It is truly comical the way the National Liberals and the men of 
Progress *** are acting in the Imperial Diet with respect to §1 of 
the Military Law: 

“The effective strength of the army in peacetime in non-commissioned officers 
and soldiers shall, until the issue of further legal regulations, amount to 
401,659 men.” 

This paragraph, they cry, is unacceptable; it cancels out the 
Imperial Diet’s budgetary rights and turns the approval of military 
estimates into a mere farce! 

Quite right, gentlemen! And precisely because this 1s so, because 
the article 1s unacceptable, you will accept it in its essentials. Why 
make so much fuss because you are expected to bend your knees 
once again, as you have so often done before with such grace? 

The root of the whole wretched business is the re-organisation 
of the Prussian army. It engendered the glorious conflict.** 
During the whole period of the conflict, the liberal opposition put 
into practice Manteuffel’s principle: “He who is strong gives way 
bravely.” “*! After the Danish War their braveness in giving way 
increased considerably. Yet when Bismarck returned in triumph 
from Sadowa in 1866 and went so far as to apply for an indemnity 
for his previous unauthorised expenditure —then their giving way 
no longer knew any bounds.**” The military estimate was 
immediately approved, and in Prussia what has once been 

approved is, according to the Prussian constitution, approved 
forever, for “the current” (once approved) “taxes shall continue to 
be raised’’!? 

Then came the North German Imperial Diet, which debated the 
constitution of the Confederation.” There was much talk of 
budgetary rights, the government proposal was declared unaccept- 
able on the grounds of inadequate control over finances; there was 
much twisting and turning this way and that, and finally they 
swallowed the bitter pill and transferred the regulations of the 
Prussian constitution on the military estimate to the North 
German Confederation on all major points. By this measure, the 
strength of the army in peacetime was already raised from 
200,000 to 300,000 men. 

Then came the glorious war of 1870, and with it the “German 
Empire”. Another constituent (!) Imperial Diet and a new imperial 
constitution.*** More high-minded speeches and countless reserva- 
tions on account of the budgetary rights. And what did the 
gentlemen decide? 

The Imperial Constitution §60: 

“The strength of the German army in peacetime is set until December 31, 1871, 
at one per cent of the population of 1867 and shall be provided pro rata in respect 
of the same by the individual federal states. After this date, the strength of the army in 

One per cent of the population of 1867 means 401,000 men. 
This effective strength has since been prolonged by decision of the 
Imperial Diet until December 31, 1874. 

§62: “To meet the expenditure for the whole of the German army and the 
institutions appertaining to the same, the Emperor shall have 225 thalers multiplied 
by the number of men constituting the peacetime strength of the army according 
to §60 placed annually at his disposal until December 31, 1871. After December 31, 
1871, these amounts shall continue to be paid to the Imperial Exchequer by the individual 
states of the Confederation. For the purpose of calculating the same, the peacetime effective 
strength provisionally laid down in §60 shall be retained until changed by imperial law.” 

That was the third time our Nationals had knelt down before 
the inviolable military estimate. And when Bismarck now comes 
and demands that the happy provisorium be turned into an even 
happier definitiuum, these gentlemen cry out at the infringement 
of the budgetary rights, which they themselves have sacrificed 
three times in a row! 

My dear Sirs, the Nationals! Go in for “practical politics”! Make 
allowances for “current circumstances”! Cast your “unattainable 
ideals’”” overboard and carry on bravely “on the basis of the 
realities”! You have not only said A, you have already said B and 
C, so do not hesitate to say D! Dithering and dathering is no use 
here. Now is the time for another of your glorious “compromises” 
whereby the government gets its own way entirely and you may be 
pleased to get off without being kicked. Leave budgetary rights to 
the English, bogged down in their materialism, to the decadent 
French and the backward Austrians and Italians; do not cling to 
“foreign models”, do a “genuinely German job”! Yet if you 
absolutely insist on having budgetary rights, then there’s only one 
thing to do: next time elect only Social-Democrats! 

II 
[Der Volksstaat, No. 29, March 11, 1874] 

That the Nationals are stupid—despite all their smart little 
Laskers—we have known for a long time, and they know it 
themselves. Yet we would not have believed that they were as 
stupid as Moltke thinks they are. The Master of Silence spoke for 
a whole hour in the Imperial Diet and yet remained the Master of 
Silence; for he withheld from his audience virtually all of what he 
himself thinks. Only on two issues did he frankly speak his mind: 
first, that the fatal §1 is absolutely necessary, and second, with the 
splendid words: 

“What we have conquered with arms in half a year, we must guard with arms 
for half a century, lest it be snatched away from us again. Since our successful wars 
we have gained respect everywhere, love nowhere.” 4 

Habemus confitentem reum. Here we have the guilty party brought 
to confession.” When Prussia came out with its annexation 
demands after Sedan,** it claimed: the new border is determined 
solely by strategic necessity; we are only taking what we absolutely 
need to safeguard ourselves; within this new border and after the 
completion of our fortifications we shall be able to look forward to 
any attack with equanimity.—And this is certainly true, from a 
purely strategic point of view. 

on February 16, 1874.— Fd 

The fortified line along the Rhine, with its three major bases, 
Cologne, Coblenz and Mainz, had only two faults. First, it could be 
circumvented by way of Strasbourg; second, it lacked an advance 
line of fortified points giving depth to the whole position. The 
annexation of Alsace-Lorraine eliminated both of these drawbacks. 
Strasbourg and Metz now form the first line; Cologne, Coblenz 
and Mainz, the second; all of them are first-class strongholds, with 
well advanced forts and capable of resisting modern rifled 
artillery; moreover, they are situated at such distances from one 
another as best to afford the colossal armies of today freedom of 
movement, on terrain extremely well-suited to defence. As long as 
the neutrality of Belgium is respected, a French attack may be 
easily confined to the narrow strip of land between Metz and the 
Vosges; it is also possible, if deemed desirable, to retreat behind 
the Rhine at the outset, thus forcing the French to weaken 
themselves before the first major battle by despatching troops to 
Metz, Strasbourg, Coblenz and Mainz. It is a position unequalled 
in strength throughout Europe; the Venetian Quadrilateral ** was 
child’s play in comparison with this almost impregnable position. 

Yet precisely the capture of this almost impregnable position 
forces Germany, according to Moltke, to defend its conquests by 
arms for half a century! The strongest position does not defend 
itself, it needs defending; defence requires soldiers; and so the 
stronger the positions the more soldiers are needed, and so on, in 
an eternal vicious circle. In addition, the newly recovered “lost 
brother-tribe” in Alsace-Lorraine* simply does not want anything 
to do with Mother Germania and the French are obliged, come 
what may, to attempt to liberate the Alsatians and Lorrainians 
from the Germanic embrace at the first opportunity. The strong 
position is thus outweighed by the fact that Germany has forced 
the French to side with anyone who wishes to attack her. In other 
words, this strong position contains within it the seed of a European 
coalition against the German Empire. No amount of three-Emperor 
or two-Emperor meetings **’ and toasts alters this in the slightest, 
and nobody knows this better than Moltke and Bismarck; as 
Moltke, in fact, discreetly puts it in this melancholy sentence: 

“Since our successful wars we have gained respect everywhere, love nowhere!” 

So much for the truth according to Moltke. Now for his fictions.” 

We shall waste no time discussing the sentimental sigh with 
which the great strategist announces his sorrow that the army is 
unfortunately obliged to consume such colossal sums for the good 
of the people, posing, as it were, as a Prussian Cincinnatus who 
desires nothing more ardently than to be promoted from General 
Field-Marshal to cabbage-farmer. Still less shall we dwell on the 
hackneyed theory that, on account of the poor education given to 
the nation by the school-master, every German must be sent to 
spend three years at the high-school where the sergeant-major is 
the professor. We are not speaking to Nationals here, as poor 
Moltke was obliged to do. We shall pass on at once to the 
staggering military tall stories that, to the universal amusement of 
the great General Staff, he told his astonished audience. 

It is again a matter of justifying the large German armaments 
by the allegedly even larger ones of the French. And so Moltke 
discloses to the Imperial Diet that the French Government already 
has the right to call 1,200,000 men to arms for the regular army 
and over a million for the territorial army. In order to place these 
men, “indeed only a part of them”, the French had increased 
their cadres. They now had 152 infantry regiments (as against 116 
before the war), 9 new battalions of fusiliers, 14 new cavalry 
regiments, 323 batteries instead of the former 164. And “these 
reinforcements have not yet stopped”. The peacetime effective 
strength of the army amounts to 40,000 men more than in 1871, 
now being set at 471,170. Instead of the eight army corps with 
which the French faced us at the outbreak of the war, France will, 
in future, have 18, and a nineteenth for Algiers; the national 
assembly is virtually imposing money for armaments on the 
government, the local authorities provide free training grounds 
and officers’ messes, and build barracks at their own expense, 
displaying an almost violent patriotism such as could only be 
wished for in Germany—in short, everyone is preparing for a 
great war of revenge. 

Now, if the French government had done everything with which 
Moltke credits it, it would have been doing no more than its duty. 
After defeats such as those of 1870, it is the first duty of the 
government to build up the defences of the nation sufficiently to 
guard against a recurrence of such disasters. Precisely the same 
thing happened to the Prussians in 1806; their entire obsolete 
army was transported free of charge to France as prisoners of war. 
After the war, the Prussian government did its utmost to make the 
whole nation capable of bearing arms; the men were only given six 
months’ training, and despite Moltke’s aversion to the militia, we 

have Blücher’s word for it that, after the first few engagements, 
these “militia patteljohns”,*** as he expressed himself, were every 
bit as good as the battalions of the line. If the French government 
did likewise, if it devoted all its energies to making the whole 
nation capable of bearing arms in five or six years—it would only 
be doing its duty. But the opposite is the case. With the exception 
of the newly-formed battalions, squadrons and batteries, which, up 
to now, have only reached the level of the German organisation of 
the line, everything else exists solely on paper, and France is 
militarily weaker than ever. 

“France,” says Moltke, “has faithfully copied all our military institutions... 
Above all, they have introduced universal compulsory military service, basing it on 
a 20-year commitment, whereas ours is for only 12 years.” 

If this were really so, what does the difference between 20 years 
and 12 years amount to? Where is the German who would really 
be relieved of his militia commitment after 12 years? Is it not 
generally said: the 12 years only come into effect when we have 
enough men; until then you will have to remain in the militia for 
14, 15, 16 years? And why have we exhumed the extinct 
Landsturm,**” if not to render every German who was ever in 
uniform liable to military service for the rest of his earthly life? 

In fact, however, universal compulsory military service in France 
is of a rather special character. France lacks precisely the 
semi-feudal eastern provinces of Prussia that form the real basis of 
the Prussian state and the new German Empire; provinces 
providing recruits who obey without question, and never become 
much wiser afterwards, as militiamen, either. The extension of 
universal compulsory military service to the western provinces 
already showed in 1849 that one man’s meat is another man’s 
poison *°; the extension now made to the whole of Germany will 
create men trained in arms who will put the Moltkes and 
Bismarcks out of business, at the very latest by the time the twelve 
years so dear to Moltke are up—should the whole little scheme 
last that long. 

In France, then, not even the basis exists for universal 
compulsory military service to create soldiers obedient to reaction. 
In France the Prussian non-commissioned officer was an obsolete 
concept even before the Great Revolution. Minister of War 
Saint-Germain introduced Prussian flogging in 1776; but the 
flogged soldiers shot themselves, and flogging had to be abolished 
the very same year. Really introduce universal compulsory military 
service in France, train the mass of the population in the use of 

arms, and where would Thiers and Mac-Mahon be? But Thiers 
and Mac-Mahon, although far from geniuses, are not the 
schoolboys Moltke makes them out to be. On paper they have set 
up universal compulsory military service, certainly; in reality they 
have been insisting with the greatest obstinacy on five-year service 
under the colours.**' Now, everyone knows that universal compul- 
sory military service is quite incompatible even with the Prussian 
three-year term of service; either one must accept a peacetime 
effective strength for Germany of at least 600,000 men, or one 
must allow men to draw lots for exemption, as does happen. What 
peacetime effective strength would a five-year term of service yield 
in France under universal compulsory military service? Almost a 
million; but even Moltke cannot manage to impute even half this 
figure to the French. 

The same day Moltke impressed his audience so astonishingly, 
the Kdélnische Zeitung published a “military announcement” about 
the French army.* These military announcements come to the 
Kolnische Zeitung from a very good semi-official source, and the 
military ‘“‘swineherd” concerned will have received a first-class 
ticking-off for dropping this clanger at such an eminently 
unsuitable juncture. For the man actually tells the truth. He states 
that the latest official French statistics prove 

“that France would scarcely be able to carry out the military goal that she has 
set herself in the new defence law, even by stretching her powers to the utmost”. 

According to him, “the strength of the army for this year has 
been set at 442,014 men”. First, however, the Republican 
Gendarmerie Guard of 27,500 must be deducted from this figure; 
“yet according to the budget figures given for the individual 
services the actual strength of the army, in fact, amounts to only 
389,965 men”. From this must be subtracted 

“recruited troops (the Foreign Legion and native Algerian units), administrative 
troop bodies and cadres of non-commissioned officers and re-enlisted soldiers, 
which were fixed at 120,000 men, according to the earlier authentic French 
figures. However, even estimating the real effective strength of the same at only 
80,000 men, there only remains—with regard to recruitment—an actual army 
strength of 309,000 men, consisting of five annual intakes of the first contingent and one 
of the second (reserve) contingent. The one annual intake of the second contingent 
consists of 30,000 men, and thus the annual enlisted intake of the first contingent and 
annual recruit intake of the same may be calculated as 55,800 men each. If we then add 
to this the 30,000 men of the second contingent, the largest annual recruitment to the 
French army would still be only 99,714 men”. 

No. 48, February 17, 1874, Ist supplement, p. 3.— Ed. 

Thus: the French call up about 60,000 men annually for five 
years’ service, making 1,200,000 men in 20 years, and if we deduct 
such wastage as actually occurs in the Prussian militia, a maximum 
of 800,000 men. Further, 30,000 men for one year’s service— 
worthless militiamen, according to Moltke—makes 600,000 men in 
20 years, after deductions for wastage 400,000 men at the most. 
Thus, when the French have, undisturbed for 20 years, indulged 
the patriotism so praised by Moltke, they will eventually be able to 
confront the Germans, not with Moltke’s 2,200,000 men, but at 
the most with 800,000 trained soldiers and 400,000 militiamen, 
whereas Moltke can already easily mobilise one and a half million 
fully trained German soldiers at any time. It is against these facts 
that one should weigh the amusement that Moltke’s speech— 
greeted with astonishment by the Imperial Diet— produced among 
the General Staff. 

One must allow this to Moltke: As long as he was dealing with 
naive adversaries like Benedek and Louis Napoleon, he engaged 
in thoroughly honest warfare. He followed the strategic rules 
discovered by Napoleon I to the letter, meticulously and scrupul- 
ously. No enemy could reproach him with ever having employed 
surprise, secrecy, or any other vulgar ruse of war. Consequently it 
could be doubted whether Moltke really was a genius. This doubt 
has been removed since Moltke has had to fight opponents who 
are his equals—the geniuses of the Imperial Diet. In confronta- 
tion with the latter he has demonstrated that he can outfool his 
opponents if necessary. There is no longer any doubt of it: Moltke 
is a genius. 

But what may we suppose Moltke really thinks of the French 
armaments? Here, too, we have a number of indications to help 
us.— Moltke and Bismarck were under no illusions about the fact 
that, just as the victories of 1866 could not fail to elicit a cry for 
revenge for Sadowa from official circles in France, neither could 
the successes of 1870 fail to impose “revenge for Sedan” on 
official Russia. Hitherto the obedient servant of Russia, Prussia 
had suddenly revealed itself as the foremost military power of 
Europe; such an immense shift in the European situation to the 
detriment of Russia was tantamount to a defeat for Russian policy; 
the cry for revenge rang out loud enough in Russia. Under the 
circumstances, Berlin thought it better to settle the matter as soon 
and as rapidly as possible, without leaving the Russians any time to 
arm. The measures taken at the time by the Prussians to prepare 
for war against Russia we shall perhaps discuss on another 
occasion; suffice it to say that, in the summer of 1872, they were 

more or less ready, particularly with the plan of campaign, which 
this time did not aim to be a “blow to the heart”.* Then Tsar 
Alexander of Russia came uninvited on an imperial visit to Berlin, 
presenting “in an authoritative place” certain documents that 
brought the little plan to nothing. The renewed Holy Alliance, 
directed, to begin with, against Turkey, replaced for the time 
being the ultimately inevitable war against Russia. 

This little plan naturally also provided for the eventuality of 
France’s allying herself with Russia against Prussia. In this event, it 
was decided to remain on the defensive against France. And how 
many men were then considered sufficient to repel all French 
attacks? 

An army of two hundred and fifty thousand men!