One is impressed by the virility and vigor of the Germans as a race. Their national spirit also is wonderful, exceeded only perhaps by that of the Japanese. People who one day read the announcement of the death of a son, a father, or a brother, are seen the next day in the streets or cafés going about quietly, expressing or betraying neither sorrow nor regret. The loved one has died “für Gott, für König, und für Vaterland.” That is glory enough, and neither the Emperor nor the people feel that it is appropriate to mourn for one who has died for his country.
Saturday, December 5th. I went this morning with Donait to inspect the prison camp at Zossen, which is about forty kilometers from Berlin and holds at present twenty thousand French soldiers, guarded by fifteen hundred of the Landsturm. Their camp was surrounded by three lines of very high and effective barbed-wire fences. In each of the alleys between these fences German sentinels paced back and forth. The prisoners seemed to me to be excellently cared for and were healthy, well-fed, and fairly contented. They were physically better off than they would be in muddy trenches at the front. They have all been given some kind of work to do, such as caring for their own prison camps, cooking, and building sheds for themselves or barracks for the German army. We saw a procession of about two thousand who came in from a near-by forest carrying tremendous bundles of faggots for firewood. As they marched they were singing, with a good deal of spontaneous gusto, a ribald French song. We considered their condition a great credit to their captors.
We were shown the famous great parade ground of Berlin. It is an immense field, quite flat, beautifully turfed, and about one and a half miles square. In one corner is about one-third of a square mile of pine woods with little rolling hills and an imitation forest country where troops can be drilled in skirmish formation. Young soldiers were being trained thereon in advancing in echelons and in taking up well-hidden firing-line positions.
The regular army of Germany as it has been recruited each year has absorbed just over half of the eligible men of the nation. Military service therefore has by no means been universal, and there are several million men of military age who have never been utilized. Over two million of the latter have volunteered since August, only two hundred and thirty thousand of whom have as yet been accepted for training. In addition not all of the regular army has yet been brought into service.
The German officers have, since the opening of the war, adapted themselves to changed conditions with unexpected flexibility. They immediately relaxed their ordinary overbearing manner and assumed a closer relationship with the private soldiers. They do not, as their enemies report, drive their men but they themselves lead to battle. They are idolized by the nation as a whole and by the army in particular. They do not address the soldiers of the rank and file in the second person singular, but in the more respectful second person plural.
The Kaiser has already awarded thirty-eight thousand iron crosses. He takes the ground that he is nevertheless maintaining the standard of 1870. He says that the numbers now involved are so much larger and the demands in courage and endurance so much greater that thousands deserve to be decorated in the present conflict where hundreds won the honor in the Franco-Prussian war.