nd. Years will pass before the full effect of the
strengthening of the army, which is now being decided on, appears in the
rolls of the Reserve and the Landwehr. The recruit who begins his
service to-day requires a year's training to become a useful soldier.
With the hasty training of substitute reservists and such expedients, we
merely deceive ourselves as to the necessity of serious preparations. We
must not regard the present only, but provide for the future.

The same argument applies to the political conditions. The man who makes
the bulk of the preparations for war dependent on the shifting changes
of the politics of the day, who wishes to slacken off in the work of
arming because no clouds in the political horizon suggest the necessity
of greater efforts, acts contrary to all real statesmanship, and is
sinning against his country.

The moment does not decide; the great political aspirations,
oppositions, and tensions, which are based on the nature of
things--these turn the scale.

When King William at the beginning of the sixties of the last century
undertook the reorganization of the Prussian army, no political tension
existed. The crisis of 1859 had just subsided. But the King had
perceived that the Prussian armament was insufficient to meet the
requirements of the future. After a bitter struggle he extorted from his
people a reorganization of the army, and this laid the foundations
without which the glorious progress of our State would never have begun.
In the same true spirit of statesmanship the Emperor William II. has
powerfully aided and extended the evolution of our fleet, without being
under the stress of any political necessity; he has enjoyed the cheerful
co-operation of his people, since the reform at which he aimed was
universally recognized as an indisputable need of the future, and
accorded with traditional German sentiment.

While the preparation for war must be completed irrespectively of the
political influences of the day, the military power of the probable
opponents marks a limit below which the State cannot sink without
jeopardizing the national safety.

Further, the State is bound to enlist in its service all the discoveries
of modern science, so far as they can be applied to warfare, since all
these methods and engines of war, should they be exclusively in the
hands of the enemy, would secure him a distinct superiority. It is an
obvious necessity to keep the forces which can be put int