University of Virginia Library

THE ARMY.

I.

The possession of a powerful and well-disciplined
Army is a sign of great excellence in a nation,
not only because the Army is a necessary stand-by
in our relations with other countries, but also
because a noble people with a glorious past will
be able to use its Army as a bloodless weapon for
long periods together. The Army will also be a
popular school for manly virtue in an age when
business and pleasure often cause higher things
to be forgotten. Of course, it must be admitted
that there are certain highly-strung and artistic
natures which cannot endure the burden of military
discipline. People of this kind often cause others
to hold quite erroneous views on universal service.
But in dealing with these great questions one
must not take abnormal persons as a standard,
but rather bear in mind the old adage, "Mens
sana in corpore sano." This physical strength
has particular significance in periods such as ours.
One of the shortcomings of English culture lies
in the fact that the English have no universal
military service. This fault is in some measure
atoned for on the one hand by the extraordinary

development of the Fleet, and on the other by
the never-ending little wars in countless colonies
which occupy and keep alive the virile forces of
the nation. The fact that great physical activity
is still to be observed in England is partly due to
the constant wars with the colonies. But a closer
view will reveal a very serious want. The lack
of chivalry in the English character, which presents
so striking a contrast with the naïve loyalty of the
Germans, has some connection with the English
practice of seeking physical exercise in boxing,
swimming, and rowing, rather than in the use of
noble arms. Such exercises are no doubt useful;
but no one can fail to observe that this whole
system of athletics tends to further brutalize the
mind of the athlete, and to set before men the
superficial ideal of being always able to carry off
the first prize.

The normal and most reasonable course for a
great nation to pursue is, therefore, to embody the
very nature of the State; that is to say, its strength,
in an ordered Army drawn from its people and
perpetually being improved. The ultra-sensitive
and philosophical mode of regarding these questions
has gone out of fashion among us who live
in a warlike age, so that we are able to come back
to the view of Clausewitz, who looked upon war
as a mighty continuation of politics. All the
peace-advocates in the world put together will
never persuade the political powers to be of one
mind, and as long as they differ, the sword is and

must be the only arbiter. We have learned to
recognize the moral majesty of war just in those
aspects of it which superficial observers describe
as brutal and inhuman. Men are called upon to
overcome all natural feeling for the sake of their
country, to murder people who have never before
done them any harm, and whom they perhaps
respect as chivalrous enemies. It is things such
as these that seem at the first glance horrible and
repulsive. Look at them again and you will see
in them the greatness of war. Not only the life
of man, but also the right and natural emotions
of his inmost soul, his whole ego, are to be sacrificed
to a great patriotic ideal; and herein lies the
moral magnificence of war. If we pursue this
idea still further, we shall see that in spite of its
hardness and roughness, war links men together
in brotherly love, for it levels all differences of
rank, and draws men together by a common sense
of the imminence of death. Every student of
history knows that to do away with war would
be to cripple human nature. No liberty can exist
without an armed force ready to sacrifice itself
for the sake of freedom. One cannot insist too
often on the fact that scholars never touch upon
these questions without presupposing that the
State only exists as a sort of academy of arts and
sciences. This is of course also part of its duty,
but not its most immediate duty. A State which
cultivates its mental powers at the expense of its
physical ones cannot fail to go to ruin.

Generally speaking, we must admit that the
greatness of historical life lies in character rather
than in education; the driving forces of history
are to be found on spheres where character is
developing. Only brave nations have any real
history. In the hour of trial in national life it becomes
evident that warlike virtues have the casting
vote. There is great truth in the old phrase
which described war as the examen rigorosum
of the States. In war, the States are called upon
to show, not only the extent of their physical,
but also of their moral power, and in a certain
measure of their intellectual capacity. . . . War
brings to light all that a nation has collected in
secret. It is not an essential part of the nature
of armies to be always fighting; the noiseless
labour of armament goes on equally in time of
peace. The entire value of the work done for
Prussia by Frederick William I did not appear until
the days of Frederick the Great, when the tremendous
force which had been slowly collecting suddenly
revealed itself to the world at large. The
same is true of the year 1866.

And just because war is nothing more than a
powerful embodiment of politics, its issues are
decided, not by technical factors alone, but chiefly
by the policy which directs it. It is very significant
that when Wrangel and Prittwitz might
have been able to get the better of the Danes in
1848, and 1849, the King, who seems to have
felt horror at the thought of taking this step, and

who, moreover, feared Russia, did not himself
know what he wanted. An Army can never be
expected to fight when its leaders are in doubt as
to the advisability of a particular military action.
Every war is by nature a radical one, and in many
cases the efficiency of the troops will prove useless
in face of the hesitation and aimlessness of the
policy which it serves. Remember the campaign
in Champagne in 1792. One technical superiority
of the Prussian and Austrian troops over the sans
culottes was at that date still very considerable,
and in the neighbourhood of Mannheim a single
battalion of the Wedell Regiment prevented two
French divisions from crossing the Rhine during
the whole of one day. But still the political result
of the war was the complete downfall of the coalition.
The Allies were not of one mind; their
policy lacked all definite aim, and the campaign
was being conducted at haphazard. Political
considerations of this kind, which interfere with
the strategy of the leaders, are particularly disastrous
in wars conducted by coalitions, and
history has often proved the truth of the line,
"the strong man is strongest when alone." In the
campaigns of 1813 and 1814, the incompetent
Prussian generals, in concert with the talented
Prussian commanders, carried on war to the knife,
whereas the more competent Austrians, who were
hindered by the aimless policy of their country,
showed themselves lukewarm and indifferent.
A policy such as that of the Austrians could not
hope to find a better commander than Schwarzenberg.
Many wars have been lost before they
were begun because they were the result of a
policy which did not know its own mind. Every
healthy-minded Army is conscious of a strong
sense of chivalry and personal honour. But under
certain circumstances this military sense of honour
becomes oversensitive. Abuses are, of course,
to be deplored, but this touchiness is in itself a
wholesome symptom. The duel is not a thing
which can be disregarded even among civilians.
In a democratic community the duel is the last
protest which can be made against a complete
subversion of social manners and customs. A
certain restraint is put upon a man by the thought
that he will risk his life by offending against social
usage; and it is better that now and then a promising
young life should be laid down than that
the social morality of a whole people should be
brutalized. A sense of class honour also fosters
the great moral strength which resides in the Army
and which is the cause of a large part of its effectiveness.
The officers would lose the respect of
their subordinates if they did not show a more
ticklish sense of honour and a finer breeding.
Since duelling was abolished in England, moral
coarseness in the Army has been on the increase,
and officers have been known to come to blows in
railway carriages in the very presence of their
wives. It is obvious how greatly such conduct
must impair the respect due from the men to their
superiors. The statement of the democrat that
a man of the lower classes will more readily obey
his equal than a gentleman is entirely false. The
respect of a soldier for a man of really distinguished
character will always be greater than his respect
for an old corporal. This truth was plainly demonstrated
in the last war, when it was found that
the French officers did not possess enough authority
over their men.

As warfare is but the tremendous embodiment
of foreign policy, everything relating to military
affairs must have a very intimate connection with
the constitution of the State, and, in its turn,
the particular organization of the Army must
determine which of many types of warfare shall
be followed. Because the Middle Ages were
aristocratic, most of the battles then fought
were between cavalry, which has always been the
pre-eminently aristocratic instrument of war.
The results of this idea may still be observed
to-day. Too great a preponderance of cavalry is
always a sign that the economic condition of a
nation is still defective, and that the power of the
aristocracy in the State is too absolute. . . .
Mechanical weapons have, on the other hand,
always been the especial property of the middle
classes. Engineering has always flourished among
commercial nations, because they possess both
capital and technical skill. Among the ancients,
the Carthaginians were technically the most
important nation in military affairs; but Rome

conquered them in the end, not because
her generals were better, but because of
the moral force which held her National Army
together.

For however important technique may be in
war, it never turns the scales unaided. Economic
considerations such as skill in engineering or in
systematic collaboration can never help one to
determine the value of an Army. Still, this is
what the commercial nations seek to do, for they
look upon an Army of purely professional soldiers
as the best. It is not technical but abstract and
moral superiority that tells in the long run in war.
As far as physical capacity goes, the English
soldiers are very efficient; they are trained to box,
and are fed on an incredibly liberal scale. But
even people in England are realizing more and
more strongly that there is something wrong with
their Army, and that it cannot be compared with
a National Army because the moral energies of
the people are excluded from it. The world is not
as materialistic as Wellington supposed. Wellington
used to say that enthusiasm in an Army
could only produce confusion and other ill-effects.
The really national weapon of England
is the Fleet. The martial enthusiasm of the
country—and it is far stronger than is usually
supposed on the Continent, because the idea of
a British universal Empire is very general among
the people—must be sought on the men-of-war.

In considering these questions we must never
lose sight of the purely moral value of the National
Army as opposed to its purely national and political
value. We must be quite clear as to whether
the perpetual complaints of the great cost of our
military system are justified. It is certain that
the blood-tax imposed by the military burden is
the greatest which a nation can be called upon to
bear. But we must never forget that there are,
and ought to be, things which are above all price.
Moral possessions have no price, and it is therefore
unreasonable to try to reckon the value of the
honour and power of the State in terms of money.
Money can never represent what we lost when the
flower of our youthful manhood fell on the battlefields
of France. It is unworthy to judge the
possessions of the soul as if they were material.
A great nation is acting in a right and reasonable
way if it seeks to give expression to the idea of the
State, which stands for power, in the form of a
well-ordered military organization. Without it,
trade and intercourse could not prosper. If one
were to try to imagine the country without the
Army which protects our civil peace, it would be
impossible to say how great would be the decrease
in our national revenues.

Under ordinary circumstances the right to bear
arms must always be looked upon as the privilege
of a free man. It was only during the last period
of the Roman Empire that the system of keeping
mercenaries was adopted. And as mercenary

troops consisted, except for their officers, of the
lowest dregs of society, the idea soon became
prevalent that military service was a disgrace;
and the free citizen began to show himself anxious
not to take part in it. This conception of the
mercenary system has gone on perpetuating itself
through the ages, and its after-effects have been
strikingly demonstrated even in our own day.
Our century has been called upon to witness, in
the formation of the National and Civil Guards,
the most immoral and unreasonable developments
of which the military system is capable. The
citizens imagined themselves too good to bear
arms against the enemies of their country, but
they were not averse to playing at soldiers at
home, and even to being able to defend their purse
if it should happen to be in danger. Hence the
truly disgusting invention of the National Guard,
and the inhuman legal provision that in the event
of a popular disturbance the adored rabble might
receive an immediate shaking at the hands of the
guard. The Army was only to interfere if things
became serious. This shows a complete failure
to realize the moral nobility of the duty of defence.
The right to bear arms will ever remain the honorary
privilege of the free man. All noble minds
have more or less recognized the truth that
"The God Who created iron did not wish
men to be thralls." And it is the task of all
reasonable political systems to keep this idea
in honour.

II.

The example of the German National Army
has had an irresistible influence on the rest of
Europe. The ridicule heaped on it in previous
decades has now been shown to be unwarranted.
It was the custom abroad to look down on the
Prussian territorial system (Landwehr) and on the
Prussian boy army. Things are very different
now. We know now that moral factors in warfare
weigh more heavily than technical excellence;
and it is further evident that the ever-increasing
technical experience of life in barracks brings
with it a corresponding brutalization of the moral
instincts. The old sergeants of France were in
no way superior to the German troops, as the
French had expected. We may say with truth
that the problem of giving a military education
to the strength of the nation and of making full
use of the trained Army was first seriously dealt
with in Germany. Our Army constitutes a peculiar
and necessary continuation of the scholastic
system. For many people it would be impossible
to devise a better means of education. For such
persons, living as they do in a period in which
mental restraint is lacking, the drill and enforced
cleanliness, and strict military discipline are indispensable
from every point of view. Carlyle
prophesied that the Prussian conception of universal
military service would go the round of the
globe. Since 1866 and 1870, when the organization

of the Prussian Army stood its trial so brilliantly,
nearly all the other great Powers of the
Continent have sought to imitate its methods.

But imitation abroad is not as easy as was
supposed because the Prussian Army is really a
nation in arms, and the peculiarities and refinements
of the national character are naturally
exemplified in it. Above all, a system of this
kind cannot be established unless the nation possesses
a certain degree of political freedom, is
satisfied with the existing régime, and can count
on social freedom in the Government. A natural
respect for superior education is also necessary, for
without it the institution of the One-year Volunteers
would be unthinkable. This system has
been introduced simply in order to make it economically
and morally possible for young men belonging
to the educated classes to serve in the ranks.
In France this voluntary system has proved a
failure because an external equality between
different classes of men has been insisted upon.
In Germany we could hardly do without it. Quite
apart from the fact that our supply of professional
officers is not nearly large enough in the event of
war, the educated young men who in the One-year
Voluntary Service transforms into territorial
reserve officers, and who stand in many ways in
a closer relationship to the people than the professional
officers, form a natural link between the
latter and the rank and file of the Army.

The heavy burden of universal military service

can be lightened in a certain measure by decentralization,
which usually enables a man to serve in
his native province. Our Provincial Army Corps
have, on the whole, quite justified their existence.
They should remain the rule; and as a wholesome
counterweight we have, in the Guard, a corps
which includes men from all parts of the country,
and forms a crack regiment, one of whose functions
it is to spur on the rest of the Army. The rigid
centralization of France makes the existence of
Provincial Army Corps such as ours an impossibility.
The natives of Normandy and of the Pyrenees
there stand side by side in the same regiment.
In Germany, on the other hand, common nationality
is rightly looked upon as a strong cement which
will ensure the solidarity of separate bodies of
troops. This universal military service, if it is
to preserve the existence of the State, must
naturally presuppose unity in the nation as a
whole. One or two isolated little provinces,
peopled by foreign races, do not greatly affect the
question, and a few simple precautions will do
away with any threatened danger from those
quarters. In Austria things are more serious,
because there the officers in the Reserve are the
weak point of the army. They are good Czechs,
good Germans, and good Magyars, but not good
Austrians; and this flaw may some day bring
about disastrous consequences.

In all these matters of military organization
we were until quite lately the leader of the other

nations. During the last few years the neighbouring
States have made such strenuous efforts to
obtain military power that we have been obliged
to go further—this time in imitation of other
nations. The furthest limits to this onward movement
are improved by nature of things, and the
enormous physical strength of the Germanic race
will see to it that we have a perpetual advantage
in this respect over the less faithful nations.
The French have nearly reached the utmost limits
of their capacity; the Germans possess, in this
respect, far wider elbow-room.

I will ask you once more to observe the nature
of the influence exercised on warfare by these new
methods in military affairs. The general tendency
of this system is towards peace. A nation
in arms is not as easily drawn away from its social
occupations to take part in a frivolous war as a
Conscript Army would be. Wars will become
rarer and of shorter duration, although more
bloody. Desire to return home will drive the
Army to advance. The temper of the Prussian
soldiers in the summer of 1866, expressed in the
words, "Let us press on towards the Danube, so
that we may get home again soon," should be
looked upon as the normal temper of a courageous
and, at the same time, peace-loving National Army.
There can be no difficulty, to-day, in understanding
the bold spirit in warfare which seeks, above
all, to plunge a dagger into the heart of the enemy.
It may be said that nothing is absolutely impossible

to a National Army of this kind when the nation
can look back over a glorious past. The experiences
of our last two wars, especially in the Battles
of Königgrätz and Mars La Tour, have proved
this to be true. We saw, at the Battle of Sadowa,
that fourteen Prussian battalions could stand
against something like forty-two Austrian ones;
and the Franco-Prussian War furnished us with
numerous instances of decisive battles in which we
fought facing our own frontiers, so that if we had
lost we should have been driven back into the
interior of the enemy's country. In the case of
a modern national army, the duty of sparing men
is entirely swallowed up in the higher duty of
annihilating the enemy. The fear of desertion
need not be entertained; the Army can be billeted
wherever it is.

The famous saying of Montecucoli, cited even
by Frederick the Great, belongs to a period now
entirely past. Montecucoli had said that in order
to wage war a nation must have money, and
money, and yet more money. It is true that a
great deal of money is needed for the preparations
involved by war; but when fighting has once begun,
the conqueror can do without ready money. He
can simply fall back on the resources of the occupied
territory, and may even abstain from paying
his troops for the moment. Once, when Blücher
imposed a huge war contribution on the French
in order to feed his hungry soldiers, the King sent
an order forbidding him to embitter the French

too much, and promising that the soldiers' pay
should be procured in Prussia. Blücher replied,
"Your Majesty's Army is not a mercenary army.
Even if I am not permitted to take money from a
hostile country, we will not be an unnecessary
burden to our mother country." It is a well-known
fact that Napoleon began the campaign of
1806 with a war chest of forty thousand francs,
and in 1813 we were, ourselves, in a far worse
plight. We had, at the beginning, only two
thousand thalers (about six thousand marks) in
cash; but the first thing we did was to turn the
pecuniary resources of the Saxons into ready
money, and so we went on.

A certain self-reliance on the part of undercommanders
has become a necessity in the enormous
National Army of the present day. General
Manteuffel once told me that on the misty morning
of the Battle of Noisseville, he was only able to
give quite general directions; for the rest, he relied
entirely on the initiative and sense of responsibility
of his generals. The final stages in the development
of war on the principle of universal service
have not yet been reached, and the world has not,
as yet, beheld a war between two national armies.
During the first half of the last great war, we
witnessed a meeting between a really national
army and a conscript army, and later, an improvised
Militia. The spectacle of the encounter
between two perfectly trained national armies,
which we have yet to see, will certainly be a

gigantic one. The world will then witness enormous
losses, and enormous results. And, if we
consider the multitude of new technical devices
produced in these modern times, we must realize
that future wars will give rise to far more astounding
revelations than any during the Franco-Prussian
War.

The new means of transport are especially
important in modern warfare. A State cannot
have too many railways for military purposes.
An immediate occupation of an enemy's country
is especially important in modern warfare, for it
puts an effective stop to all recruiting. One of
Napoleon III's most serious mistakes in 1870
was, that he failed to occupy at least a portion of
the left bank of the Rhine. We could not, at the
outset, have prevented him from doing so, and
this fact is openly stated in the introduction to the
work composed by the general staff, which Moltke
no doubt wrote himself. We should, by that
means, have lost two army corps from our field
army.

It is certain, then, that the more railways lead
to the frontier, the better. But I must here repeat
that everything has its natural limits. It is true
that an extensive railway system facilitates the
collection of an army on the frontier the moment
war is declared; but during the war its use is far
more restricted. It is quite easy for a scouting
party to make a railway impracticable for a long
time. The working capacity of a railway is also

limited, and it can only transport a given number
of men and guns in each day. Our general staff
has calculated that an army of 60,000 men can
cover thirty miles as quickly on foot as by train.
It is often more useful for the troops to spend this
time in marching. It thus follows that railway
transport is only an advantage when the distances
to be covered are great, and even then the advantage
is sometimes doubtful. If a line of advance
is to be kept secret, the troops must march. This
is proved by Bourbaki's unsuccessful expedition
against Southern Alsace. He collected his army
in trains, and tried to bring it up in that way as
far as the Vosges. All officers are of opinion that
if the troops had gone on foot, the German outposts
of the small detachments, on the western
spurs of the Vosges, would not have observed
them soon enough. As it was, our Uhlan patrols
on the heights were able to report a noticeable
activity on the railway lines in the valley, and
General Werder thus had time to draw in his men,
and cause them to take up a defensive position.
The old truth that very much depends on the
marching capacity of an efficient body of infantry,
still holds good in modern warfare.

Our ideas regarding the importance of the fortress
have, on the other hand, undergone a complete
change. The time has long vanished when every
town was a fortress, and a long campaign in a
hostile country usually ended by taking the form
of siege-warfare. To-day, the question is even

being asked, "Are fortresses any longer of practical
use?" The Germans answer this question far
more sensibly than the French. France surrounded
herself with a tremendous rampart of
fortresses, reaching from Sedan to Belfort, and
thus believed herself shut off from Germany as
by a Chinese wall. But in so long a line there
must somewhere be a weak spot, which the Germans
will certainly end by finding. There is,
however, an even more important consideration.
Walls cannot defend themselves, and if they are
to be effectually defended, the great fortresses
need a huge garrison, which is thus lost to the
field army. The Germans are of opinion that
small-barrier forts are necessary, and may be useful
even to-day. A little mountain fortress of this
kind, situated on a defile can, under certain circumstances,
cut the enemy off from using a
whole system of roads.

The Saxon fortress of Königstein, for instance,
is not impregnable, but a siege of the place might
drag on indefinitely. It was from this fortress
that a successful attempt was made in 1866 to
destroy the important railway from Dresden to
Prague, so that the Prussians were unable to use
it for a fortnight. The railway could not be
repaired, because the batteries of the fortress
commanded the line. The advance of the Prussians
into Bohemia was thus made very difficult.
The fortress of Bitsch, in the Vosges, plays a very
similar part. Little mountain strongholds will

thus continue to be of service for some time to
come.

On the other hand, it is necessary to maintain
the large strongholds known as army fortresses,
in order to have places of refuge for a whole army,
and especially so that one may there shelter and
replenish a beaten army. Strassburg and Metz
exist for this purpose. All our officers agree,
however, that we must not have too many fortresses
of this type. Many deny that they have
any use at all, for decisive actions in war are
always fought in the open field, and any military
system which lessens our forces in the field presents
very serious drawbacks. A fortress of this kind
needs a large garrison even when no enemy is
in the neighbourhood. We are always brought
back to the fact that national armies, which are
so full of moral energy, must be looked upon as
pre-eminently capable of assuming a vigorous
offensive.

I will conclude by pointing out, very briefly,
that the fleet has begun to assume a far more
important position—not, in the first place, as an
essential factor in a European war, for no one
believes now that a war between great Powers
could be decided by a naval battle—but as a protection
for the merchant navy and the colonies.
The task of ruling countries on the other side of
the Atlantic will, from henceforth, be the chief
duty of European fleets. For, since the object
of human culture must be to assert the supremacy

of the white races on the entire globe, the importance
of a people will finally depend on the share
it takes in the rule of the transatlantic world. It
is on this account that the importance of the fleet
has so largely increased during our own day.