Transmitting and Receiving Orders by Telephone
I have spoken of military service being almost universally compulsory in Europe. This means that every man of a certain age and with the requisite health and strength is obliged to report for duty. It has not hitherto meant that every eligible recruit was obliged to serve. In Germany a large contingent, even of the capable, was formerly excused. In 1910, for instance, nearly 235,000 were declared more or less unfit for service, although in France they would probably nearly all have been accepted. By the German army bills of 1911, 1912 and 1913 indeed the numbers of those required for active service were steadily increased: 9,482 in the first named year, some 29,000 in the second, and then the great increase of 63,000 in the third. But there were still, up to the present mobilization, some thirty thousand able-bodied recruits who could not be placed.
Telegrams
In the Prussian military-service law of 1814, and again in the constitution of the North German Confederation of 1867, the principle was laid down that the army should consist of one per cent. of the population. This had long been disregarded as the population increased, and the proportion had sunk as low as eight-tenths of one per cent. It has now been raised to a little over the original figure. The population as given officially in 1913 was 64,925,993, while the number of common soldiers (I quote the figures given by Stavenhagen in the Handbuch der Politik) was 647,811.[*]
Giving Orders
The cost of the German army has been enormous—more than twenty-five billion marks between 1872 and 1910, and in 1913 alone, 1,608,653,300 marks. The extraordinary defense contribution for 1913, 1914 and 1915, a tax, not on income but on capital direct, is estimated to bring nearly 1,300,000,000 marks. Strange to say, the tax was very popular—every party in the Reichstag voted for it, even the social democrats, whose delight in a measure that fell most heavily on the rich (small properties were exempted) made them swallow the fact that the money was for national and military purposes. The yearly sums that the sudden increase in the army entails are to be paid by a curious tax on the increase of property value to be estimated every three years.
Telegraph Battalion