by Friedrich Engels

Officious War-Whooping

["Der Volksstaat" No. 46 of 23 April 1875]

The press reptiles of the German Reich have once again received orders to blow the war trumpet. Godless, depraved France refuses at any price to leave in peace the God-fearing Germany that blooms so splendidly under the rule of stock-exchange swindles, company promotions and crashes. France is arming on the most colossal scale, and the high-pressure speed with which these armaments are being pursued is the best proof that it intends, possibly as early as next year, to fall upon the innocent, peace-loving Bismarckian Reich, which, as everyone knows, has never troubled the smallest puddle, which is ceaselessly disarming, and about which only the press hostile to the Reich spreads the slander that it has just now, through a Landsturm law, converted two million citizens into reservists.

The press reptiles are in a difficult position. While, in the service of the Foreign Office, they have to present the Reich as a lamb of unheard-of gentleness, the War Ministry finds it in its interest to make the German bourgeois understand that something is actually being done for his heavy tax money, that the armaments that have been decided upon are really being carried out, that fortresses are being built, that the cadres and mobilisation plans for the numerous men “on leave” are being made ready, and that the combat readiness of the army is increasing with every day. And since the communications made in this respect are authentic and, what is more, come from experts, we are perfectly able to judge the war-whooping of the press scoundrels.

The new French cadre law serves as the pretext for all the noise. Let us therefore compare the institutions created by it in France – for the time being

still on paper – with those actually existing in Germany, and for brevity’s sake, let us concentrate mainly on the decisive arm, the infantry.

On the whole, it turns out that the new French law is a considerably worsened edition of the Prussian one.

The French line infantry is to consist of 144 line regiments, 4 Zouave and 3 Turcos regiments, each of 4 battalions, 30 light infantry battalions, 4 foreign battalions and 5 punishment battalions, in all 643 battalions, whereas the German line army, to be sure, figures with only 468 battalions. This superiority of the French line is, however, mere illusion.

First of all, the French battalion, like the Prussian, has four companies, but each company only four officers instead of five, and one of these four is a reserve officer, a species which until now does not exist at all in France. In France up to now there was one officer for every 35–40 men, and with the antiquated and cumbersome French drill regulations this is also necessary, while in Prussia one managed quite well with one officer for every 50 men. But this is also the maximum, and therefore the committee of the National Assembly that deliberated on this law was likewise agreed that at most 200 men could be placed in the company. The French company is thus numerically 25 per cent weaker than the Prussian, and since the reserve officer does not exist for the time being and will not exist for many years to come, it is also far from being its equal in organisational terms. But now that the company – owing to the breech-loaders – has become the tactical unit in battle, and that fighting in company columns and the skirmishing based on them require strong companies, the National Assembly has thus done the French army the greatest injury it could have done to it.

The French line, accordingly, on a war footing, counts:

606 line battalions à 800 men | 484,800 men,
Zouaves, Turcos, Foreign Legion, punishment battalions | 46,000 men,
total | 530,800 men,

of which, however, at least 40,000 men have to be deducted for Algeria, who become available only once new formations are in a position to relieve them. Thus, for the opening of a war, 490,800 infantrymen remain. The 468 battalions of the German infantry number 1,050 men each on a war footing, together, according to official figures, 490,480 men, almost exactly as many as the French line.

So far, then, equality of numbers, better and stronger organisation on Germany’s side. But now comes the difference.

On France’s side, the above-mentioned 643 weak battalions constitute the entire infantry for which any kind of wartime organisation exists at all. To be sure, the 318 depot companies of the line and the light infantry are supposed to contain 249,480 supernumerary reservists (including 50 or 40 officers and non-commissioned officers per company), but so far only the men exist, and these for the most part completely untrained, while those who have been trained have mostly only six months’ service. Of the officers and non-commissioned officers, at most a quarter are available. Before these 318 depot companies turn themselves into 318 mobile battalions, the whole campaign could be decided, and what comes under fire in the process will not surpass the quality of the mobile guards of 1870. Then there remains the territorial army, which embraces the men from the 30th to the 40th year and which is to be organised into 144 regiments of 3 battalions, that is 432 battalions. All this exists only on paper. To really carry through such an arrangement one needs some 10,000 officers and 20,000 non-commissioned officers, of whom literally not a single one is available so far. And where are these officers to come from? It took almost two generations until the one-year volunteers in Prussia provided usable reserve and Landwehr officers; as late as the 1840s they were regarded as a nuisance in almost all regiments and treated accordingly. And in France, where such an institution runs counter to all traditions of revolutionary equality, where the one-year volunteers are despised by the officers and hated by the soldiers, nothing can be done with them whatever. There is no other source for reserve officers.

As for the non-commissioned officers and men, as is well known, the victors of Sadowa in 1866 boasted that the long existence of the Landwehr system in Prussia gave them a start of twenty years over any other country which might adopt the same system; only when the oldest year-classes consisted of trained men, would equality with Prussia be achieved. That seems to have been forgotten now, as also that in France only half the annual contingent actually serves, the other half being discharged after six months’ service (which, with today’s pedantic regulations, is entirely insufficient), so that France’s reserves and Landwehr consist largely, compared with the Prussian, of recruits. And then they pretend to be afraid of the present French territorial army, which consists of the same raw cannon fodder that in 1870 and 1871 on the Loire and at Le Mans could not hold its ground against half as strong but disciplined German detachments!

Nor is that enough. In Prussia, after bitter experience, they have finally learned how to mobilise. In eleven days the whole army is ready for action, the infantry far earlier. But this requires that everything is arranged in the simplest way, and that in particular every man on leave is assigned in advance to the unit he is to join. The basis for this is that every regiment has its permanent recruiting district, from which the corresponding Landwehr regiment is also replenished in the first instance. The new French law, on the other hand, assigns the recruits and reservists to that regiment which happens to be in the district at the time of mobilisation. This was done for the sake of a tradition that had become established since Napoleon, according to which the individual regiments were to garrison alternately in all parts of France and were to be recruited as far as possible from the whole of France. Having to abandon the latter, they clung all the more firmly to the former and thereby made impossible that constant organic connection between regimental command and Landwehr district command which ensures the rapidity of mobilisation in Prussia. If this senseless change, which is bound to cause far more disruption in the special arms than in the infantry, should prolong mobilisation for this latter arm by only three days, then, facing an active opponent, those are the three most important days of the whole campaign.

What, then, is the meaning of all the mighty French armaments? A line infantry equal in number to the German, but worse organised, which moreover, in order to place itself on a war footing, has to call up a number of men with only six months’ service; a first reserve, in which men with only six months’ service predominate and for which at most a quarter of the officers and non-commissioned officers are available; a second reserve of predominantly men who have not served, without any officers whatsoever, and for both reserves, of course, a total lack of solid cadres. Along with this, the certain prospect that with the present arrangements the missing officers will never be procurable, so that both reserves, in the event of war, will be capable of no higher performances than the battalions hurriedly formed in the autumn and winter of 1870.

And now let us look at the gentle, lamb-like German Reich, which allegedly has no teeth, and shows even fewer. We have already demonstrated a line infantry of 468 battalions with, on a war footing, 490,480 men. But to this must be added the following new formations.

Since the beginning of 1872, 36 extra recruits have been enlisted in each battalion, making roughly 17,000 men a year. Furthermore, after two years’ service, a full quarter of the men has been discharged, but a like number of new recruits has been enlisted in their stead, making roughly 28,000 men. Thus, each year, a total of 45,000 men more than previously are enlisted and trained; up to the end of 1875, that makes, in three years, 135,000 men, to which must be added 12,000 one-year volunteers (at 4,000 per year); together 147,000 men, or just enough to form a fourth battalion for each of the 148 regiments. The supernumerary replacement companies for this purpose have already, at all line regiments, been “organisationally prepared” since the same time, i.e., the line and reserve officers and non-commissioned officers who are to enter these battalions have already been designated. The fourth battalions can therefore march off at the latest two to three days after the first three, and reinforce the army by 148 battalions of 1,050 men = 155,400 men. But these figures are still far from expressing the increase in strength that the field army thereby obtains. Anyone who saw the Prussian fourth battalions in 1866 knows that, consisting predominantly of strong, physically mature men of 24–27 years of age, they form the core troops of the army.

Alongside the formation of the fourth battalions, the organisation of the replacement battalions—148 in number, to say nothing of the Jäger replacement companies—is proceeding. They are composed of the supernumerary trained reservists and the untrained men of the replacement reserve. Their strength was officially given in 1871 as 188,690 men. This is to be understood, however, as meaning that the cadres of officers and non-commissioned officers already established in peacetime are capable of drilling such a number of men, for the replacement reserve alone, into whose first class some 45,000 men are now drafted annually, yields far more than the above figure over seven annual classes. The replacement battalions are in fact the reservoirs from which the battalions in the field, weakened by battles and even more by hardships, receive the necessary reinforcements of more or less trained men, and which then continually replenish themselves again from the replacement reserve.

Simultaneously with the line and replacement troops, the Landwehr is mobilised. The Landwehr cadres, likewise already fixed in peacetime, comprise 287 battalions (which are to be increased to 301). In the two last wars the Landwehr battalions were only brought up to 800 men; if we take this low establishment strength alone, the German Reich provides 229,600 men of organised Landwehr infantry, a figure which,

however, still leaves a yearly growing number of supernumeraries available for later disposition.

As if that were not enough, the Landsturm has also been called back into existence. According to semi-official reports, at the end of 1874 the war strength of the German infantry had already been augmented by 234 Landsturm battalions (at 800 men = 187,200 men), not counting the Jäger companies; which can only mean that the cadres for these battalions have been at least barely established. But the Landsturm is still nowhere near exhausted, for, according to the triumphant remark of Voigts-Rhetz in the Reichstag, it comprises “five per cent of the population, two million men!”

Now what does the account look like?

France has 530,800 men of line infantry, including the troops serving in Algiers, and that is its entire organised infantry. Even if we add the whole of the first reserve, so far as it possesses any sham organisation at all—254,600 men (288 depot companies at 800 men, 30 Jäger depots at 540 men, and 8,000 supernumerary convicts)—that makes a total of only 785,400 foot soldiers.

The German Reich enters the scene, eleven days after the mobilisation order,

with a line infantry of

490,480 men,

two to three days later

with 148 further battalions

155,400 men,

after another fourteen days

with 287 Landwehr battalions at 800 men

229,600 men,

and after yet another fourteen days

with 234 Landsturm battalions at 800 men

187,200 men,

altogether an infantry of

1,062,680 men,

which is already completely and fully organised in peacetime and provided in advance with all necessities, and has behind it the 148 replacement battalions, of the strength (see above) of 188,690 men, for filling the gaps caused by the campaign. In all, an organised infantry mass of 1,251,370 men.

Is it believed, perhaps, that we are exaggerating? Not in the least. We still fall short of the truth, by neglecting various small factors which, however, yield quite a respectable sum when added together. Here is the proof.

The Kölnische Zeitung of 27 Dec. 1874 contains a “military communication” originating from the War Ministry, from which we

gather the following: At the end of 1873, the war footing of the German army amounted to

1,361,400 men, of which infantry

994,900 men.

To this were added in 1874 the fourth battalions

155,400 men.

and 234 Landsturm battalions

187,200 men.

total infantry

1,337,500 men,

thus almost 100,000 men more than our estimate. The same article calculates the total war footing of all arms at 1,723,148 men, including 39,948 officers; and the French, on the other hand, have at most 950,000 men of troops organised in advance, including 785,000 men of infantry!

As regards the quality of the troops—assuming equal average warlike qualities in both nations—that of the French army has certainly not been improved since the war. The government has done everything to demoralise the troops, especially by quartering them in barrack camps, where the soldier could neither drill nor do anything else in winter, and was, so to speak, reduced exclusively to drinking absinthe. There is a shortage of non-commissioned officers, the companies are weak, the cavalry regiments have by no means enough horses. The Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung still drew attention to this on 14 January; at that time it was still preaching peace!

But the new army legislation places at the disposal of the French War Minister: 704,714 men of the line, 510,294 men of the reserve, 582,523 of the territorial army, and 625,633 of its reserve, altogether 2,423,164 men, who in case of emergency can be brought up to 2,600,000 men! To be sure, although General Lewal, after a careful examination of the relevant documents, declares that this sum must be reduced to 2,377,000 men. And even these are enough to drive the best War Minister out of his mind. What in the world is he to do with this mass of people, almost two-thirds of them untrained? Where are the officers and non-commissioned officers to come from, without whom he can neither drill them, let alone organise them?

In Germany things look quite different. The strength of the war footing is already assumed in the explanatory memorandum to the Reich Military Law to be equal to 1,500,000 men. But to this are added, in consequence of that very law, the five annual classes of the replacement reserve, whose liability to serve was extended from the 27th to the completed 31st year—45,000 men each year—hence about 200,000 men. At least 200,000 supernumerary men above the war

footing were already previously carried on the registers. And to this is added the Landsturm with a full two million men; so that the German War Minister has 3,900,000, if not four million,
men at his disposal, the army, as the cited semi-official says,

“even in the event of a call-up of up to 1,800,000 men
and more
, except for the recruits assigned to the replacement army, will consist throughout of trained soldiers who have been completely drilled militarily in advance, something which, in France, up to the level of the territorial reserve, might perhaps be effected
only within twenty years.”

It can be seen that it is not France, but the German Reich of the Prussian nation, that is the true representative of militarism. Four million soldiers, ten per cent of the population! Keep it up. It suits us perfectly well that the system is driven to the extreme point. Not from outside, by another victorious military state, but only from within, through its own necessary consequences, can this system be finally broken. And the more it is exaggerated, the sooner it must collapse. Four million soldiers! Social Democracy will also thank Bismarck if he raises the figure to five or six million and then, at the earliest opportunity, starts enlisting the girls as well.

F. E.