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.
The army, too, is an interesting commentary upon the changes that are
so rapidly taking place in Germany, from an agricultural to a
manufacturing nation. Of every 100 recruits that presented themselves
there were passed as fit, in 1902, for the First Army Corps, of those
from the country 72.76; of those from the towns 63.88; in 1910 these
figures had fallen to 67.24 and 53.66. In the Second Army Corps the
recruits passed as fit, from the towns, had fallen from 60.74 in 1902
to 50.42 in 1910. In the Fifth Army Corps, of recruits from the towns
the percentage of those passed fell from 60.07 to 46.13. In the Sixth
Army Corps the percentage fell from 50.14 to 43.83. In the Sixteenth
Army Corps from 67.50 to 58.80. In the Eighteenth Army Corps the
recruits from the towns passed as fit had fallen from 60.46 in 1902 to
46.58 in 1910. The average for the whole empire, of those from the
towns passed as fit, had fallen from 53.52 in 1902 to 47.87 in 1910.
The First Army Corps has its head-quarters at Koenigsberg, and recruits
from that neighborhood; the Second Army Corps has its head-quarters at
Stettin, and recruits from Pomerania; the Fifth Army Corps has its
headquarters at Posen, and recruits from Posen and Lower Silesia; the
Sixth Army Corps has its head-quarters at Breslau, and recruits from
Silesia; the Sixteenth Army Corps has its headquarters at Metz, and
recruits from Lorraine; the Eighteenth Army Corps has its head-quarters
at Frankfurt-am-Main, and recruits from that neighborhood.
These figures are enough to make my point, without giving the
statistics for all the twenty-three corps, which is, that in spite of
the precautions taken, the German recruit, especially from the towns,
in whatever part of the country, is losing vigor and stamina.
Even this hard-and-fast arrangement of a bureaucratic government with
a military backbone does not solve all the problems. When one sees,
however, the German school-boy, and the German recruit during the
first weeks of his training, in the barracks and out, and I have
watched thousands of them, and then looks over this same material
after two or three years of training, it is hard to believe that they
are the same, and that even these hard-working officers have been able
to bring about such a change.