Germany and the Germans Part 18

I am not discussing here the question of compulsory service in England. It is not difficult to see that part of England's army must of necessity be a professional army, which can be sent here and there and everywhere, and that conscription would not answer the purpose, for compulsory conscription could hardly demand of its recruits that they should serve in India, in Canada, or in Bermuda or Egypt, for the length of time necessary to make their service of value. Conscription, too, on a scale to make an army serviceable against the trained troops of the Continent is out of the question. Therefore, so far as compulsory service for military duty only is concerned, I see no hope for it in England. But in a land of free men such as is, or used to be, England, and in America, compulsory service ought to be undertaken with pride and with pleasure, as a moral, not as a military, duty for the salvation of the country from internal foes, and as a nucleus around which could rally the nation as a whole in case of attack from external foes. Patriotism among us has come to a pretty pa.s.s indeed when the nation is divided into two cla.s.ses: those growling against the taxation of their surplus; and those with their tongues hanging out in antic.i.p.ation of, and their hands clutching for, unearned doles.

And now, the more shame to us, must be added a third cla.s.s who use public office for private profit. What if we all turned to and gave something without being forced to do so? Where would the "Yellow peril" and the "German menace" be then? We should have much less exciting and inciting talk and writing if our nerves and digestions were in better order. Nothing calms the nerves, increases confidence, and lessens the chance of promiscuous quarrelling better than hard work.

Even if what the German army has accomplished along these lines were not true, there can be no freedom of political speculation or experiment, no time to make mistakes and to retrieve the situation, when one is surrounded on all sides by overt or potential enemies.

Germany must have a powerful army and fleet, must have a strong and autocratic government, or she is lost. "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland."

She can permit no silly, no stupid, no excited majority to imperil her safety as a nation. If Germany were governed as is France, where they have had nine new governments since the beginning of the twentieth century, and forty-four since the republic replaced the empire forty-one years ago--not counting six dismissals of the cabinet when the prime minister remained--or fifty changes of government in less than that number of years, Germany would have lost her place on the map.

France remains only because, so far as defence is concerned, France is France plus the British fleet.

Political geography is the sufficient reason for Germany's army and navy. Let us be fair in these judgments and admit at once, that if j.a.pan were where Mexico is, and Russia where Canada is, and Germany separated from us by a few hours' steaming, certain peace-mongers would have been hanged long ago, and our cooing doves of peace would have had molten tar mixed with their feathers. An Italian proverb runs, "It is easy to scoff at a bull from a window," and we indulge in not a little of such babyish effrontery from our safe place in the world. Germany, on the other hand, looks out upon the world from no such safe window-seat; she is down in the ring, and must be prepared at all hazards to take care of herself. That is a reason, too, why Germany offers little resistance to the ruling of an autocratic militarism. The sailors and the stokers would rather obey captain and officers, however they may have been chosen for them, than to be sunk at sea; and nowadays Germany is ever on the high seas, battling hard to protect and to increase her commerce abroad, and to protect her huge industrial population at home. Germany can take no chances for the moment, for only "Wer sich regiert, der ist mit Zufall fertig."

One wishes often that one's lips were not sealed, one's pen not stayed by the imperious demands of honor, to abstain from all mention of discoveries or conversations made under the roof of hospitality, for nothing could well be more enlightening than a description of a chat between the great war-lord of Germany and a leading pacifist: the one completely equipped with knowledge of the history, temper, and temperament of his people; the other obsessed by a fantastic exaggeration of the power and influence of money, even in the world of culture and international politics, and preaching his panacea in the land, of all others, where even now mere money has the least influence, all honor to that land!

Spinoza, the greatest of modern Jews, and the father of modern philosophy, writes: "It is not enough to point out what ought to be; we must also point out what can be, so that every one may receive his due without depriving others of what is due to them." And in another place: "Things should not be the subject of ridicule or complaint, but should be understood." Those who know little of the history of the development of Germany, and particularly of Prussia, cannot possibly understand another reason for the political apathy of the Germans and their pleased support of their army. It is this: they have been trained in everything except self-government, in everything except politics. Perhaps their governors know them better than we do. Their progress has come from direction from above, not from a.s.sertion from below. The art or arts of self-government, throughout their development as a nation, have been forcibly omitted from their curriculum. Every step in our national progress, on the contrary, has been taken by the people, shoulder to shoulder, breaking their way up and out into light and freedom. There is little or no trace of any such movement of the people in Germany, and there is little taste for it, and no experience to make such effort successful. We, who have profited by the teaching of this political experience, do not realize in the least how handicapped are the people who have not had it.

One hundred years ago half the inhabitants of Prussia were practically in the toils of serfdom. It was only by an edict of 1807, to take effect in 1810, that personal serfdom with its consequences, especially the oppressive obligation of menial service, was abolished in the Prussian monarchy. Caste extended actually to land. All land had a certain status, from which the owners and their retainers took their political position and rights. The edict of 1807 was in reality a land reform bill, and gave for the first time free trade in land in Prussia. It was vom Stein, a Bismarck born too soon, who induced Frederick William II, King of Prussia, and grandson of the Great Elector, to abolish serfdom, to open the civil service to all cla.s.ses, and to concede certain munic.i.p.al rights to the towns. But vom Stein was dismissed from the service of his weak-kneed sovereign on the ground that he was an enemy of France, and was obliged to take refuge in Russia. Like other martyrs, his efforts watered the political earth for a fruitful harvest.

It is well to know where we are in the world's culture and striving when we speak of other nations. What were we doing, what was the rest of the world doing, in those days when the Hanoverian peasant's son, Scharnhorst, and Clausewitz were about to lay the foundations of this German army, now the most perfect machine of its kind in the world?

These were the days prepared for by Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau; by Pitt and Louis XV, and George III; the days of near memories of Wolfe, Montcalm, and Clive; days when Hogarth was caricaturing London; days when the petticoats of the Pompadour swept both India and Canada into the possession of England.

These names and the atmosphere they produce, show by comparison how rough a fellow was this Prussia of only a hundred years ago. He had not come into the circle of the polite or of the political world. He was tumbling about, un-licked, untaught, inexperienced, already forgetful of the training of the greatest school-master of the previous century, Frederick the Great, who had made a man of him.

We were already politicians to a man in those days, and the Englishman Pitt was map-maker, by special warrant, to all Europe.

When the Prussians were serfs politically, our House of Representatives, in 1796, debated whether to insert in their reply to the President's speech the remark that "this nation is the freest and most enlightened in the world." It is true that this was at the time when Europe was producing Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Mozart, Haydn, Herschel, and about ready to introduce Walter Scott, Wordsworth, Sh.e.l.ley, Heine, Balzac, Beethoven, and Cuvier; when Turner was painting, Watt building the steam-engine, Napoleon in command of the French armies, and Nelson of the British fleet; but this bombastic babble of ours harmed n.o.body then, and only serves to show what a number of intellectual serfs must have been members of that particular House of Representatives.

We have not overcome this habit of slapdash comparative criticism, for only the other day a distinguished American inventor left Berlin with these words as his final message: "We have nothing to learn from Germany." But in the nineteenth century, where does the American of sober intelligence, if Lincoln be omitted, find a match for Bismarck as a statesman, Heine as a wit and song-writer, Wagner, Brahms, and Beethoven as musicians, Goethe as a man of letters and poet, the still living influence of Lessing and Winckelmann as critics, Fichte as a scholarly patriot, Hegel and Kant as philosophers, von Humboldt, Liebig, Helmholtz, Bunsen, and Haeckel as scientists, Moltke and Roon as soldiers, Ranke and Mommsen as historians, Auerbach, Spielhagen, Sudermann, Freytag, "Fritz" Reuter, and Hauptmann as novelists and dramatists, Krupp and Borsig as manufacturers, and the Rothschilds as bankers? Lincoln, Lee, Sherman, Jackson, and Grant may equal these men in their own departments, but aside from them our only superiority, and a very questionable superiority it is, lies in our trust-and-tariff- incubated millionaires. Let us try to see straight, if only that we may learn and profit by the superiority of others.

These explanations that I have given, historical, political, external, and internal, offer reasons worth pondering both why we do not understand Germany's huge armament and why Germany looks upon it as a necessity.

However much the expenditure on fleet and army may be disguised, the burden is colossal. In the year 1878 the net expenditure, ordinary and extraordinary, for purposes of defence, for army and navy and all other military purposes whatsoever including pensions, amounted to 452,000,000 marks; in 1888, to 660,000,000 marks; in 1898, to 882,000,000 marks; and in 1908, to 1,481,000,000 marks.

The total expenses, net, of the empire in 1908 were 1,735,000,000 marks, showing that only 254,000,000 marks out of the grand total of 1,735,000,000 were spent for other than military purposes. As the army and navy now stand at a peace strength of some 700,000 men, and as these men are all in the prime of their working power, the loss in wages and in productive work may be put very conservatively at 600,000,000 marks, which brings the cost of the support of the military establishment of Germany up to 2,000,000,000 marks and more per annum, or $500,000,000.

Many Americans were dismayed when our total national expenditure reached the $1,000,000,000 point, and the Congress voting this expenditure was nicknamed the "Billion-dollar Congress." What would we say of an expenditure of half a billion dollars for defence alone!

With what admiration, too, must we regard 65,000,000 people, living in an area one quarter smaller than Texas, on a by-no-means rich or fertile soil, who can bear cheerfully the burden, each year, of half our total national expenditure, merely on the military and naval barricade which enables them to toil in peace and security.

Humanity has, indeed, made but a poor zigzag progress from the gorilla; Christianity, just now engaged in blessing the rival banners of warriors setting out for one another's throats, has failed ignominiously to bring the wolf in man to baptism, when the central state of Christian Europe must arm to the teeth one in every eighteen of her adult male inhabitants, and spend half a billion dollars a year, to protect herself from a.s.sault and plunder.

If the hairy, skin-clad cave-dwellers, or the man who left us the Neanderthal skull, could have a look at us now, here in Berlin, in many ways the centre of the most enlightened people in the world, they would undoubtedly go mad trying to understand what we mean by the word "progress." And yet we smile indulgently at the poor farmers in Afghanistan who till their fields with a rifle slung across their shoulders. What is Germany doing but that! And an enormously heavy rifle it is, costing just seven times as much as all other national expenditures together; in short, it costs seven marks of soldier to protect every one mark of plough. I admit frankly the horror and the absurdity of all this; but as an argument for disarmament, "it does not lie," as the lawyers phrase it. It is a criticism, and an unanswerable one, of our failure as human beings to enthrone reason and to tame our pa.s.sions; but it is a veritable call to arms to protect ourselves, not a reason for not doing so. Let the international gluttons overeat themselves till they are seriously ill; but it would be madness to starve ourselves in the meantime, and yet that is the grotesque logic of certain of our preachers of disarmament.

At the moment of writing there are 1,000,000 men at each other's throats in the Balkans, there is a revolution in Mexico, and incipient anarchy in Central America; as an emollient to this, Great Britain is about to present a bust of the late King Edward to the Peace Palace at the Hague! I can imagine myself saying "Pretty p.u.s.s.y, nice p.u.s.s.y," to the wild-cats I have shot in Nebraska and Dakota, but I should not be here if I had; and however small my value to the world I live in, I estimate it as worth at least a ton of wild-cats.

I am bound, however, in fairness to call the attention of the unwary dabbler in statistics to a point of grave importance in dealing with German finances. The German Empire, so far as expenditure and income are concerned, is merely an office, a clearing-house so to speak, for the states which together make up the empire. The expenses of the empire, for example, in 1910 were $757,900,000 and of the army and navy, including extraordinary expenditures, $314,919,325; this does not include pensions, clerical expenses, interest, sinking-fund, and loss of productive labor, as did the figures on a preceding page. To the ignorant or to the malicious, who quote these figures to bolster up a socialist or pacifist preachment, this looks as though Germany had spent one half of her grand total on the army and navy. But this is quite wrong. In addition to the expenditures of this imperial clearing-house called the German Empire, there was spent by the states $1,467,325,000: the so-called clearinghouse bearing the whole burden of expenses for army and navy, the separate states nothing except the per capita tax, called the matriculation tax, of some 80 pfennigs. To make this matter still more clear, as it is a constant source of error not only to the foreigner but to the Germans themselves, the income of the empire for 1910 was $757,900,000, the income of all the states $1,463,150,000, or of the empire and the states combined $2,221,050,000. In the same way the debt of the empire in 1910 stood at $1,224,150,000, and the debt of the states of the empire at $3,856,325,000, or a grand total outstanding indebtedness of all Germany of $5,080,475,000.

Of late years the imperial expenditure of Great Britain, for example, has amounted to some $935,000,000 a year; but various local bodies spend also some $900,000,000 a year. Some of this is cross-spending, but the grand total amounts to some $1,500,000,000 a year.

Before writing or speaking of Germany it is well to know at least what Germany is. To pick up a hand-book and to quote therefrom the figures relating to the German Empire, as though these covered Germany, as is often done, is as accurate and helpful to the inquirer, as though one should take the figures of the New York clearing-house as accurate descriptions of the total and detailed business of all the New York banks and trust companies. A clearing-house is merely a piece of machinery for the adjustment of differences between a host of debtors and creditors. The comparative cost of the German army and navy can only be figured properly against the income and expenditure of the total wealth of all Germany. And all Germany is something more than the German Empire, which in certain respects is only a book-keeper, an adjuster of differences.

"Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?

Ist's Preussenland? Ist's Schwabenland?

Ist's wo am Rhein die Rebe bluht?

Ist's wo am Belt die Move zieht?

O nein! O nein! O nein!

Sein Vaterland muss grosser sein.

"Des ganze Deutschland soil es sein!

O Gott vom Himmel, sieh' darein, Und gib uns rechten deutschen Muth; Da.s.s wir es lieben treu und gut!

Des soil es sein! des soil es sein!

Des ganze Deutschland soll es sein!"

The official t.i.tle of the sovereign is not Emperor of Germany, or Emperor of the Germans, but German Emperor. Thus the territorial rights of other heads of states are safeguarded. Even the popularity of the first Emperor, who wished to be named Emperor of Germany and who disputed with Bismarck for hours over the question, could not bring this about, and he was proclaimed at Versailles merely German Emperor.

However heavy the burden of armament may be, we must be careful to put such expenditure in its proper perspective and in its proper relations, not only to the German Empire, which for official, clerical, and statistical matters is quite a different ent.i.ty, but to "das ganze Deutschland." The German Empire is the clearinghouse, the adjutant, the executive officer, the official clerk, the representative in many social, financial, military, and diplomatic capacities of Germany; but it is not, and never for a moment should be confused with, what all Germans love, and what it has cost them blood and tears and great sacrifices to bring into the circle of the nations, the German Fatherland!

In 1910 the total funded debt of the empire amounted to 4,896,600,000 marks, and the debt in 1912 had risen to 5,396,887,801 marks. In the six years ending March, 1911, Germany's debt increased by $415,000,000.

In 1910 the funded debt of Germany (empire and states) was $4,896,600,000; of France $6,905,000,000; of England $3,894,500,000, and of Russia $4,880,750,000. It is a curious psychical and social phenomenon that, though we are as suspicious as criminals of one another's good faith in keeping the peace, we are veritable angels of innocence in trusting one another financially, for back of these huge debts we keep in ready money, that is, gold, to pay them: Germany at the present writing $275,000,000 in the Reichsbank; France $640,000,000 in the Bank of France; England a paltry $175,000,000 in the Bank of England; and Russia $625,000,000 in the Bank of Russia. We all live upon credit, an elastic moral tie which seems to be illimitably stretchable, and both a nation's and an individual's wealth is measured not by what he has, but by what he is, that is to say, by his character or credit. It is startling to find how we distrust one another along certain lines and how we trust one another along others. The total amount of gold in these four countries would just about pay the interest at four per cent. for two years on their total indebtedness!

From what we have seen of the proportion of expenditure that goes to military purposes, it cannot be denied that Germany is increasing her liabilities at an extraordinary rate, and largely for purposes of protection. In the last two years the interest on her increased debt alone, at four per cent., amounts to $5,000,000; while the interest at four per cent. upon military expenditures of all kinds amounts to the tidy sum of $20,000,000 per annum. The German, however, faces these facts and figures, not as a matter of choice, not as a matter of insurance wholly, but as a hard necessity. It is what the delayed conversion of the world is costing him, not to speak of what it costs the rest of us. He is surrounded by enemies; he is not by nature a fighting man; his whole industrial and commercial progress and his ama.s.sed wealth have come from training, training, training; and he sees no alternative, and I am bound to say that I see none either, but a nation trained also to defence, cost what it may.

The last German estimates (1912) balance with a revenue and 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-s.h.i.+ps 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 j.a.pan $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 Wurtemberg, 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 pa.s.ses. 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 ent.i.tled 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 pa.s.sed a certain examination serve only one year and are ent.i.tled 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 Gadke 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s through a war-school before obtaining a commission. Of these there are 10 in Prussia, Wurtemberg, 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-Hauser; 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 inst.i.tutions 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 pa.s.s judgments in the cla.s.s-room. I have visited many of these cla.s.s-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.