subsequently adopted a longer period of service, many one as long as twenty years.  The minister of war will be able to explain this to you more in detail, if he will address you.  In figures the others are as strong as we, but in quality they cannot equal us.  Courage is the same with all civilized nations, the Russian or the Frenchman fights as bravely as the German; but our people, our 700,000 men, are experienced, rompus au metier, trained soldiers who have not forgotten anything.

In addition, no nation in the world can equal us in our material of officers and subalterns to direct such a huge army.  This means the remarkable degree to which popular education has spread in Germany, and which appears in no other country.  The degree of education which is needed to qualify an officer and a subaltern to command according to what the soldiers expect of them, is found with us far more extensively than elsewhere.  We have more of the material out of which officers, and more out of which subalterns are made, than any other country, and we have a body of officers which no country in the world can equal.

This, and the excellence of our subalterns, who are the pupils of our officers, constitute our superiority.  The other nations cannot equal us in the amount of education which qualifies an officer to fulfil the severe requirements of his station, and of good comradeship to bear all the necessary privations, and at the same time to satisfy the exceedingly difficult social demands which must be met, if the feeling of good fellowship between officers and men, which thank God exists in our army to a high and often stirring degree, is to be established without detracting from the authority of the officers.  The relations existing, especially in war time, between our officers and men are inimitable,—­with few evil exceptions which only prove the rule, for on the whole we may say:  No German officer forsakes his men under fire; he saves them at the risk of his life, and they do the same; no German soldier forsakes his officer—­we have experienced this.

If other nations are obliged to furnish with officers and subalterns equally large troops as we are intending to create by this bill, they may be forced by circumstances to appoint officers who will not succeed in guiding a company through a narrow gate, and even less in meeting the heavy obligations of the officer who is to retain the esteem and love of his men.  The amount of education which is needed for this, and the amount of camaraderie and sense of honor which we find among our officers, can be elicited from no other body of officers anywhere in the world, either by rules or injunctions.  In this we are superior to everybody, and that is why they cannot imitate us.  I am, therefore, not at all afraid of it.

Then there is another advantage if this bill is passed.  The very strength at which we are aiming necessarily renders us pacific.  This sounds like a paradox, but it is not.