“And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war.”
I believe this is a half-truth, and dangerous accordingly. This army has been in existence for over forty years, and has done far more to keep the peace than any other one factor in Europe, except, perhaps, the British navy.
The German army protects the German people not only from external foes, but from internal diseases. It is the greatest school of hygiene in the world, on account of its sound teaching, the devotion, skill, and industry of its officers, the number of its pupils, and its widely distributed lessons and influence.
Culture taken by itself is livery business, and when combined with much beer and wine drinking, irregular eating and a disinclination for regular exercise, culture becomes a positive menace to health. Of this danger to the German, their own great man Bismarck spoke in the Abgeordnetenhaus in 1881: “Bei uns Deutschen wird mit wenigem so viel Zeit totgeschlagen wie mit Biertrinken. Wer beim Frühschoppen sitzt oder beim Abendschoppen und gar noch dazu raucht und Zeitungen liest, hält sich voll ausreichend beschäftigt und geht mit gutem Gewissen nach Haus in dem Bewusstsein, das Seinige geleistet zu haben.”
(“The Germans waste more time drinking beer than in any other way. The man who sits with his morning or his afternoon glass of beer beside him, and who, in addition, smokes and reads the newspapers, considers that he is much occupied, and goes home with a good conscience, feeling that he has fully done his duty.”)
“Jeden Feind besiegt der Deutsche:
Nur den Durst besiegt er nicht.”
Which I permit myself to translate into these two lines:
“The German conquers every foe,
Except his thirst, that lays him low.”
Even if the German army were not necessary as a policeman, it could not be spared as a physician by the German people. It is to be forever kept in mind that the German is brought up on rules; the American and the Englishman on emergencies. Emergencies provide a certain discipline of themselves, and our philosophy of civilization leaves it to the individual to get his own discipline from his own emergencies. We call it the formation of character. The German thinks this method a hap-hazard method, and burdens men with rules, and the army is Germany’s greatest school-master along those lines. We are inclined to think that it results in a machine-made citizen.
There are three classes of men who pick up the bill of fare of life and look it over: Civilization’s paralyzed ones, with no appetite, who can choose what they will without regard to the prices; the cautious, those with appetite but who are hampered in their choice by the prices; the bold, those with appetite and audacity, who rely upon their courage to satisfy the landlord. The Germans are only just beginning to look over the world’s bill of fare in this last lordly fashion, to which some of us have long been accustomed. I see no reason why they should not do so, though I see clearly enough the suspicion and jealousy it creates.