patriotism, the love of one's country. They
had stood in a strongly personal relationship to their king but it no
longer sufficed to save them. They had shouted "Long live the king!"
thousands of times; yet they betrayed the king when they presumed he
had lost because they knew no better.

They had _played_ too long at being soldiers to be able really to be
soldiers.

Subsequently such men as Scharnhorst, Boyen, and Gneisenau directed the
military service into the new paths of allegiance to the nation; a work
which was crowned by the unexampled successes of the years 1870-71.
But since that epoch, while the foundation of the system--the people
themselves--had with each new year altered and progressed in every
relation of life, yet the system itself had remained unchanged, and the
German officer's devotion to duty, similarly unchanged, was largely
wasted by being directed into worn-out channels.

Again, it must be deeply deplored that promotions were no longer due to
military efficiency alone, but also to victories achieved at the courts
of princes. To this circumstance, opening up, as it did, an anything
but reassuring view of the good faith of the authorities, was to be
added yet another, also tending to undermine the soundness of the army:
the ever-increasing luxury apparent in military circles. Of necessity,
and in the true interests of the army, the best material in the
corps of officers--the members of the old noble and gentle "army
nobility"--were careful to shun this vice. These officers, whose
families had often served the king as soldiers for four or five
generations, held fast to a Spartan simplicity of life, and to the old
Prussian independence of material comforts, and with them were all
those who regarded their vocation as something loftier than an
amusement. Otherwise, a most unsoldierlike luxury was spreading
unhindered in all directions, causing the young subalterns especially
to neglect their duties, and rendering them in great measure absolutely
unfit for real hard work and privations. And despite the numerous
orders levelled against them, these tendencies continued to increase,
because of the lack of a good example in high quarters.

The plain and simple uniform in which so many great victories had been
won no longer sufficed. New embellishments medals, cords, trimmings, or
what not were eternally being devised. As though such mere external
trumpery could create anew the now waning love for milita