s.

Of technical military matters I know nothing. I have some experience
in handling horses in harness and under saddle, and on subjects with
which I am familiar I venture to pass judgments in the class-room. I
have visited many of these class-rooms, and listened to the teaching
and lectures in French, English, strategy, and political geography,
and kindred topics, and if the rest of the instruction is on a par
with what I heard there is no criticism to be made. I may not say
where, but one of the instructors in French was a real pleasure to
listen to.

The courses and examinations which lead up, in the Kriegesakademie, or
staff college, to the grade of fitness for the general staff, or the
technical division of the general staff, or administrative staff work,
or employment as instructors, are of the very stiffest. An officer who
succeeds in reaching such proficiency, that he is sent up to the
general staff must be a very blue ribbon of a scholar in his own
field.

The quarters, the food, the training, are Spartan indeed at the cadet
schools, but how valuable that is, is shown in the faces, manners,
physique, and general bearing of the picked youths one sees at the
Kriegesakademie in Berlin. No one after seeing these fellows would
deny for a moment the value of a sound, hard discipline. The same may
be seen at our own West Point, where the transformation of many a
country bumpkin, into an officer and a gentleman, in four years is
almost unbelievable.

The truth is that most of us suffer from lack of discipline, and the
intelligent men of every nation will one day insist that, if the state
is to meddle in insurance and other matters, it must logically, and
for its own salvation, demand compulsory service; not necessarily for
war, but for social and economic peace within its own boundaries. It
is a political absurdity that you may tax individuals to provide
against accident and sickness to themselves, but that you may not tax
individuals by compulsory service to provide against accident and
sickness to the state. There can be nothing but ultimate confusion
where the state pays a man if he is ill, pays him if he is hurt, pays
him when he is old, and yet does not force him to keep well, and thus
avoid accident and a pauper's old age by obliging him to submit to two
or three years' sound physical training. Whether the training is done
with a gun or without it matters little. Most men of our breed like to
know how to ki