Life in a German Crack Regiment

by Graf von Wolf Ernst Hugo Emil Baudissin

"Shoot myself. But he'll soon pay up, I'll see to that all right."

"If you only had been something else but an officer," lamented his mother; "it's madness for a man who has no money to enter the army."

"I quite agree with you," said Fritz; "but what's the use of lamenting? It's too late now, you should have thought of that before, when you sent me to the Military College. I wasn't asked."

"You are quite right. The rascal is reproaching us now," laughed his father.

"I didn't mean that at all, father. I have a very good time as a lieutenant; besides, I don't know what else I could have been. But you know, being a lieutenant has its drawbacks; one is never free from money difficulties, and then there is the constant fear of getting one's discharge much earlier than one expects. It's a horrible feeling. I really can't understand why fathers let their sons go into the army, and least of all can I understand why retired officers always do it. The old officers, you, father, most of all, and those whom I met to-day at the club, are always complaining of the injustice of being pensioned off so early; they lament that the army is no longer what it once was; they groan over their tiny pensions and their bodily ills, the results of long years of campaigning; they swear at the allowance they are obliged to make their sons. They know perfectly well, however, that he cannot manage on it, and that he, therefore, contracts debts; they know that, at best, their son will only be a staff-officer, and that then till his death he will lead the same miserable, embittered life as they have. And alas: they also know how a mistake on duty, a mis-spent evening, an impulsive blow may ruin a young soldier, and although they know all this they let him become a soldier. And when one day the young officer is at the end of his tether and has to leave the army, then there is lamentation and grieving, and, of course, no one is to blame but the son."

"Everybody wouldn't find things as bad as you do," interposed the major.

"You are right, but I am not speaking about myself, but of things in general. In my regiment it happens we are nearly all the sons of retired officers and I am constantly hearing one or other of them complaining: 'Why on earth didn't my father let me be something else, as he must know I can't possibly manage on the small allowance he gives me?' Why do these old officers always send their sons to a military college in spite of all there is against it? Because it is cheap, and it is so very convenient to get the young rascals educated in that way. Do you suppose that in the future the retired officers would take it quite so much as a matter of course that their sons should go into the army if they had to pay four or five hundred marks a year at college instead of eighty, besides providing them with clothes? They would not think any more about it. But now it's a simple matter: 'Let the boy be educated cheaply, that's the thing, we can attend to other things later on.' Privately they always reckon upon an old uncle or aunt, and when one day they 'strike' or die, then the lieutenant is in a fix and gets into debt, or he is expected to live upon air. People always talk about the foolish lieutenants, but what about the foolish parents who, to save themselves the expense of educating them, let them adopt a profession in which it is impossible to earn any money and the temptation to spend it is tremendous."

"Very well delivered," said his father; "but if the officer has no money to get his son properly educated, as was the case with me, what is he to become?"

"Fritz ought to have been put into business," declared Hildegarde. "If a man has no means he should choose a career in which he can make money."

"In theory that is very beautiful and quite true," answered Fritz; "and if many fathers were as wise as you, my charming sister, it would be better for our officers. These first-class men, as father called them a little while ago, would not run around and beg and borrow and get credit, and try their luck at cards in order to try and keep their heads above water until they find a rich wife or are ruined."