THE GERMAN ARMY.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1307, 9 December 1911, Page 7

THE GERMAN ARMY.

DECAY OF THE KEEN MILITARY SPIRIT. INTERESTING ARTICLE IN "THE TIMES." Wo publish to-day {says the "London Tiines" of October 30) tho last of the scries of articles contributed by our military correspondent on tho German manoeuvres which took place last mouth, and on the lessons derived from them. In several respects these manoeuvres were of peculiar importance. Tho number of troops engaged has only been exceeded on threo previous occasions,' the rival Red and Blue Armies were composed of the very elite of the North German Corps; and the scene of operations, tho eastern borders of Mecklenburg, with its vast stretches of unfenced arablo land, broken by lakes and woods, was admirably adapted to the handling of largo bodies of men. Moreover, tho equipment of the various arras offered certain novel features of interest. Thus, the infantry were, not completely, but abundantly, provided with the new machine-gun companies, and also —a matter of importance, since an army "marches on its stomach"—with-the now travelling kitchens; tho artillery, peculiarly interesting in view of the revised Schiessvorschrift issued last March, wus armed' with tho new 15c. howitzers and light howitzers, and furnished with ladder observatory wagons on tho model of thoso used in the French Army; and last, but not least,. for tho first time eight aeroplanes, supplemented by two airships, took part in the operations. In one way and another, then, the Kaiscrmanovcr of 1911 afforded even those who, like our correspondent, received no special facilities from the Germany military authorities, an excellent opportunity of arriving at certain conclusions as to the training and the fitness of tho several armies for war, and of estimating whether the German Army as' a whole is as good as, or better 1 or worse than, those foreign armies to which it may.conceivably be opposed.

An "Amiable Theory" Disproved. Such comparisons are apt to be misunderstood t>y tboso who can see in them nothing but evidence of a desire to make mischief. To guard against any such misconception we may at once say that, in our opinion, it is not in the interests of peace that the armaments aud general preparation for war of any Power should be notably inferior to those of another, and rival Power. Had Trance, for example, been a weak State, the Morocco crisis would have been far more dangerous; and the recent experience of Turkey. has disproved once for all the amiable theory of tho zealots of the peice propaganda that nnpreparedness for war will in itself disarm hostility. If, then, our correspondent, whose acknowledged mastery of his subject gives great weight to his opinion, subjects the men, the materiel, and the methods of the German Army, as revealed in the recent manoeuvres, to a very searching criticism, this is inspired at most by what he conceives to bo the duty of pointing out that the sedulously propagated belief in the invincibility of the German Army, which has gained for the German Empire so many bloodless victories in diplomacy, is not so well grounded as is widely supposed. He is, moreover, careful to deprecate a too confident reaction against this belief.

A Flood of Luxury. The decay in the keen military spirit in the German Army, which our corre. spondent comments on, is doubtless duo to a variety of causes. Thirty years of profound peace are not favourable to the genius of war. No one doubts tho selfsacrificing patriotism of the German people; the burden of compulsory military service is borne lightly; and even the Social Democrats, for all their hatred of tho military caste, repudiate the antipatriotic "international" crusade against bearing arms. But the old German ideal of tho simple life, which the Emperor William rightly holds up as that of the true soldier, has been largely submerged in. a flood of luxury, tho inevitable result of the nation's vast increase of .wealth.; This is a phenomenon which, as JwcT'taioW to ■ our cost/ is* * riot -confined''to Germany. But on the traditional Prussian system,- bora of economy and established in discipline, it exercises a disproportionate inflnence. Let us imagine the class of officers!' poorly paid, not allowed; to marry until they have attained a certain income and forced to wait some twenty years before they can obtain their captaincy, compelled to .remain for a great part of their lives in a single dull garrison town, with little occupation but to prepare every day, from morning till night, for a war which is ever postponed. It is not to be wondered at that commerce, with its visions of wealth and power, is attracting the class for which the profession of arms was once the only career opeil: still less is it to be wondered at that the class from which the noncommissioned officers, once tho backbone of the Prussian Army, were recruited should, to the incalculable loss of the Army, follow the sarce call. These factors may account for the lowered,morale, of the. German Army-on which our correspondent comments.

'"'A'Hopeless Effort, For tho serious deficiencies in materiel to which ho draws attention another cause is suggested—the policy advocated by tho German' Navy League, which has aimed at giving Germany a "decisive voice on the sea," at the risk of crippling her power on land. The artillery, to their superiority in which tho Germans largely o»:ed their victories in 1870-1871, is now admittedly inferior to that of tho French; yet to replace it Is impossible so long as 22 millions a year are spent in a hopeless- effort to overtake tho seapower of Great Britain. Tho idee, that Germany's relative power will bo increased by this latter process," against which a German Admiral enters a sensible protest ■in the "Frankfurter Zeitung," was repudiated, in a reply to n letter from Admiral -Caster, by the late Hcrr von Holstein, who pointed out that this was "a simple question c-f arithmetic"; for how could Germany's sea-, ppwor bo relatively increased if for every new German ship Great Britain built ■two? In this respect at least the interests of Germany and of Great Britain march together. For the supreme interest of Great Britain, next (o the security of her own "place in. tho sun," is the maintenance of tho peaco of Europe, which, 6hort of the impracticable ideal of universal' disarmament, is best guaranteed when the forces of the Great Powers aro such as to inspire respect. This guarantee is weakened by a policy which divorts to speculative ambitions at sea tho energy and the money which should be devoted to keeping the German Army at the high level of its glorious past. ■