ing true discipline, etc., etc. This is tantamount to saying 
that order and discipline can only be established by making 
the men practise utterly useless things. The abolition of the 
“goose step” alone would make whole weeks available for rational 
exercises, quite apart from the fact that foreign officers could 
then watch a German review without laughing up _ their 
sleeves. 

Another similar obsolete institution is sentry duty, which, 
according to an old traditional notion, also serves to develop the 
intelligence and especially the independent thought of the men by 
teaching them the art—in case they are not already familiar with 
it—of standing guard and thinking of nothing at all for two 
hours. In view of the present universal custom of practising 
outpost duty in the field, sentry duty in town, where there are 
after all security police of every kind, has become totally senseless. 
Its abolition would result in at least a twenty per cent gain in the 
effective term of service for the army and ensure safety on the 
streets for civilians. 

And then there are everywhere a lot of soldiers who on all sorts 
of pretexts do as little service as possible: company craftsmen, 
batmen, etc. There is plenty of scope for changes here. 

Yes—but what about the cavalry? Surely they must have a 
longer term of service?—This is certainly desirable if one is 
dealing with recruits who can neither ride nor tend a horse. But 
there is plenty of scope for changes here too. If the horse rations 
were not so meagerly proportioned—the horses have to be 
specially fed for the manoeuvres in order to attain their normal 
strength!—and if every squadron had a number of extra horses 
available so that the men were able to practise in the saddle more 
often and for longer periods—in short, if a serious effort were 
made to compensate for the shorter term of service by the more 
intensive pursuit of essentials and the elimination of things 
superfluous, it would soon be found that it is possible to manage 
in that way, too. Even for rough-riding, on which so much stress 
has been placed and the vital necessity of which I readily concede, 
ways and means can be found. And anyway there is nothing to 
prevent the retention and extension of the system of three or 
four-year volunteers or of re-enlisted soldiers for cavalry troops, 
for as long as it is considered necessary—in return for corre- 
sponding compensations in the service liability of the reserve and 
the Landwehr, without which such things will not be attained. 

Of course, if one listens to the military authorities one hears 
quite a different tale. It is all quite impossible, they say, and 

Can Europe Disarm? 377 

nothing may be altered without everything collapsing. But for fifty 
years now I have heard so many military institutions solemnly 
described as unassailable and sacrosanct today, only to see them 
flung mercilessly into the junk room tomorrow, and by the very 
same authorities; furthermore, I have so often seen that what is 
praised to the skies in one army is deemed beneath contempt in 
another; I have so often observed that customs lavished with 
praise and institutions of long standing prove to be folly in the 
face of the enemy; finally, it has so often been my experience that 
in every army there is a particular conventional tradition intended 
for those of minor rank, the common soldier and the public, that 
is cultivated by the higher superiors but ridiculed by the officers 
of independent mind and reduced to nought by every campaign— 
in short, I have had so much historical experience of this that I 
would advise everyone to distrust nothing more than military 
“expertise”. 

III 

It is a peculiar contrast: our high-ranking soldiers are generally 
so dreadfully conservative precisely in their own field, and yet 
there is today scarcely any other domain that is as revolutionary as 
the military one. The smooth-bore six-pounder and the seven- 
pound howitzer which I handled close by the Kupfergraben in the 
old days and today’s rifled breech-loading guns, the large- 
calibre smooth-bore gun of those days and the modern 5mm 
repeating breech-loaders, seem centuries apart; and there is still 
no end to it, every day technology still ruthlessly throws overboard 
all the latest innovations. Now it is even discarding the romantic 
powder-smoke, giving battle a totally different character and 
course that are quite incalculable in advance. We must, however, 
increasingly come to terms with such incalculable factors in the 
midst of this ceaseless revolutionising of the technical basis of 
warfare. 

As late as forty years ago the effective firing range of the 
infantry extended no further than 300 paces, at which distance a 
single man could survive unscathed a volley from an entire 
battalion, provided that the men were all really aiming at him. As 
for the firing range of the field artillery, it was practically 
ineffectual even at 1,500 to 1,800 paces. In the Franco-Prussian 
War the effective firing range of the rifles was 600-1,000 paces, 
that of the artillery 3,000-4,000 paces at the most. But the new