The Officers
With all the technical aids and inventions, however, the decisive factor in a war remains the men and more especially the officers.
Albatross-Taube Packed for Shipping
I recently overheard a well-known Boston woman teacher holding forth with the positiveness of complete conviction on the subject of the German officer and commiserating him on the life of idleness circumstances forced him to lead “except, of course, during the three or four hours a day when he is obliged to exercise.” The remark was addressed to a distinguished Harvard professor—anti-military, however, to the core—who had no contradiction to offer. I should have marked both of these great people zero for flat ignorance of the subject had I had them in a class. The German officer, I grant, may occasionally seem as idle and as frivolous as the son of a new American millionaire: the only difference would be that the American conceals his idleness under a show of industriousness, sending telegrams when he has nothing else to do, while the German conceals the fact that he has been up since four in the morning training a mass of raw recruits, that he has spent several hours at the Kriegsakademie studying languages, geography, political economy and the like and that he has as a permanent job some important problem in tactics to work out. Those who know the methods of the Prussian government could never accuse it of giving its employees too little work. A list is kept of all officers in which their industry, their interest in their work and their general good conduct is noted. The ideal that is kept before them may not be exactly our ideal, but it is a wonderful one of knightly virtue all the same. The man may never forget that he is a leader of men; he must grip his standard of honor, such as it is, like grim death and be willing unhesitatingly to lay down his life for it. If he flinch or falter in physical encounter or in any way is “guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer” he has to resign his position. He has to conform not only to the rule of his superiors but also to the code of his fellow officers. There are things in that code that one would like not to see there and one misses much that might well be included, but to down the profession as a sinecure “except, of course, during the three or four hours a day” is the purest folly.
Double Monoplane
And peace-time is the mere waiting-period, the period of training for the real work. In war-time the fate of the whole country hangs on the officer. An Italian, Mangiarotti, recently inquired of some two thousand soldiers who had just taken part in the African campaign regarding their sensations when facing the enemy. “The great ideals of God, king and fatherland,” he writes, “incorporate themselves in one single personality, the officer.” The lieutenant who does his duty in the firing line is an absolute hero to his men. But only real superiority of mind and body can keep him at this height.
Albatross Hydro and Aeroplane
There are more than thirty thousand officers in the regular standing army, the great majority of them belonging to the nobility, who feel that they have a hereditary right to these positions. I am inclined to think that this feeling of caste will not be disadvantageous in war. The military career from youth up has been the one serious object and occupation in life. The memory of Jena has been preventative of pride and an incentive to hard work. The habit of commanding gained as lord of the manor—as Herr Graf or as Herr Baron—will not be useless in the field.
A Taube over the Military Flying Grounds
at Johannisthal, near Berlin
Price Collier, in his Germany and the Germans, gives the officer a bad character for arrogance and instances the fact that an officer will crowd a woman off the sidewalk. Such cases are very rare to-day, much rarer than they were some thirty years ago. The Zabern affair, however, has thrown a glaring light on a certain presumptuousness in the army and aroused at the time very bitter passions. There was a contempt for the ordinary laws of justice connected with the trial that is likely to avenge itself in time if it has not already done so. But no human institution is perfect, and the officer has at present far other things to think of than presumptuousness.
Biplane
In time of war many more officers are needed than in time of peace. This is provided for in Germany by a different and less perfect system than in France. From the one-year volunteers, of whom there are about 15,000 yearly, are taken the “officer aspirants,” who then undergo supplementary training, returning at intervals in later life for further instruction and practise. The general structure of the army does not change in time of war. Instead of numbering five or six hundred men the size of a battalion is raised to eleven hundred or more. There are supplementary troops in all branches, consisting partly of retired soldiers and partly of raw recruits, who must be licked into shape as quickly as possible, but who serve mainly to fill up the ranks at the front as they become depleted. Every able-bodied man must leave his occupation and take to the ranks whether he has had military training or not. Even a German in foreign lands, if he fail to report for duty to his consul, is liable on his return to a sentence of six years in the penitentiary. How many will hasten to naturalize themselves in other countries is one of the problems of the war.
Airship Transportation Wagon
Horses, too, are called in in great numbers as soon as mobilization is ordered. In time of peace the twenty-five army corps, each numbering about forty thousand men, require 157,000 horses; in time of war the demand, of course, will be much larger, and this is provided for by instant requisition. But not at random. A list or census is regularly kept of practically all the horses in the country; it is revised at stated intervals and commissioners note the adaptability of every animal to this or that purpose. In times of mobilization the animals are brought before final commissions, consisting partly of military, partly of civilian members, who appraise their value and declare them confiscate. The transferring of horses to the rallying centers is one of the chief difficulties of the railroads, which, as is well known, belong to the state and are altogether closed to general traffic during the mobilization period.
Uhlans Crossing River
Germany is putting, so it is estimated, some four million men into the field. And behind them, should the war last long, are nearly a million boys who belong to the Prussian Jung Deutschland and to the Bavarian Wehrkraftverein. Boy scouts, we should call them in our country, but in Germany they are regularly trained by officers in the army—an occupation of these sinecure-holders that I omitted to mention. They are taken in squads on long tramps, are trained to use their eyes and ears and enjoy the life of the hills and woods. They carry their cooking utensils and prepare their own meals. The government encourages the institution by large grants and often places barracks and tents at the disposal of the boys for longer expeditions. Public and private generosity, too, has provided homes in out-of-the-way places where the boys can take shelter over night.
Patrol of Uhlans
How deadly an instrument for war is the German army remains to be seen. That it has already accomplished many fine things in time of peace is undoubted. Not the least of these is the spread of hygienic knowledge and the encouragement of manliness.
By the terms of the German constitution the Kaiser is head and chief of the whole German army and, notwithstanding concessions made to Bavaria, Württemberg and Saxony for the period when it remains on a peace-footing, is absolute commander in time of war. Whether he will personally take the field or not is another question. If he does he will be upheld by an enormous wave of loyalty, but, on the other hand, the presence of a monarch in camp is often a hindrance to the operations. His own great-grandfather, and at the same time the Austrian emperor, made life very bitter for Blücher and the other real fighters in 1814.
Uhlans Fording River
The real business of commanding a modern army is done by the chief of the general staff. It is of good augury that the present holder of that position is again a Moltke. On him falls the planning and the responsibility for carrying out of the plans, though he has under him a huge staff of subordinates—more than two hundred in all—whose duty is to collect information, make reports and even tender advice. The older Moltke once wrote: “The make-up of the headquarters of an army is of an importance not always sufficiently realized. Some commanders need no advice, but weigh and decide things for themselves. Their subordinates have merely to carry out instructions. But such stars of first radiance are only to be found about once in a century. Only a Frederick the Great takes counsel with no one and determines everything himself. As a rule the leader of an army can not do without advice.” The old plan was to hold a council of war and abide by its decisions; the new one is for the commanding general to use every aid from others but to take the whole responsibility himself.
Easily Upset
Headquarters travels with the army and with it goes the imperial chancellor, ready to take advantage of every happening in the field to influence the course of negotiations. The minister of war remains at home to see to the prompt forwarding of troops and supplies. In 1870 and 1871 Bismarck had much to suffer from female influences—royal ladies who objected to the bombardment of beautiful cities and the like. There are at present no royal ladies in Germany who are likely to interfere. Blücher used to insist that the most merciful way of making war was to be absolutely relentless in pursuit—to the last man and to the last horse. The worst thing that can happen is to have the campaign drag on slowly with necessity of renewing battles. This phase of the matter royal ladies do not always understand.
If the example of the Franco-Prussian War is followed the Germans will put as many as six different armies into the field, each with some four army-corps. There are twenty-five army-corps, and the fighting part of a single army-corps, which numbers some 41,000 men, strings out on an ordinary road to a distance of twenty-six kilometers or more than sixteen miles. As the food supplies, medical and surgical apparatus and ammunition wagons have to follow at a considerable distance we may estimate the length of the whole column at more than double this amount. Were the whole standing army (not to speak of the reserves) to travel along the same road it would take twenty-five days to pass a fixed point. It may be said here that the number of direct roads passing from Germany into France is small and that for purposes of invasion the possession of Belgium was a strategic necessity. Its occupation meant victory or defeat in the great struggle and the devil take the consequences. Belgium and France are so at one that the French have so trusted to the forts of Liege and Namur, which they believed to be impregnable, that they have done little to fortify their own borders in that direction.
Who the commanding generals of the German army are to be has not yet been made public in America. Judging by the holders of high positions in peace-time they will be Grand Duke Frederick II of Baden, Duke Albert of Württemberg, Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria and the generals Bülow, Eichhorn, Heeringen and Prittwitz. Whether or not the German crown-prince will be given a command is doubtful. He is brave and dashing but impetuous and unbalanced, and his relations with his father have been somewhat strained. I am told that at maneuvers he expects far too much from his men and horses, though his pleasant manners and his joking way make him very popular. He may, of course, prove the Frederick the Great of the campaign should it last sufficiently long for him to gain the proper experience.
[*] It may be worth giving the exact strength of the German army on October 1, 1913: Total 790,788 and 157,816 horses. Of these: officers, 30,253; sanitary officers, 2,483; veterinaries, 865; non-commissioned officers, 104,377; common soldiers, 647,811. (Infantry, 515,216; cavalry, 85,593; field artillery, 126,042; sappers and miners, 24,010; communication troops, 18,949; army service, 11,592.)