For the past twenty-five years all Europe has been arming on a 
hitherto unprecedented scale. Every major power is seeking to 
surpass another in military might and readiness for war. Germany, 
France and Russia are exhausting themselves in their efforts to 
outdo one another. At this very moment the German government 
is demanding from the people a new exertion so tremendous that 
even the present tame Reichstag shrinks away from it. Is it not 
folly, then, to talk of disarmament? 

And yet in all countries the classes of people who almost 
exclusively have to provide the bulk of the soldiers and pay the 
bulk of the taxes are crying out for disarmament. And yet 
everywhere the effort has reached the stage where its strength— 
here the recruits, there the money, somewhere else both—is 
beginning to fail. Is there no way out of this blind alley except 
through a war of destruction such as the world has never seen? 

I maintain: disarmament and thus a guarantee of peace is 
possible, it is even comparatively easy to carry out, and Germany 
more than any other civilised state has the power, as well as the 
mission, to carry it out. 

After the war of 1870-71, the superiority of the system of 
universal compulsory military service with a reserve and Land- 
wehr—even in its then stunted Prussian form **°—over the system 
of conscription by proxy had been conclusively demonstrated. All 
the continental countries adopted it in more or less modified 
forms. There would not have been any great harm in this itself. 
An army that has its main reserve in middle-aged married men is 
by its very nature less offensive than was the conscript army of 

Can Europe Disarm? 373 

Louis Napoleon, which was heavily permeated by paid proxies— 
recruited professional soldiers. But then came the annexation of 
Alsace-Lorraine, which turned the Peace of Frankfurt into a mere 
ceasefire for France, as the Peace of Tilsit**! had been for Prussia. 
And now began the feverish arms race between France and 
Germany, into which Russia, Austria and Italy were also gradually 
drawn. 

To start with, the obligatory term of service in the Landwehr was 
extended. In France the territorial army acquired a reserve of 
older men; in Germany the second levy of the Landwehr and even 
the Landsturm were revived.*” And so it went on, step by step, 
until the age limit set by nature was reached and even exceeded. 

Then conscription was stepped up and the new training cadres 
which this made necessary were set up; but here again the limit 
has been almost or fully reached, and in France has even been 
exceeded. The last enlistment intakes of the French army already 
include quite a number of young men who are not yet—or not at 
all—equal to the hardships of service. The English officers, 
impartial on this point, who attended the large manoeuvre in 
Champagne in 1891 and acknowledged the high efficiency of the 
present French army, generously and at times admiringly, report 
unanimously that an excessively large number of young soldiers 
dropped out in the course of the marches and combat exercises. 
In Germany we have admittedly not yet exhausted our reserves of 
men fit for military service, but to remedy that is precisely the 
purpose of the new Military Bill. In short, even in this respect we 
are approaching the limits of our powers. 

Now the modern, the revolutionary aspect of the Prussian 
military system consists precisely in the demand that the strength 
of every able-bodied man should be placed at the service of 
national defence for as long as he is capable of bearing arms. And 
the only revolutionary thing that can be discerned in all military 
development since 1870 is the very fact that it has been deemed 
necessary—often enough with some reluctance—actually to in- 
creasingly carry out this demand, which had hitherto only been 
fulfilled in chauvinist fantasy. Neither the term of service liability 
nor the enlistment of all able-bodied young men can be called into 
question today, least of all by Germany and. even less by the Social- 
Democratic Party, which, quite the contrary, is the only force able 
to translate also this demand fully into practice. 

Accordingly there remains only one point where the need for 
disarmament can apply the lever: the term of service with the 
colours. And this, in fact, is the Archimedean point: international 

regulation, by the great powers of the Continent, of the maximum 
term of active service with the colours for all arms of the service, 
initially for two years, as far as I am concerned—but with the 
proviso of an immediate further reduction as soon as people are 
convinced of the possibility, and with the militia system as the ultimate 
objective. And I maintain that Germany in particular is better able 
to make this proposal, and that Germany will profit more than 
anyone else by making it, even if it is rejected. 

Il 

The international regulation of the maximum term of service 
with the colours would affect the armies of all powers equally. It is 
generally assumed that, in armies whose men have never been 
under fire, for the initial phase of a campaign the term of active 
service—within certain limits—provides the best measure of their 
suitability in all war situations, particularly for strategic and tactical 
attack. Our warriors of 1870 had sufficient experience of the furia 
francese, of the bayonet attack of the long-serving imperial infantry 
and the full force of the cavalry attacks at Worth and Sedan; but 
at Spichern, right at the beginning of the war, they also 
demonstrated that they could expel this same infantry from a 
strong position—even though outnumbered.** Generally speak- 
ing, then, let us concede that within certain limits, which vary with 
the national character, in troops with no experience of war the 
term of service with the colours is decisive with regard to their 
general suitability for war and particularly their fitness for the 
offensive. 

If we succeed in setting a maximum limit to their term of 
service internationally, the relative capacity of the various armies 
will remain roughly what it is today. What one forfeits in 
immediate potential, the others will also forfeit. Insofar as a 
surprise attack by one state on another is excluded, it will continue 
to be so, to the same extent. The difference in the term of active 
service between France and Germany, for instance, has up till now 
not been such that it is of any importance; even under the 
reduced term of service everything would depend on how the 
agreed term of service was used in each of the armies, just as it 
does today. Apart from this, the relative strength of the two 
armies would correspond to the ratio between the populations of 
the two countries. Once universal compulsory military service is 
actually introduced, in countries of roughly equal economic 

Can Europe Disarm? 375 

development (which determines the percentage of the unfit) the 
population size will always be the measure of the strength of the 
armed forces. Then there will be no more tricks like the Prussian 
tricks of 1813; that cream will have been skimmed off. 

But a great deal is dependent on how the established term of 
service is utilised. And on this subject there are men in almost all 
armies who could tell a tale or two if they were— permitted to, for 
shortage of money has everywhere forced armies to give a 
proportion of their recruits a “makeshift” training in a few 
months. Then they have to restrict themselves to essentials, a 
whole lot of traditional tomfoolery is thrown out of the window, 
and they find to their surprise how little time it takes to make a 
soldier out of a tolerably well-built young man. Bebel has related 
in the Reichstag how this astonished the training officers of the 
German Ersatzreserve.** In the Austrian army there are plenty of 
officers who maintain that the Landwehr, which has about the same 
term of service as the German Ersatzreserve, is better than the line. 
No wonder. There they lack the time that is wasted in the line on the 
traditional and hence sanctified idiocies—and for this very reason it 
is not wasted. 

The German infantry regulations of 1888 limit the tactical 
formations for battle to the essentials. It contains nothing new; 
fighting ability in all reversed situations had already been 
introduced by the Austrians after 1859; the formation of all 
battalion columns by means of a simple combination of four 
company columns had been introduced at about the same time by 
the Darmhessians, who had to succumb to this rational formation 
again being prohibited by the Prussians after 1866.°*° In other 
respects the new regulations do away with an immense tangle of 
antediluvian ceremonies that were as useless as they were 
sancrosanct; least of all do I have any reason to find fault with it. 
For after the war of 1870 I allowed myself the luxury of drawing 
up a plan of the closed formations and movements of companies 
and battalions appropriate to present-day warfare, and was not a 
little surprised to find this piece of the “state of the future” 
implemented in almost every particular in the relevant sections of 
the new regulations. 

But the regulations are one thing, and putting them into practice is 
another. The martinets, which have always flourished in the Prussian 
army in times of peace, reintroduce the time-wasting abolished in the 
instructions through the back door of the parade-ground. All at once 
parade drill is vitally necessary to counterbalance the unruliness 
of the dispersed battle order, as the sole means of establish- 

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