their profession as a kind
of sport, attractive, abounding in superficial honours, and for
that reason very agreeable. They generally spring from well-to-do
middle-class families (Landsberg), or, in the smart regiments of
Guards, from the families of large landed proprietors and wealthy
manufacturers. These latter are apt to regard court ball-rooms and
racecourses as more important fields of action than drill-grounds and
barracks. They are wholly without ambition, because they only intend to
spend a few years in the army, and then retire to the comforts of
private life on their own estates. They are neither good officers
because to be that demands a man's whole attention and energies; nor,
subsequently, good citizens--because the proper management of a large
estate needs training and experience, which cannot be acquired during
their years of military life.

"Yet sometimes these very officers become generals in command, or
something of the sort!" said he. "That's the worst of it!"

_June 3rd._

The colonel continued the conversation of yesterday. We talked about
the aristocracy and the middle-class in the army. He admits without
hesitation that the middle-class element is despised, from the
staff-officers downwards, owing to causes originating in the reflected
glory of the old personal relations between the monarch and his
feudal lords, now somewhat modified by the indiscriminate giving of
titles--the acceptance of which titles, moreover, on the part of the
middle-classes, he utterly condemns. He wound up by saying: "If only it
were always members of the aristocracy who were really the most
efficient, and attained the highest eminence!"

Just as the colonel had argued before that there was danger of
one-sidedness from the prevailing influence of the "army nobility," he
now
pointed out that, on the other hand, an advantage arose: a kind of
accumulation of specific military qualities of a bodily as well as of a
mental kind. He may be quite right.

_June 6th._

Yesterday and to-day the Crown Prince lunched at the mess. He came for
these two days in order to inspect the regiment of dragoons here, which
belongs to his brigade. An amiable, good-tempered fellow (although our
cooking did not give him entire satisfaction), and one who likes to sit
over his wine a little.

As we rode after dinner his Highne