"The practice tour[[8]] with which the course terminates offers the opportunity of testing the capacity, knowledge, and endurance of each officer—of finding what he can do. Upon the basis of simple general and special ideas, usually framed by the teacher who conducts the exercise, the decisions of the general commanding and the general staff officer's share in the measures adopted will be illustrated. For this purpose it will be useful to form two sides, neither of which should, as a rule, exceed the strength of an imaginary infantry division on a war footing. The exercise should be so arranged as to occasion in turn practice in formal work such as may promote facility in the issue of orders and a knowledge of the arrangements of our army, discussions upon the spot of tactical situations, analyses of the effects upon the troops of dispositions given, and lastly, comprehensive examinations of the situation presented by the campaign or battle. Each officer who joins the tour should have the opportunity of grappling with as many as possible of these various kinds of difficulties."
The advocates of original research as the true instrument of higher education may not at first sight recognise their ideal in Moltke's Order of Teaching. They may smile at an academy where natural science and history are taught in lectures appealing only to the intelligence and the memory. But the school at Berlin has a practical aim. It is a school of war, and in all that relates to war the German staff officer learns to apply that science which consists in the true method of apprehending. Moreover, the Order of Teaching, like all other German military regulations, does not fully reveal the thoroughness of the work executed in obedience to its precepts. In military history, for instance, it lays down that the third year's course is to deal with "campaigns of the time of William I." This phrase would be met by very superficial work. The letter would be fulfilled by a perusal of a précis of the campaigns of 1866 or of 1870. A study of one of these campaigns in the official history might seem completely to fulfil the requirements. But in practice the students at the Academy work out the selected campaign on a still wider basis. In the probationary year which follows the Academy course they are allowed access to the materials from which the staff histories were written, and are expected to form their own judgment on the campaign from the study of the original documents themselves. This is the very ideal of the ideal professor of history.
There is no doubt another point of view from which the War Academy may be differently judged. A University, strictly speaking, is a school of free thought, and should give to those who have lived its life and breathed its spirit a view of the world, of nature and of humanity, of which the characteristic is freedom, spontaneity, independence. The man who in this sense has had a liberal education may be reactionary or progressive in his sympathies, may be democratic or authoritative in his leanings, but in any case if the University has done its work he will choose his own way. He will take his bearings for himself, and his thought will be conditioned by no ordinances and limited by no authority. At this intellectual freedom the War Academy does not aim. Its business is not with the progress of humanity, but with the training of good servants for the King of Prussia. Whether this immediate object is a means to the higher end is a question for the historian in some future century.
[[1]] Schwartz, Leben des Generals Carl von Clausewitz, etc., vol. i. p. 151.
[[2]] It is dated August 12th, 1888; Count Moltke's resignation as chief of the general staff of the army is dated in the Gazette, August 10th, 1888.
[[3]] Mark Pattison's Suggestions on Academical Organisation, with Especial Reference to Oxford, p. 307.
[[4]] Cp. Pattison's Suggestions, p. 262.
[[5]] Cp. Paulson's Suggestions, p. 165.
[[6]] List of the subjects taught in the Academy, with number of hours per week in each year's course devoted to each:—
1st 2nd 3rd
MILITARY SUBJECTS. year's year's year's
course. course. course.
Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 2
Military history . . . . . . . . 3 4 4
Early history of armies . . . . . 1 -- --
Construction and nature of weapons 3 -- --
Fortification . . . . . . . . . . 3 -- --
Means of communication . . . . . -- 2 --
Military surveying . . . . . . . -- 2 --
Military law . . . . . . . . . . -- 1 --
Military hygiene . . . . . . . . -- 1 --
Military geography . . . . . . . -- 2 --
Duties of the general staff . . . -- -- 4
Siege warfare . . . . . . . . . . -- -- 3
NON-MILITARY SUBJECTS.
History . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3 3
General geography . . . . . . . . 2 -- --
Administration and law, including
international law . . . . . . . -- -- 2
Mathematics (Mathematical ) 4 3 2
Physical Geography (sciences as ) 2 -- --
Physics . . . . . (alternatives ) -- 3 --
Geodesy . . . . . (for language.) -- -- 3
Chemistry . . . . ( ) -- -- 2
French . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6 6
or . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Russian . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6 6