GERMANY’S NEW ARMY

Hokitika Guardian, 22 March 1930, Page 6

GERMANY’S NEW ARMY

THE BEST IN EUROPE. The best army in Europe to-day is the German army. It is composed of 100,009 trained professional soldieis. They know the duties ol the inlantiy, cavalry, artillery. Many ol them have also done service at sea. I hey are “soldier and sailor, too.” This has come about by a miscalculation of the military men of the Allied countries w m decided Germany w<.s to have only it small proles do mil army, not enough to ntta<k any <t!ier country, just big enough to keep order. To prevent .universal military training soldiers were obliged to enlist Lr nine years.

The Allied military men counted without the genius of the German people, for organisation. They supposed these professional soldiers, a handful according to wartime standards, would simply do their full routine, it has worked out differently.

A NEW STATUS. The German militarly mind was equal to the occasion. It realised an entirely new kind of army had to be developed. It was no longer a question or a highly developed officer corps and a mobilised nation, hut of a small highly organised unit. The country wna also a republic, and though the sense of discipline remained, a soldier could no longer be treated as food for gun,.. Moreover there were none to wawie. Each man was valuable, a soldier and a technician. The old class of German officer has a pretty had reputation lor insolence - , lie got over it— and right away. Tie lias developed a spirit of comradeship m>tweeu himself, the non-commussioned offiicr and the men which is proba-ldy tlie closest that exists in any army. There is a spirit of patriotism in the army that guides its discipline. If as Carlyle says, “discipline is a kind of miracle tiiat wonts by faith,” that of L,,e new Dorman army is worked by faith in the Fatherland. The whole army is filled with a sense of its importance in bringing back the country to strength, freeing it from tbe stigma of defeat, perhaps. The very disabilities under which is was placed by the Treaty of Versailles have inspired it u> surmount tncin.

THE FRENCH ATTITUDE

ft has gradually dawned upon the Headquarters stall's of the countries that l'orceu Germany to develop this model army that they may have committed a mistake, and most of them have been studying the Roieliswehr. The French General Staff has-been the most interested. The continuous induction in. military service in France and tbe probabilities of a further reduction by argieement m a. gene.nl disarmament conference have brought them to realise that Germany already has an army, which would in a. single coin bat give the exisiant Flench army ail it wanted, and further reduction would quickly, leave the French army inferior.

If the two armies, as they stand, were to measure strength, Germany would have 100,090 war technicians every man so well trained he could handle any weapon and lead any group. Fiance would have 35,000 ptoessional soldiers, 120,000 raw recruits under the one-year service and native troops under French officers. If tbe worn of French military wri.ers can fie taken, 1110 Germans, e.-.ccpt for i.ioir lack of air force and the Jiinital.on on their artillery, could easily win

The respect the French military men ••uive lor the Reich.swehr i.s the surest pro or of its efficiency They admire, -o begin with, the way the German officers understood tlieir opportunity. They took raw youths and made soldiers. real ones, out of them. They had nine years to train them;’ Never weie raw recruits taken more pains with. They were drilled and drilled. They learned how to handle every kind of weapon, to understand every kind of warfare. They were trained as comrades and men.

AND EXPERIENCED. Ihe first few years after the war a iso gave them, some active work against the various Communist uprisings. They let men choose tlieir service, let them change from foot to muse, from bicycle to the artillery. , ney all had a time in the Signal l.nrps. Finally, they all received a. .mince to put in a year or two at sea. This is all recounted in the past tense because most ol the effort is in the past. The Reichswehr is now a model army with an esprit cle corps all its own, and, as -the now recruits come in they gel into the atmosphere of it and develop into soldiers qiuekl.y (>1 course, there is a soldier in every German anyhow. It lias always been .so and that is what gives the new Reichwchr its extra quality. No one really knows what that army would be capable of, and yet it was made up of callow farmer hoys, scoine of them so young in the first days of the Republic that their tin lints seemed to weigh them down, and tho row of handgrenades they carried around their slim waists looked almost ridiculous. But those same hoys have grown up to to able men who have the poise of good soldiers. They understand tho amis, the gases and the ‘technique of the new warfare since the development of the two big weapons of the future, aeroplanes and gas.

A VERSATILE GROUP

Every day the German soldier gets

u]) to learn something, and the moment he has finished one branch of the service lie is shifted to another. The future warin' e is sufficiently eomplicateu .to take time to learn. The men are movable and interchangeable. They have become replaceable parts in the new war machine.

The worst fault of the old imperial German Army was that it could not rapidly change its tactics. It was a machine that did not leave room for individual action. The new German Army is different. It is made up of units of trained individuals, each conscious of the workings of the whole machine. The old machine, was. al times, clumsy. The new one is highly Rubricated and mobile. It is even more of an entity than the old oim. 11 puts on less show but it has a new kind of military soul.

Tn other countries the professional soldiers are asking themselves whether their armies, after reduction in armament agreements, will have a soul too.