her men from whom all joyful spontaneity was taken by the
stiff, wooden formalism of their duty, and not a few of whom cherished
the very opposite of patriotism in their breasts! Drill was to maintain
discipline among them? It held them together as an iron hoop holds
together a cask, the dry staves of which would fall asunder at the
first kick!

Confronting the men stood their officers, who, although many of them
actuated by the most honourable intentions, were quite incompetent to
guide the recruits to a convinced and conscious obedience, a voluntary
patriotism. The officer, as a consequence of his origin or education,
was separated by a veritable abyss from the sensations and thoughts of
the common soldier; and, on the other hand, the soldier was unable to
understand the spirit in which he was treated by the officer. It thus
came about that the officer for the most part had a pretty low opinion
of the privates, while the private did not fail to form his own
conclusions as to the officers.

The constancy with which the German corps of officers clung to the old
principles of army organisation was worthy of a better cause. Pinning
their faith to their glorious traditions, all criticism was set down as
malicious gossip, even if it came from their own midst. To an ideal of
such doubtful value they devoted their industry and strength. And it
was strange how little the analogy of the miserable year 1806
shook military self-confidence, despite the startling points of
resemblance. Now, as then, the complaint was of the one-sided
reactionary training of the officers, which must separate them from the
forward movement of the people; now, as then, there was a kind of
hidebound narrow-mindedness, too often degenerating into overweening
self-conceit, making them a laughing-stock to civilians; and, finally,
now as then, there were the same stiff, wooden regulations, the
mechanical drill, which, despite all personal bravery, failed utterly
before the convinced enthusiastic onrush of the revolutionary army. But
worse than defeat in battles was the cowardly capitulation of
strongholds which ensued. The commanders of those days certainly
understood how to command the evolutions of a battalion, how to direct
a parade march, and how to ensure that all pigtails were of the
regulation length; but despite all the drill and all the pedantry, they
remained strangers to the inspiration which inaugurated a new era of
military service--the new