taurant, the man dying within a few hours of the deed. His
murderer attempted no other exculpation, or indeed explanation, than
by saying that according to the army code of honor he was forced to
avenge on the spot the insult offered him. Bruesewitz was sentenced to
merely a mild type of confinement for a term of two years, but was
pardoned by the Kaiser at the expiration of a twelvemonth. A more
recent case was that of a young navy lieutenant who likewise stabbed
to death with his sword a former schoolfellow and townsman who had not
saluted him on the street with sufficient ceremoniousness. That, he
said, was his only reason for killing the man, and he, too, received a
very mild sentence. Even worse was the case of two officers quartered
in a small garrison of the province of East Prussia, close to the
Russian border. These men, being somewhat in liquor on New Year's Eve,
mortally wounded one civilian and gravely wounded another for no other
reason than that these men had shouted a song distasteful to them, the
whole occurrence happening in the street after midnight. The officers
got off with a ludicrously small punishment.

Such facts as these--and they could be multiplied indefinitely--show,
above all, one thing: the striking difference in the conception of
what is termed "honor" obtaining between the officers in the army and
the bulk of the population, the citizen element. The so-called "army
code" embodies views which it is euphemism to call mediaeval--remnants
of the dark ages. And yet these views are not excused; no, they are
upheld and endorsed by the Kaiser, his government, and by the army in
a body.

The "code" also brings about that other absurdity, the army duel, as a
mode of settling all serious "affairs of honor." About that enough has
been written in Germany itself to fill whole libraries, and yet the
foolish thing continues. The Kaiser, grown up in all the prejudices of
caste as held by his ancestors and by the present generation of the
upper classes in Germany, has done nothing to eradicate this evil. The
provisions made by him, and now carried out, for regulating the
practice of duelling in his army, have had only the effect of
rendering the duel as an institution still more respectable.

The main reason which impelled me to secure the authority for
presenting his little work in an English dress was the fact that it
tells a truthful tale about an organization of such first-rate
importance as the Ger