Kiderlein-Waechter; the under-secretary of state is Herr Zimmermann; the secretary of the interior is Herr Delbrueck; of finance, Herr Wermuth; of justice, Herr Lisco; of the navy, von Tirpitz, who was recently ennobled; the postmaster is Herr Kraetke. Not one of these officials of the empire is of the old nobility!

Of the 11 ministers of the kingdom of Prussia, the minister for agriculture, von Schorlemer; for war, von Heeringen; for education, von Trott zu Solz; and for the interior, von Dallwitz, are of the old nobility; but the other 7 ministers are not. Of the 12 Oberpraesidenten, men who rule the provinces, 6 are noblemen; of the 37 Regierungspraesidenten, 14 are of the nobility, 23 are not. This should dispose finally of the frequently heard assertion that Germany and Prussia are ruled by a small group of the landed nobility and that there is no way open to the talents. It is fair to say that a very small and intimate court group do have a certain influence in naming the candidates for these posts, but they are too wily to keep these positions for themselves.

I suppose we all like, in a childish way, to wear placards of our prowess in the form of orders and decorations, but the evening attire of this bureaucratic nobility often looks as though there had been a ceramic eruption, a sort of measles of decorations. Men's breasts are covered with medals, stars, porcelain plaques, and their necks are hung with ribbons with a dangling medallion, all distributed from the patriarchal imperial Christmas-tree for every conceivable service from cleaning the streets to preaching properly on the imperial yacht. Men collect them as they would stamps or butterflies, and some of them must be very expert.

The officers and the officials who are recognized as giving their services as a family tradition, as a patriotic service, or out of sheer love of the profession of arms, are rather liked than disliked, and give a tone and set a standard for all the rest. Both these officers and their men are respected. Of no German soldier could it be written:

"I went into a theatre as sober as could be, They gave a drunk civilian room, but 'adn't none for me; They sent me to the gallery or round the music-'alls, But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls."

On the contrary, every effort is made to keep the army pleased with itself and proud of itself. The chancellor of the empire is always given military rank; officers are not allowed to marry unless they have, or acquire by marriage, a suitable income; the dignity of the officer is upheld and his pride catered to; officers are made to feel that they are the darlings of the Fatherland by everybody from the Emperor down.

This artificial stimulant goes far to keep them contented, and the fact that the scale of comfortable living in Germany was twenty years ago far below, and is even now not equal to, that of the equivalent classes with us makes the task easier. They have not been taught to want the things we want, and are still satisfied with less. And back of and behind it all is the feeling among the leaders, that the army furnishes no small amount of the patriotic cement necessary to hold Germany together. Ulysses lashed himself to the mast as he passed the sirens of luxury and leisure, and for the German Ulysses the army supplies the cords. It is not the foreign student of German life alone who notices that the Germans, even now, seem to be tribal rather than national. The best friends of Germany in Germany also recognize this weakness, comment upon it, and favor every possible expedient to overcome it.

I admit frankly my admiration for this Spartan three quarters of a million of soldiers and sailors, and their officers. It offers a splendid example of patriotism, of disregard for the weakening comforts, luxuries, and fussy pleasures that absorb too much of our vitality; and of disdain for the material successes, which in their selfish rivalry, breed the very industrial distresses which are now our problems. At least here is a large professional body whose aims, whose way of living, and whose earnings prove that there can be a social hierarchy not dependent upon money. It is one of the finest lessons Germany has to teach, and long may she teach it.

That is distinctly the side of the army that I know and approve without reserve. Of its value as a fighting force it would be ridiculous, in my case, to write. I have read and heard scores of criticisms and comments from many sources, and they range from those who claim that the German army is unbeatable, even if attacked from all sides, to those who maintain that it is already stale and mechanical.

The war of 1866, when Prussia represented Germany, lasted thirty-five days; the war against Denmark lasted six months and twelve days; the war against France lasted six months and nine days. Thirty-six German cavalry regiments did not lose a man during the whole campaign of 1870-1871; and the Sixth Army Corps was hardly under fire. There has been no long, practical, and therefore decisive test of the army. Of the transport and commissary services during the French war, when Germany toward the end of it had 630,000 men in the field, certainly we, with the deplorable mismanagement and scandal of our Spanish war, and the British with the investigations after the Egyptian campaign fresh in memory, have nothing to say, except that it was wholly admirable and beyond the breath of suspicion of greed, thievery, or political chicanery. There was no rotten leather, and no poisoned beef.

Officers, too, in the French war, were called upon to do their duty and to obey, and no individual brilliancy which interfered with the general plan was condoned or pardoned, no matter how highly placed the relatives or how influential the connections of the offender. A distinguished general, after a successful and heroic victory, who had been tempted into a bloody battle against orders, was called before his superiors, told that the first lesson the soldier had to learn was obedience, and sent home! A brother of the chief of staff went into the war a captain and came back a captain!

I am wondering what our underpaid, unnoticed regulars in the army and navy would have to say, were they free to speak, of the conduct of our last martial escapade with Spain, by our press and by our politicians. There would be no stories of the German kind, I am sure, and no single record of an influential civilian who did not get all the glory that he deserved. My impulsive countrymen are always manufacturing heroes and saviors, but fortunately the crosses upon which they crucify them are erected almost as fast as the crowns are nicely fitted and comfortable, so that there is little danger of permanent tyranny. What Richelieu said of the French applies to some extent to ourselves: "Le propre du caractere francais c'est que, ne se tenant pas fermement au bien, il ne s'attache non plus longtemps au mal."

During and after the Franco-German war there was no cheap heroism, no feminine excitability producing litters of heroes; no slobbering, osculatory advertising; no press undertaking the duties of a general staff, which in our Spanish war almost completely clouded the real heroism and patriotism that were in evidence. There were no newspaper-made heroes, hastening back to exchange cheap military glory for votes and delicious notoriety. For all of which, gentlemen, let us thank God, and give praise where it is due.