The English Army

Friedrich Engels

The English Army

Written at the beginning of 1864.

After the manuscript.

The *Allgemeine Militär-Zeitung* recently gave a detailed review of the booklet by Petrie and James on the organisation of the English army, and then in another article described the position of this army in the English state. It now remains to consider this army itself in its historical development over the last seventy years, in its present appearance, its matériel, its internal service routine, its tactical training, and its peculiar forms of combat. This is the purpose of the present lines.

The English army is of quite special interest to the military observer. It is the only one in the world that still rigidly and inflexibly adheres to the old linear tactics, at least insofar as it has never known columns within the range of infantry fire (except in defile fighting). It not only fires in line, it also attacks with the bayonet only in line. Despite this—or perhaps precisely because of it—it is undeniably the army that has suffered the fewest defeats. It is in any case worth the trouble to examine more closely the mode of combat of such an army, particularly now when, to the astonishment of the whole world, the thing thought impossible is becoming possible: that England is threatening us Germans with war.

I

We naturally begin with the
Infantry.
The *robur peditum* |The elite infantry| is the main strength and the chief pride of the English army. Since William Napier it has become an article of faith throughout England that the massed fire of an English line is superior to that of any other troops, and that the

British bayonet is irresistible, and it is true that the English—like other people, to be sure—owe their victories above all to the infantry.

The English infantry has 3 Guards regiments with 7 battalions, 109 line regiments, of which Nos. 1 to 25 have two battalions each, No. 60 (Rifles) has 4 battalions, and the rest have only one battalion each. In addition there is the Rifle Brigade with 4 battalions, making a total of 141 battalions. Whether a line regiment has one battalion or two depends solely upon necessity; as soon as circumstances permit, the second battalions of the first 25 regiments are sure to be disbanded again. Officer promotion also proceeds by regiment, which frequently leads to fatal disruptions when, for example, as with the 13th Regt at present, the first battalion is in Jamaica and the second in New Zealand.

As reserve and elite troops, the Guards and the eight Highland Scottish regiments are counted above all, and they have always done credit to their reputation. Nine so-called “light” regiments and 5 “fusilier” regiments are counted as light infantry, but they differ from the line only by a few badges, and only the 8 rifle battalions are genuine light infantry. Regiments Nos. 101 to 109, former European regiments of the East India Company, serve only in India.

Besides these 141 battalions of British infantry, there are in the home country several other corps, to which we shall return later, and in the colonies:

In North America: 1 battalion and 2 companies of British troops

1,350 men

in the West Indies: 4 bat. Negroes and Mulattos

3,700 men

On St. Helena: 1 British battalion

560 men

On Malta: native fortress artillery

560 men

At the Cape of Good Hope: mounted riflemen,
5
/
6
Hottentots,
1
/
6
Europeans, mostly Germans and Swiss

900 men

In Ceylon: 3 bat. native rifles

1,460 men

8,610 men

Finally, in India, the native army: 151 battalions with a total of about 110,000 men. These troops, with few exceptions, are led by British officers and are, in their whole organisation, very similar to the English line. Only the Indian army still retains many peculiarities from the time of the East India Company; for example, it does not have the purchase of commissions, at least not officially, although similar things occur there indirectly.

Of the English infantry, on 5 February of this year, there were in India 58 battalions, in China 3, on Mauritius (Isle-de-France) 2, at the Cape 4, in Canada and the other North American possessions 12, in Bermuda 1, West Indies 2, in New Zealand (on account of the war with the natives) 10, Gibraltar 5, the Ionian Islands 4, Malta 5, in England and on the homeward voyage home 42. Of these last, 6 were in London, 9 at Aldershot Camp, in Portsmouth, Plymouth and Dover 10, in Jersey 1, in the interior of England 2, in Scotland 2, in Ireland 10, on the return voyage 2. One sees here the mighty assistance which the fleet renders the army; without its protection and the rapid means of transport it provides, these weak garrisons would be far from adequate. But where the fleet can provide only little protection, as in India and Canada, we find strong occupying forces, and similarly in the strategic positions in the Mediterranean, where one must be prepared for struggles with European troops.

Formerly it was the rule to send the Guards abroad only in the event of war; now, however, two battalions are in Canada.

The total strength of the active infantry now amounts to 133,500 men; that is, an average of 884 men per battalion, organised into 10 companies, each with a captain, a lieutenant and an ensign (ensign, the equivalent of our second lieutenant). In addition, each battalion, with the exception of the Guards, has two depot companies for drilling recruits; 6 to 8 of these depots are combined into a depot battalion, of which there are 23, with a total strength of about 18,000 men. These depots are all in the home country, mostly on or near the coast. The total strength of the English infantry is therefore somewhat over 150,000 men.

II

The officers are recruited from all the educated classes of the nation. Not much theoretical schooling is required of the candidates; the prescribed examinations make demands at which a Prussian *Portepeefähnrich* would smile. Efforts are being made, however, more and more to bring young men from the military school at Sandhurst into the army, particularly by awarding ensigncies *without purchase* to those who pass the best examination. Only few language skills are required, and the candidate is given great freedom of choice among several European and Indian languages; the mathematical

requirements are extremely low; on the other hand, far more attention is paid to good, clear, simple expression in English essays of a practical kind than with us, where almost every German army writes its own separate German, and not always the German of common sense. That no inquiries are made into political opinions goes without saying in a country where the two main parties in the aristocracy are almost equally represented; England’s greatest military family, the Napiers, consisted and still consists almost entirely of Radicals. In general, more importance is attached to manly character than to knowledge, and since the English officer can count with certainty on being ordered to every corner of the world and soon led under fire, one can well imagine that the English army does not, to the degree of many another, become a welfare institution for people who lack almost all the physical and moral qualities of a soldier. This last, however, is also the chief guarantee of a good officer corps; for despite all the fine rules mentioned above, nowhere does more nepotism and family favouritism exist than in the English army. Without influential connections no one gets into the officer corps, and without money no one gets ahead who does not have the luck to have his immediate superior shot down in battle. To be sure, there are honourable exceptions here as well; a certain shoemaker’s son from Glasgow died last year as Field Marshal Lord Clyde, after reconquering the lost India; but poor Colin Campbell had had to take part in the campaign against Buenos Aires as an officer as early as 1807, and in 1854, when he went to the Crimea, he was still only a colonel. And without a distant relative who commanded a regiment, he would never have become an officer.

English officers form, particularly in the home country itself, a very exclusive corps. They even have, as in Prussia, a dialect of their own, or rather an accent, and associate very little with the citizens of their garrison towns. Contributing to this seclusion is the fact that the unmarried officers live in barracks (i.e., in a separate outbuilding on the barrack square) and must take part in the common officers’ mess. In a country where the army, in all criminal matters that are not of a strictly military nature, is subject to civil jurisdiction, this sharing of quarters in barracks is a necessity. Young officers are severely punished for wild pranks out in town which could bring them into collision with the civil authorities; in return, however, a fairly large degree of freedom prevails within the barracks themselves. Female visitors of all kinds come and go, there is plenty of drinking and gambling, and

the young gentlemen play the coarsest practical jokes |rough jokes| among one another. If a sneak insinuates himself among them, so much the worse for him. A few years ago, in some regiments, these practical jokes |rough jokes|, carried to excess, led to scandalous courts-martial proceedings, and since then strict regulations have been issued against them; but in reality such jests are generally looked upon with favour, only the public scandal must be avoided. The government contributes £25 per company annually to the officers’ mess; the mess is supposed to be kept decent but frugal and never to put officers of limited means in the position of spending beyond their means. Nevertheless, opportunity enough for spending money exists, and the loan sharks, with bills of exchange and notes of hand, ride just as many young officers to ruin here as anywhere else.

This way of life stamps the outward bearing of the English officer. Towards civilians—although he almost always wears civilian clothes off duty—he is mostly genteel and reserved; presumptuous, forward behaviour towards civilians is found as an exception, perhaps in garrison towns like Portsmouth or in musketry schools, where many officers are together and set the tone. In general, the officer has to prove that he is “an officer and a gentleman”; he can at any moment be brought before a court-martial, dismissed and even cashiered “for conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman”, and this happens without any mercy as soon as an officer has provoked a scandal by his public conduct, unless he resigns voluntarily beforehand. Hushing-up of public scandals, such as are known to us to have occurred in Germany, is not possible in England, and the spirit of the army can only gain thereby.

The right of officers to wear civilian clothes off duty, however unaccustomed it is to us Germans, has its very good sides, and that it by no means has an unfavourable effect on the military spirit of the officers is amply proved by England. Moreover, it should be noted that in the principal garrison towns, such as Chatham, Portsmouth, etc., where there is much duty, the officers appear less frequently in civilian clothes. The duel has completely disappeared from the English army. The last duel between two officers took place twenty years ago between two brothers-in-law, a major and a lieutenant; the major fell;

The lieutenant was acquitted by the jury on account of the preceding unheard-of provocation. The views of honour which have been enforced in the English officer corps – and no one more zealously than Wellington himself – rest on the fundamental notion that he who insults another without cause dishonours himself, not the insulted party; and that he can restore his honour only by making good his wrong, so far as it lies in his power. Whoever, therefore, is the first to insult a comrade thereby incurs the charge of conduct unworthy of a gentleman, unless he remedies his wrong, or if the insult is of such a kind that it cannot be remedied; a court martial soon puts the matter to rights. This way of looking at things may appear strange enough in certain circles, especially in the Prussian army, but it certainly has more sound common sense on its side than the fantastically exaggerated duelling point d’honneur (Ehrenduell) of some people. That the military sense of honour can perfectly well maintain itself upon this footing is proved by the English officers themselves, who in this respect have no comparison to fear.

Promotion in the regiment takes place throughout by seniority, combined with the purchase of commissions, in the following manner: As soon as a vacancy occurs, the senior officer of the next lower rank has the option of purchasing it or not; if he declines – which happens only from lack of means – the second senior gets his turn, and so forth. This purchase of commissions is without question one of the worst institutions in the English army, a point with which foreign soldiers will never reconcile themselves. The thing remains tasteless and reprehensible, even if one allows all the mitigating considerations which the English adduce in its defence: that it brings younger officers more quickly into higher posts, that it is an ancient, inherited institution which is difficult to abolish, etc. It is and remains a disgrace for the English army that it has not been able to overcome this system, and it unquestionably injures the spirit of the officer corps in the highest degree that capable officers must stagnate in the lower grades simply because they have their pay but no capital.

The price of an ensign’s (i.e., sub-lieutenant’s) commission is, in the line infantry, £450 (3,000 thalers); if the ensign wishes to become a lieutenant, he must pay a further £250 (1,700 thalers); for the captain’s commission a further £1,100 (7,030 thalers); major’s commission a further £1,400 (9,030 thalers); lieutenant-colonel’s commission a further £1,300 (8,700 thalers). The commission is therefore, summa summarum, worth £4,540 sterling or over 30,000 thalers, which sum the holder also recovers from his successor as soon as he is promoted to colonel. In the Guards and the cavalry the prices are far higher; in the artillery and engineers no purchase of commissions takes place. If the officer dies, all the capital invested is lost, and the next in seniority succeeds to his place without purchase. From the rank of colonel upwards no purchase takes place; every lieutenant-colonel who has served three years on active duty as such becomes a colonel by right. It is forbidden, on pain of cashiering, to pay more than the fixed price for an officer’s post, yet this happens throughout.

As, moreover, the requirements for the ensign’s examination include no military knowledge whatever, a special examination takes place before promotion to lieutenant and to captain, which confines itself to practical duty, the service regulations, military law, and drill. Theoretical knowledge of tactics is not required.

The officers in the Guards have higher rank; the ensign that of lieutenant, the lieutenant that of captain, the captain that of lieutenant-colonel. This causes much vexation in the line.

The promotion of non-commissioned officers to officers occurs only in exceptional cases. In each battalion the chief routine work devolves upon three officers: the adjutant, the quartermaster, and the paymaster. Old, reliable non-commissioned officers are frequently taken for these posts, who then never rise beyond the lieutenant’s rank granted them gratis. Otherwise, promotion to officer takes place only in rare cases for special distinction before the enemy. The character of the English recruited army, which involves a very strong admixture of degraded and brutal elements, the tone among the troops that depends upon this, and the concomitant kind of discipline make it necessary that the officers belong from the outset to a higher social class than the soldiers. The distance between officer and soldier is therefore greater in England than anywhere else. Hence promotion from the ranks is here very difficult and, so long as, on the one hand, the purchase of commissions and, on the other, the recruiting system last, will always remain only a rare exception. That educated young men join the army as volunteers to serve for promotion, as so frequently happens in Prussia and France, cannot occur in England; the character of the troops is precisely of the kind that people would universally believe the young man had taken up the soldier’s trade from quite other motives, which he prefers to conceal. It is therefore entirely understandable that the English officer corps consists almost exclusively of men who have been raised as gentlemen, and that the mass of the soldiers has more respect for officers who are from the outset their “natural superiors,” as they say in England.

Correspondingly, the tone that prevails between officers and soldiers is cold and businesslike. The two classes are really linked only by the relation of command and obedience. Neither familiarities and jests nor outbursts of passion occur. Praise and blame are meted out to the soldiers by the officers only rarely and directly, and then always in the same calm, businesslike voice. This refers, of course, only to the service relationship during drill, etc.; under their breath the English officers can curse [two words illegible] ... of which their batmen could tell enough.

An institution altogether peculiar to the English army is that by which an officer can hold two different ranks: a lower one in his regiment and a higher one in the army. This second rank, when it is granted permanently and unconditionally, is called brevet rank. Thus a captain in the army may be a brevet major or brevet lieutenant-colonel; it has even happened (notably with commanders of irregular Indian troops) that they were only lieutenants in their regiment but majors in the army. Such a captain and brevet major does captain’s duty in his regiment, but counts as a field officer for duty in the garrison or camp. This higher rank may also be granted only for a certain period or for a certain colony or theatre of war. Thus, in the last ten years, many colonels were appointed “brigadier-generals” or even “major-generals” for the duration of the Crimean War or even for the duration of their stay in the Levant, and similarly in India. This system is a means of bringing favoured or particularly useful individuals into higher positions in spite of seniority; but it entails, as is obvious, many inconveniences and much confusion. To the French in the Crimea the English could never make it comprehensible that a man could simultaneously be captain and major. In promotion the rule holds that no one can become a captain who has not done his full service for at least two years as ensign and lieutenant, no one a major who has not been an officer for six years.

The military training of officers who do not come from the Sandhurst establishment takes place in the platoon and company school, exactly like that of the soldiers; only after an examination before the battalion commander are they exempted from drill and admitted to duty as officers. All the subaltern officers of a battalion are once a year, before the battalion’s spring drill course begins, assembled under the command of a field officer in one platoon and, in this formation, rifle in hand, must drill through the entire squad, platoon and company school. This, however, may for the most part be done only very superficially.

III

The non-commissioned officers and soldiers are, as is well known, recruited by enlistment, and indeed exclusively in Great Britain and Ireland. Only the 100th Regiment recruits in Canada. The recruiting service is under the Adjutant-General of the army and is conducted in a double manner: Firstly, the individual regiments and depot battalions may recruit in their own garrisons. Secondly, independently of this, an organised recruiting service exists over the whole country, for which purpose it is divided into nine recruiting districts (England 4, Scotland 2, Ireland 3). Each district is under an inspecting staff officer (usually a brevet colonel) and is, if necessary, subdivided into smaller circles under lieutenants or captains. – In all, there are employed for this service: 8 staff officers, 9 adjutants, 9 paymasters, 9 surgeons, 11 recruiting subaltern officers (on half-pay), 8 sergeant-majors, 48 sergeants and an appropriate number of soldiers. In addition, the Guards still recruit exclusively for their own completion. Every recruit has the right to choose the corps in which he wishes to enlist. The pious wish is expressed that each corps should, as far as possible, recruit in the county whose name it bears. Foreigners are to be accepted only with special permission, wherefore they are frequently passed off as “Scots.”

In times of war the militia must serve chiefly as a nursery for the line; for each fixed number of men who pass from the militia into the line, an officer of the respective militia regiment receives a commission in the line. During the Indian rebellion of 1857, they went so far as to give the lieutenant-colonelcy to every former or serving staff officer who brought together 1,000 recruits.

Every recruit or veteran re-enlisting receives his full equipment gratis and a bounty, which varies according to the demand for recruits, but which is never less than £1, and very rarely exceeds £10 sterling (67 thalers). It is also frequently different for different arms; most is paid for the engineers, as only the best men can be used here. The bounty is paid out partly on attestation, but for the most part only on joining the regiment and after the recruit has been accepted by its commander. This attestation consists in the recruit being brought, not earlier than 24 hours after enlistment, before the magistrate and there declaring on oath that he has enlisted voluntarily and that no legal impediment stands in the way of his entry into the army.

For the cavalry, artillery drivers, engineers, train, and for the infantry stationed in India, China, Australia and St. Helena, recruits are accepted between the ages of 18 and 25; for the rest of the artillery and infantry, between 17 and 25. The height is fixed as follows:

Cavalry;

Household Cuirassiers: 5 ft. 10 in. to 6 ft.

Heavy Dragoon regiments: 5 ft. 8 in. to 5 ft. 11 in.

Medium Dragoons and Lancers: 5 ft. 7 in. to 5 ft. 9 in.

Hussars: 5 ft. 6 in. to 5 ft. 8 in.

Artillery;

Gunners: minimum 5 ft. 7 in., if under 18 years, 5 ft. 6 in.

Drivers: 5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 6 in.

Artificers: minimum 5 ft. 6 in.

Infantry;

Guards minimum: 5 ft. 8 1/2 in., line 5 ft. 6 in.

' = foot, " = inch.

Yet this minimum is very variable; every serious threat of war forces the government to lower it immediately, and the mere fact that the shortening of the term of service from 12 to 10 years will in the near future release a large number of soldiers was enough to induce the government a few weeks ago to reduce the infantry minimum to 5'5". In general here, as elsewhere, the standard is lowered more and more, although it is understandable that with a volunteer army recruited by enlistment one can still, on average, get hold of taller soldiers than with universal liability to service or conscription. That this is also the case in England can be seen from the figures above, which can easily be reduced to Rhenish measure if one deducts 2 1/4 inches for those from 5' to 5'6", and 2 1/2 inches for those from 5'7" to 6', which is sufficiently exact.

Besides height, a minimum chest measurement is also fixed: for 5'6" to 5'8", 33 inches; for 5'8" to 5'10", 34 inches; above 5'10", 35 inches. Drivers (horse artillery), train soldiers and riflemen must in all circumstances have a chest measurement of 34". Drivers are, however, accepted even if they do not fully meet these requirements, provided they are accustomed to handling horses.

Boys of at least 14 years of age are recruited as drummers and buglers with the consent of their parents. They receive no enlistment bounty.

The term of service is 10 years for the infantry, 12 for the cavalry, artillery, engineers and train; on its expiry the man leaving the service may, if he is still found fit, re-engage for a further 11 years in the infantry, and 9 years in the other branches of service. On expiry of this second engagement he may serve further subject to three months’ notice. If the corps is abroad when the term of service expires, the officer commanding the station has the right to extend it by up to two years.

Every soldier of good conduct generally receives permission to purchase his discharge. The sum required for discharge is based on the service already rendered and still to be rendered, on conduct, etc., and amounts as a maximum to £30 in the cavalry, £20 in the infantry, and £12 for coloured soldiers in the colonial corps.

After 21 years’ service every soldier is entitled to a pension. The amount of the pension is based on length of service, conduct and the physical infirmities acquired during service; for privates and NCOs it is a minimum of 8 pence (6 Sgr. 8 Pf.) and a maximum of 3 shillings 6 pence (1 Tlr. 5 Sgr.) per day. In certain circumstances a pension is also granted for a shorter period of service.

The recruiting sergeants, with the soldiers assigned to them, mostly keep to the poorer quarters of the large towns and frequent mainly the public houses. Often they also march through the streets in procession, with ribbons in their caps and accompanied by a few drummers and fifers, thus attracting a crowd and fishing among it. If the game they are looking for is present, it is as quickly as possible lured into the public house, where all the arts are then employed to induce the same to accept the symbolic shilling which clinches the contract. Once the new candidate for glory has taken this shilling, he can, by paying “smart-money” of one pound sterling, get himself released again before the police magistrate. The law does prescribe that the budding hero must, after a lapse of at least 24 hours after his enlistment, declare before this magistrate that he is enlisting voluntarily and persists in his resolution. In this the law assumes quite rightly that the man enlisted is not, as a rule, sober when he takes the shilling, and thus seeks to give him the opportunity of first becoming sober again. But it would be a poor recruiting sergeant who let his prey escape so easily. He and his men do not let the recruit out of their sight, and before he comes before the magistrate, gin and beer have already done their work again sufficiently. The finest part of it is that a large part of the bill is usually paid by the recruit himself, for whom the sergeant liberally advances the money on account of the enlistment bounty. Under these circumstances it is naive but correct when it is expressly laid down: “Only unmarried soldiers and drummers shall be employed on recruiting duty, and married sergeants only in case of extreme necessity; but in any event only healthy, strong people shall be taken.” Anyone who cannot carouse well is unfit for this duty.

You feel yourself positively transported back into the eighteenth century when you see this recruiting business. Despite the protective formalities with which the law has circumscribed this practice, it is an established fact that by far the largest part of “the English army, which consists entirely of volunteers,” gets into this institution very involuntarily; whether on average to its own ultimate advantage is another question.

What elements of the nation come into the army in this way is evident enough. The army remains, to a large extent, like our former armies recruited by enlistment, a refugium peccatorum (refuge for sinners), in which the larger and better part of all the adventurous elements of the people come together, to be tamed here by a sharp course of drill and very strict discipline. The English army, therefore, also stands far below all those formed by conscription (even with substitution) or, still more, by universal compulsory service without substitution, as far as its moral and intellectual character is concerned. Only the French Foreign Legion and the French corps otherwise mainly formed by substitutes, such as the Zouaves, can be placed on a similar line with it; although it cannot be denied that the whole French army, through the increasing favouring of professional soldiers in the ranks, is approaching more and more the character of the English one. But even the French remplaçant stands far above, in social and outward education, the coarse, dissolute fellows from the dregs of the large towns who set the tone in the English barracks. A young educated man can still enter the French army as a volunteer, in order to serve for advancement, without finding the probationary period as a common soldier altogether unbearable; in England a man would have to be insane to take this step. As proud as the Englishman is of his army as a whole, the individual common soldier is still always despised; even among the lower classes of the people it is still regarded as to some extent discreditable to enlist or to have a soldier as a relative. For the rest, the character of the recruits has undeniably improved very much in the last ten years. The utmost possible information is sought concerning the antecedents of the recruits, and decidedly bad subjects are kept at a distance. The heavy recruiting rendered necessary by the Crimean War and the Indian Rebellion soon exhausted the depraved class from which the army had regularly replenished itself during the long period of peace. The standard had not only to be lowered (at one time to 5'3" for the infantry), but also army life had to be made more attractive, and the tone in the barracks had to be raised, so that the more solid section of the working class could also be drawn into the range of recruiting. The dearth of suitable subjects for the many new non-commissioned officers’ posts (in the Crimean War the battalions were raised to almost double strength) was an additional factor. It was also perceived that a mode of warfare such as Wellington’s in Spain, with obligatory plundering of all fortresses taken by storm, was no longer opportune in Europe. The press took up the cause of the soldiers, and it soon became fashionable among the higher officers to extend philanthropy to the troops. An effort was made to render the soldier’s life more pleasant, to provide him with the means of recreation and self-occupation in his leisure hours in barracks or camp, and to keep him away from the public houses. Thus, especially in the last seven years, libraries, reading-rooms, social rooms with all kinds of games, soldiers’ clubs, etc., were established, mostly by private subscription. In the camps, after the French pattern, soldiers were, where possible, allotted some garden ground; experiments were made with theatrical performances and lectures, and from time to time exhibitions of all sorts of small objects of art produced by them, among other things, were arranged. All these things are only in their infancy, but are becoming ever more general. They are also absolutely necessary. The recruits during the campaigns in the Crimea and in India stood unarguably on a far higher level than the previous ones, since both wars were very popular among the masses. They have greatly improved the tone in the army. The contact with the French soldiers in the Crimea also did its part. The thing now is to preserve this spirit, so that during a longer period of peace similar better recruits may be obtained, and so that one may not again become exclusively dependent on the vagabond elements of the population which are always the first to offer themselves in peacetime.

In spite of this, the latter still form the larger part of the troops, and all institutions are framed accordingly. An English barracks with its outbuildings and yard is surrounded on all sides by high walls, which usually have only one gate. A separate building contains the officers’ quarters; one or more others contain those of the soldiers. Where the soldiers’ quarters have windows facing the street, in newer constructions this part of the building is mostly shut off by a deep ditch and a strong iron fence on the outer edge of the ditch. In large towns, especially in militia barracks containing an armoury (the militia is assembled only four weeks in the year), the whole street front of the building is provided with loopholes instead of windows, and the corners of the wings have little towers designed for rifle flanking fire—a proof that people do not regard workers’ uprisings as so entirely impossible. In this great barracks prison the soldier spends his life, with the exception of his off-duty hours. The access for civilians is strictly supervised, and the whole building is defiladed as far as possible from observation from outside, so that the soldier is kept as much as possible under control and isolated from civilians. The genial intercourse between civilians and soldiers that is so general in Germany, the ease of access to the barracks for everyone, are entirely lacking here, and in order that no lasting connections may be formed, the garrisons are changed, as a rule, every year.

The most common disciplinary offences can easily be guessed from the character of the army. They are drunkenness, unauthorised absence after tattoo, theft from comrades, brawling, insubordination, and physical assault on superiors. The lighter offences are punished summarily by the battalion commander. He has exclusive penal authority, but he may delegate to company commanders penal authority up to three days’ barracks arrest. His own penal authority extends to: 1. imprisonment up to 7 days, with or without solitary confinement, with or without penal labour. Soldiers who are so sentenced have the right to appeal from the battalion commander to a court martial. 2. confinement in a dark cell (black-hole) up to 48 hours. 3. barracks arrest up to ...

... a month, the prisoner having to perform all duties and, in addition, all extra work assigned to him by the commanding officer. Barracks arrest also entails punishment drill with full pack for up to fourteen days. Punishment drill is never to last longer than an hour at a time, but may be repeated up to four times daily. In cases ad 2 and 3 the commanding officer
may
permit appeal to a court martial. Solitary or dark confinement is, as far as possible, to be reserved for cases of drunkenness, brawling, and insolence towards superiors, and may in serious cases be combined with barracks arrest in such a way that the whole period of arrest does not exceed one month.

As can be seen, an English battalion commander has means enough in his hands to keep order among his wild fellows. If these means do not suffice, a court martial provides a remedy, where then, in the final instance, the cat-o’-nine-tails beckons to the rebellious rogue. This is one of the most barbarous instruments of chastisement in existence: a short-handled whip with nine long, hard, and knotted cords. The delinquent, stripped naked to the hips, is bound to a triangular frame and the strokes are delivered with the utmost force. The very first stroke lacerates the skin and draws blood. After a few strokes, whip and flogger are changed, so that nothing is spared the culprit. The physician, naturally, is always present. Fifty such strokes always necessitate a protracted cure in the hospital. And yet one frequently finds men who endure these fifty without a sound of pain, because it is accounted a greater disgrace to show the pain than to receive the strokes.

Until twelve years ago, the cat was applied very frequently, and up to 150 strokes were permitted. If I am not mistaken, during roughly the same period the regimental commander could also have a certain number of strokes summarily administered. The number was then limited to 50 strokes and the authority to decree them was transferred exclusively to courts martial. Finally, after the Crimean War, the Prussian division of soldiers into two classes was introduced, particularly at the instigation of Prince Albert, and it was laid down that only soldiers who had already been placed in the second class for earlier offences and who had not lifted themselves back into the first class through a year of irreproachable service could be corporally punished for a new offence. This distinction ceases, however, in the face of the enemy; here every private is once more subjected to the lash. In the year 1862, 126 men were corporally punished in the army, of whom 114 received the highest lawful number of 50 strokes.

In general, one sees that both the need and the appetite for employing the lash have greatly diminished, and since the same causes continue to operate in the army, it is to be assumed that this will also remain the case further on, and that the cat will increasingly be regarded as an exceptional, extreme instrument of terror held in reserve for grave cases in the face of the enemy. It has just been observed that the appeal to the soldiers’ sense of honour does more good than degrading punishments, and on this point there is but one voice in the whole English army, namely that a flogged soldier is never afterwards worth anything. In spite of this, England will not soon arrive at the complete abolition of the cat. We all know how strong the prejudices in favour of corporal punishments have been, and partly still are, even in armies that consist of far better social elements than the English; and in a recruiting army such an extreme instrument of terror does still have some excuse. On one point, however, the English are certainly in the right: if corporal punishment is to exist at all, they apply it only as an extreme means, but then very seriously. The eternal stick-flogging on a mild scale, such as still occurs in many armies, and unfortunately also in German ones, which can serve only to weaken the fear of this punishment ... |Here the manuscript breaks off|