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246 Militarism and Democracy in Germany
riers—men from every humble and honorable
walk in life.
There is similarly no discrimination
among regiments when war is on; as far
as this the General Staff's democracy extends.
Whatever the prestige of a regiment
in peace times, whether it be the
Garde du Corps, the crack cavalry regiment,
or the Death's Head Hussars, until
lately commanded by the Crown Prince,
or one of the Imperial Infantry Guards,
it meets with no other consideration than
that of the most plebeian infantry regiment
when the fighting is under way. It
makes no difference if ever)' officer in it is
of ancient and noble lineage. The Guards
are reported to have been among the
heaviest losers in the present war, precisely
as at St. Privat in 1870, when five
battalions lost every officer and were
fighting under their sergeants when the
day was won. It is just the same with
the Kaiser's younger sons; they have gone
into the actual welter of battle exactly
as if offspring of the humblest Westphalian
peasant, Prince Joachim being
wounded by shrapnel and Prince Oscar
collapsing from exhaustion and heart
weakness after a charge at the head of his
regiment against Turcos, whose bullets
laid low most of his regimental officers.
The Crown Prince may be safe by reason
of his being the nominal commander of an
army, but his brothers are alive to-day
only by the fortunes of war. Not unnaturally
the German press has drawn
biting contrasts between the sons of the
Kaiser and the Prince of Wales, who, it
was officially announced in England, was,
at twenty, not sufficiently trained as a
soldier to go to the front until three and
a half months of war had passed. That
the privilege of dying as the German General
Staff wills belongs to princes as much
as to anybody else is attested by the death
of Lieutenant-General Frederick, Prince
of Saxe-Meiningen, a brother-in-law of
the Kaiser's sister and of other notables.
But the brief for the democracy of the
German army does not end here. It
enforces, so its adherents claim, a fine
standard of personal conduct, of physical
vigor, and of loyalty to King and country
throughout the nation. The army takes as they tell it.
the humblest conscript, however ignorant
and lacking in self-respect, and turns him
out a decent, healthy citizen with a fine
physique, excellent carriage, inured to
heavy burdens, long marches, and absolute
obedience. If he is a dull clodhopper
from a Polish province, unable to speak
German, the recruit is taught his King's
language and how to write it; he learns,
as Kipling puts it, to "wash behind his
ears," how to eat, how to walk, how to
keep himself scrupulously neat, and how
to think for himself.
The great lesson of subordination to authority
is thus learned, and in many cases
self-restraint, as a result of methods which
are applied just as rigorously to the son of
a millionaire or of an aristocrat. The natural
German love of outdoors and of exercise
in the open is intensified by service
with the colors; a genuine comradeship
with men in all walks of life springs up,
and with it comes the ability to feel as a
German, to think in terms of the nation,
whose patriotic songs one and all sing as
they march, for singing is a wise requirement
of the German military training.
Certainly, as the English military reports
have so generously attested, this training
teaches men to face certain death for the
Fatherland with a devotion never surpassed
by Occidentals and equalling the
stoical and fatalistic pursuance of death
by Orientals. Again, the wonderful thoroughness
of the military machine leaves
its impress upon all who are for a time of
its cogs, and to it is attributed some of
that unequalled efficiency of the Germans
to which the nation owes its extraordinary
national rise and prosperity. The army
is, in other words, regarded as a vital part
of the great German system of education.
If this were all to be said of German
militarism its case would be, perhaps, won.
England and the United States might then
be tempted to add a similar course to their
educational system. But there is the
other side.
It is hard to conceive of a closer corporation
or a more autocratic body than
the German General Staff; it is the army
to which it gives the dominating note. It
is a group of aggressive, hard-working, exceptionally
able officers, envied by soldiers
all over the world because the nation does
In 1913, when they demanded
one hundred and forty thousand
more men, the war minister acted as their