Fore-armed

Military authorities agree that the German army organization surpasses all others. The present European war is the test that has demonstrated this fact. German national standards and American national standards are as far apart as the poles. The Prussian government scorns all democratic ideals and militarism pervades every cranny of the social structure. Notwithstanding these conditions, as we are searching for an ideal military system, we cannot afford to overlook the best the war has developed.

All who have given the subject any study have a general idea of the military demands made upon the German citizen. It may be well, however, to insert an epitome of the scheme in order to analyze it.

In Germany, military service is universal and compulsory, but before the present war there were many exemptions from duty with the colors. On his seventeenth birthday the young German was liable for the call, but actual military work never began until he reached his twentieth year. At forty-five his service ceased.

During these twenty-five years of liability for duty, the German compasses the entire gamut of military instruction. For seven years he trains with the first line, active, or what is commonly known as the standing army. The initial two years are spent in the ranks, where the recruit is grounded in every detail of the duties of the soldier. The instruction is imparted with a thoroughness equaled in no other army. There have been, also, undoubted cases of unnecessary severity. These are not the outcome of the system, but one of its evils, and form the exception rather than the rule. While the instruction is imparted with unusual strictness, it is policy to be just and, from the point of view of the German who has passed his whole life under restraint, the character of discipline employed is nothing extraordinary. From the strictly professional point of view the means are justified by the results. Frederick the Great himself could find few flaws in the German active army.

As the seeds of American military training were planted by a German, one who had served on the staff of Frederick the Great, we have a parallel by which we can gain some idea of the German period of instruction. The German system works along the same lines as those pursued in the Regular Army in the United States, with this exception: in the United States the recruit is encouraged to do some of his own thinking; in Germany he is never expected to think. In Germany the instruction is given under the strictest conditions conceivable. Once the soldier joins his company, he is assigned a number and his bed in barracks and thereafter he becomes as a cog in a great machine. While the preliminary training follows the accepted lines, it is more thorough and more exacting than the course of instruction in any other army. In addition to his marching, drilling and purely military work, the soldier does all the manual labor about the barracks. Of course, the soldiers do their own cooking and tailoring, they also perform all the “domestic” service of the barracks and the many demands incident to the upkeep of a large army post. The routine of the day begins with the cleaning-up of quarters and an inspection. Then the drilling is taken up and continued practically without break until noon. Various instruction will be undertaken in the afternoons, its character depending upon the season of the year. More time is spent on actual individual instruction than in any other army, and no man is graduated out of the awkward squad until he is perfect in the details of his work.

The soldier is under absolute restraint while in barracks and he can only leave his quarters with permission. His amusements and pleasures are limited and, of course, he must wear his uniform on all occasions.

The German passes through the ordinary instruction of squad, section, company and battalion during his first year service and as soon as the period for Grand Maneuvers arrives he is supposed to be well enough instructed to carry his pack and perform the trying test of that time without breaking down. These maneuvers take place during the summer at some of the various grounds scattered over Germany. The Kaiser maneuvers, when the whole of Germany’s fighting strength is assembled, are the climax of the German soldiers’ career.

During his instruction period the German recruit finds that he is happier if he performs his many duties letter perfect. And it goes much better with him if he fits himself in with the system and its prejudices. While he is in the army, his spirit is being moulded to ideals that are the foundation of the German Empire.

Following the two-year period, when all is subordinated to military training and the German citizen gives his complete time and thought to the army, he passes into the reserve for five years, where he still belongs to his corps and is obliged to join it twice for two terms of training, limited by law to eight weeks. In custom these periods seldom lasted more than a month or six weeks. The length of service in the cavalry and artillery is somewhat longer.

The next stage of the German’s military life is passed with the first “Ban” of the second line army or Landwehr. Liability for this duty lasts five years. During these years the Landwehr men are called out twice for war maneuvers, serving from eight to fourteen days on each occasion. This ends his active military instruction. The German citizen is assigned to the second Ban of the Landwehr until he has completed his thirty-ninth year, where no special training is required.

The Landsturm is the final stage of the German’s military life. This organization is nominally a home guard of all men from forty to forty-five years of age who have passed through the prescribed course of training in the army. Besides these men, the enrolment of the Landsturm includes the untrained subjects of the Kaiser between thirty-nine and forty-five. Properly, this elderly contingent is the second division of the home guard. The first division takes in all the citizens of the Empire between the ages of seventeen and thirty-nine who, for one reason or another, received no military training. Enrolling such units in the Landsturm keeps before all citizens the fact of duty for defense of the Fatherland. There are many ways in which a citizen may serve his country besides fighting in the front-line trenches.

Other categories of reserves are organized, the most important being the Ersatz, which is composed of young men about twenty years old physically and mentally fit for service, but in excess of the numbers normally needed to complete the peace time strength of the standing army. The Ersatz, undergoes three terms of training of ten, six and four weeks respectively. When the German army mobilized in July, 1914, many of the youths volunteered for duty with the colors, while the rest were mustered into service with fully trained reserves. A part of the Ersatz is assigned non-combatant duties.

Leaving out of consideration the demands of present war conditions, Germany with a population of over 66,000,000 had over 1,000,000 citizens present themselves for service each year. About fifty per cent were rejected on various counts. Of the remainder, 250,000 were actually drafted for duty with the colors.

That a man is rejected does not mean that he is entirely unfitted for military duty. In the German service, of all who presented themselves, only the best are chosen. (I refer, of course, to conditions before the present war.) It has been found that in the scheme of the organization of the German army, 250,000 recruits are all that can be effectively handled each year, so a selection is made out of all who present themselves under the yearly call, and the rest are excused. Of the number actually rejected as unfit, a large proportion belong to the class defective in eyesight.

Scrutinizing this program of military work, we see that the economic life of the ordinary citizen is actually interrupted during a two-year period. The secondary training terms are actually vacations for the hard-working German. The whole business and industrial life of the Empire is organized to meet the demands of these interruptions. Notice is always given in good time when the reserves of the active army are to be called for their supplementary period of service, and the large and small industrial organizations throughout the Empire take the necessary measures to adjust themselves to the loss of time involved. It has been found in practice that the actual working efficiency of an employee is improved by these short absences from work.

When the German citizen has passed into the Landwehr and the Landsturm, the short periods of training required of him have no appreciable effect upon the economical life of the Empire. So, although the German system looks very formidable, through the statement that a man is liable for service for a period of twenty-five years, an examination of his service shows that he devotes only two uninterrupted years to military training.

It is no easy matter to introduce an outsider into a sort of camera obscura where the German viewpoint on militarism will be revealed. In Prussia the content of the word is an inheritance passed on to the whole German people by Frederick the Great. Yes, the germ of the idea was planted by the Great Elector when Prussia was a minor principality of little more importance in Europe at the time than Paraguay is in South America today. Any German will tell you, with sincerest conviction, that the strength—and he means the wealth—of the nation is the blossoming offshoot of the military tree. Disinterested political economists partly agree with this contention. The men brought up in the German ideal cannot see, and will not admit it has unlovely sides. Far from having a warping effect on the mind, the subject of the Kaiser firmly believes the intellectual standard of Germany is founded on military training. In a conversation with a German reserve officer in Berlin during the early months of the war, I got the Teuton argument in a sentence. “The Army is the poor man’s University.” Anyone who has made a study of the German system must agree in large measure with this dictum. My informant, who had spent several years in the United States and knew our prejudices, went on to explain:

“In the army our citizen receives the cheapest, most thorough and scientific education of its kind known to pedagogy. His mind is trained. His muscles are trained. His spirit is trained. After two years he is a complete mental, physical and moral entity.”

It was a broad statement, but, allowing for native enthusiasm, accurate. The officer paused as if seeking in his mind a concrete expression of his argument.

“The goose step!” His eyes lighted at the words. “Let me tell you a secret: German soldiers enjoy the ‘goose step.’ It is the outward sign of their devotion to an ideal. Psychologists will assure you that when a man has complete control of his muscles—such control as develops in army work—his mental efficiency is enormously increased. But this is not news to you. You have seen it with your own recruits. Nicht wahr?”

I was constrained to admit that my observation, to a certain degree, bore out his statements, but I could not allow that this result could only be accomplished in military training.

“Would that those who criticize our German system could see some of the concrete results. Take men from the mountains of Silesia. Many do not know their right hand from their left. They cannot read or write. The word cleanliness is absent from their vocabulary. As your poet said, they are brothers to the ox. After two years’ hammering (this is a quotation) ‘the peasant is transformed. He has learned to read and write. He is clean, orderly, punctual, obedient, a credit to the Empire.’ Such is the pernicious result of militarism!”

Passing to generalities, my companion continued:

“In the army the people are welded into one efficient national machine, a highly trained social machine, with all its component parts working toward a common end—the German Ideal.”

Of course, this was an officer stating his views; but he was not a regular, only a reserve, and so not wholly tainted with the professional habit of mind; in fact, I found practically the same view of the effect of military training to be general throughout Germany. Bankers, merchants, artisans—all agreed that the greatness of the German Empire was firmly planted on the compulsory plan of service. When this is the consensus of opinion of practically an entire population who have tested the plan, the idea merits some hard thinking.

There are Germans who condemn the system of conscription. They are a minority so small that finding one is like hunting through oyster shells for pearls. The Socialists, as a party, oppose compulsory service. However, you must use a microphone to hear any criticism under present conditions. Dr. Karl Liebknecht, whom the German press would like to label as a bad boy of the Reichstag, is unutterably opposed to war and all the pomp, pageantry and prostration incident thereto. His effusions on the subject fill several handy volumes of the Reichstag Record. He feels so strongly on the point that once, on a “seeing-the-front party” where I was a guest, this distinguished statesman for a long time refused to appear on the same film in a war writers’ group because some “feldgrau Pickelhauben”⁠[A] filled the background. As his colleagues, we insisted he should take the center. He consented; but when one of the officers, without a smile, politely invited Herr Liebknecht to join an exclusive military group he intimated that to do so would insure something worse than eternal damnation. And Liebknecht is elected regularly. Ernest Meyer, the plodding editor of Vorwaerts, is also anti-militarist.

The German military instructor has not the same material to work with as is found in Switzerland. Though the educational plan adopted includes first-class physical instruction in public schools, it is natural that general results, in so large a population, could not be so good as in the smaller country. Yet this fault is cured in the army.

Again, the army is the economic ally of German industrialism. When a butcher, a baker, a barber, is enrolled he takes his place in the specific department of the organization for which his training fits him; and then and there his industrial efficiency advances. He is taught to be a clean and saving butcher. As a baker he is taught the chemistry of dough, in addition to practical bread making. The barber becomes a rapid-fire artist. All learn the vital lesson of hygiene as reflected in their special trades. It is unnecessary to multiply examples. The same principles hold with shoemakers, farriers, tailors, carpenters. In after life it is always the artisan who has completed his two years’ service who gets the most work in his village.

There can be no quarrel with the results produced on the individuals by army training. The salient fact that merits criticism is the domination of national existence by military principles. The army is a fetish in Germany. The school-boy, on his way to his lessons, packs his books like a knapsack. Throughout his whole educational régime he is under a discipline only little less exacting than that which he will encounter in the army. Germany prides itself upon discipline. As a broad discussion of it would only lead to the questions of exaltation or the suppression of individual effort, it finds no place here. When it comes to a choice, however, between the controlled agent and the uncontrolled in any sphere of life, there can be no disagreement. The German system must be judged from the German point of view, and not from the American.

One of the factors that has contributed more than others to the spread of military standards throughout Germany is the government ownership of railroads. The railroads are such an important part of a nation’s existence that any plan controlling them is sure to have an effect upon the people at large. The great German general staff, very rightly, consider the railroads as the first factor of the plan of national defense. Consequently, they must be at all times under military control. In no other manner would it be possible for German army administration to mobilize in the necessarily short time Germany’s geographical position demands. In time of peace, the railways are nominally under civilian control; this is theory and not fact. The heads of railway administration have rank in the army, and they understand perfectly what their immediate duties would be upon the declaration of war. So in gradation, from the highest officials down to the most insignificant brakeman, the whole railway personnel is organized on the military plan.

The tremendous advantage which this plan has given Germany will not be entirely revealed until long after the existing war is concluded. We can see the reflections of it, however, in the extraordinary capacity of German commanders for moving their forces over the most extensive areas in the shortest possible time.

With this symbol of militarism working through the daily life of the German—in the manner that railroad transportation is bound to do—it is readily understood how the essence of the evil tinctures the whole social structure. It goes without saying that the upper class in Germany stimulates domination by every means. They are very careful, however, to avoid all apparent injustice in this control, and assiduously foster the thought that it is only through a complete surrender of individual rights that the whole nation can advance to its ultimate destiny. Many of the pretentions of the Germans that have appeared outrageously presumptuous to other peoples are but expressions of this thought. And here we get the clue to the fallacy of the whole German system. It is militarism gone mad.

The many excellencies that result from military training are prostituted to unworthy ends. The essential fault of the soldier—vanity—has been emphasized and developed until it has become a national disease. It is from this seed that the German mania for impressing their standards of “kultur” upon the rest of the world has sprung.

From what proceeds it is easy to see how a discussion of the army plan in Germany leads to an analysis of the whole German political system; and would, if carried further, bring us face to face with the controversy of autocracy versus democracy. Nothing can be gained here from carrying the argument to such lengths. We wish to learn what to avoid in the German scheme, while selecting such excellencies as would fall in with American traditions and ideals.

Impartial observers are wont to state that America errs as much on the side of individual liberty as Germany does in the repression thereof. Obviously, no comprehensive design for military organization can be put into effect without the curtailment of personal freedom. In the United States we want to make this curtailment a voluntary sacrifice on the part of the individual. No citizen worthy of the name should hesitate to surrender, of his own accord, what he is disposed to consider an inalienable right, when he is convinced that in so doing he insures the safety of the nation. The sacrifices made by the German people are in response to the demand of the Kaiser, who is the sovereign. In like manner, American citizens must make similar sacrifices—modified, however, by altered conditions—for each individual citizen possesses in himself the attributes of sovereignty. Therefore, it is incumbent upon us to study this German plan, which has proved itself under the severest tests of war, and select therefrom what is necessary and suitable to national self-defense.

There is no possibility of our adopting any system tainted with militarism. When all is said and done, the greatest evil of what we classify under that term is the military caste. We must never have a military caste in the United States. The reader does not have to be reminded that the present American organization is an inheritance from Baron Frederick von Steuben, and is based upon a Prussian foundation. In a later chapter, a suggestion for modifying the system of educating officers for the army will be put forth. There is no real reason why the American youth who feels impelled to choose the military profession should not seek a congenial and moderately profitable existence in the army. With our American common-sense as a safeguard, there is very little likelihood of such an American developing into the sabre-clanking “Hauptmann.”

A detailed study of all the ramifications of the German military system belongs to the province of the professional soldier; not to the civilian. Daily, more and more data are coming to hand, throwing light upon the working, under the test of war, of the German organization.

This review of military conditions in Germany cannot be concluded without a statement of the cost of a peace army of 616,000 men. The military expenditure of the German Empire entered in the budget for 1914-15 amounted to $217,000,000. That such an enormous and complex organization can be financed for this moderate sum is the most important lesson to be learned from Germany.