GERMAN AND BRITISH SOLDIERS COMPARED.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 16, 20 January 1903, Page 4

GERMAN AND BRITISH SOLDIERS COMPARED.

Discussing tEe difference between the German soldier and Tommy Atkins, and thtffcystera of which they are the product, " Linesman," in Blackwood's Magazine, says:—The German private soldier, how ever much he may 'earn before a war, will learn nothing; in war. His mind is cast in a different mould to that of onr own Atkins, a most malleable fellow, who in South Africa took to new conditions like a duck to water, and improved upon innovations to beat the innovators. What the German has learned he has learned with a thoroughness of which no other human being is capable. What he has not learned the fear of death itself, swift tutor though it be, will not induce him to practise. When an army is defeated in battle, its salvation, let the text books say what they will, depends more upon the innate value and loyalty of the soldiers than upon any disciplinary codes ; and the larger the army ihe more this is the case, for anarchy lurks ever in terrified or despondent mobs. A British army has never in all its history been defeated in the sense of having its power of recuperation destroyed; for inextinguishable loyalty, the child of free will and the cause of free service, permeating the rank and file, has rendered a debacle impossible. Conscription is a great juggler in the Fatherland ; it takes the traders and leaves trade uninjured ; it invades without dislocating civil life ; it seals the bodies of men to itself without either quenching or setting fire to their spirits—these ard" wonderful feats, visible to all beholders. But it is impossible to help doubting the genuineness of its greatest m racle of all, the creation of a milita»y spirit, whose-splendour is impressed upon you by every German soldier with an insistence almost pathetic, quite unconvincing. They do protest too much. Conscription as yet has herded the nation only to success ; the spirit which bears up and prows stouter uudcr disaster, the inspiratiou of the fiee alone in every business under the sun, how shall it dwell in millions who are not free