t say, but Saxony is a peculiarly overpopulated
section of Germany, and the population is overdriven; and the German
everywhere is a dreamy creature compared with us, of less toughness of
fibre either morally or physically, and no doubt, here and there,
under-exercising and over-thinking make the world seem to be a mad
place and impossible to live in. Indeed, it is no place to live in for
the best of us if we take it, or ourselves, too seriously. The German
army is an educated army, as is no other army in the world, and there
are the diseases peculiar to education to combat. A mediocre ability
to think, and a limited intellectual experience, coupled with a
craving for miscellaneous reading, breed new microbes almost as fast
as science discovers remedies for the old ones.

Bismarck's words, "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland," meant to him, and
mean to-day, far more than that the army is necessary for defence. It
is the best all-round democratic university in the world; it is a
necessary antidote for the physical lethargy of the German race; it is
essential to discipline; it is a cement for holding Germany together;
it gives a much-worried and many-times-beaten people confidence; the
poverty of the great bulk of its officers keeps the level of social
expenditure on a sensible scale; it offers a brilliant example, in a
material age, of men scorning ease for the service of their country;
it keeps the peace in Europe; and until there is a second coming, of a
Christ of pity, and patience, and peace, it is as good a substitute
for that far-off divine event as puzzled man has to offer.

It is silly and superficial to look upon the German army only as a
menace, only as a cloud of provocations in glittering uniforms, only
as a helmeted frown with a turned-up moustache. It is not, and I make
no such claim for it, an army or an officers' corps of Puritans or of
self-sacrificing saints, but it does partake of the dreamy, idealistic
German nature, as does every other institution in Germany. Though, as
a whole, it is a fighting machine, the various parts of it are not
imbued with that spirit alone. The uneasy pessimism of the dreamer,
which distrusts the comfortable solutions of the business-like
politicians, and leaders, in their own and in other countries, is as
noticeable in the army as in all other departments of German life.

"And all through life I see a cross,
Where sons of God yield up their breath;
There is no gain except by lo