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 kill things, so that a gun would probably be an inducement.
The more one knows of the severe demands upon the officers of the German army and of their small pay, the more one realizes that if they are not angels there must be some further explanation of their willingness to undertake the profession. First of all, the Emperor is a soldier and wears at all times the soldier's uniform. Further, he gives from his private purse a small allowance monthly to the poorer officers of the guard regiments. A German officer receives consideration on all sides, whether it be in a shop, a railway-carriage, a drawing-room, or at court.