Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE GERMAN PRIVATE SOLDIER Who he is and How he is Made words, the facets of the same idea, will express the national atmosphere of Germany : order, system, discipline. From the moment one sets foot on the soil of the Fatherland, particularly if he enters by way of the French border, he feels this atmosphere. It radiates from the soldierly railroad guard who stands sharply at " attention " at the crossing as the ' train rushes past; he feels it in the forests all planted properly in rows, and in the neatly kept railroad grounds and rights of way; he feels it in the policeman who demands his address, his nationality, his business, and how long he is going to stay, so that he may be properly tagged and pigeonholed; and, above all, he feels it in the endless system— and it is nothing short of a system — of military and civil uniforms, which helps to relieve him of the responsibility of being a judge of character, for almost every other German wears his character on his back. And this national atmosphere of Germany is, in reality, the atmosphere of the military camp, as the spirit of the government is the military spirit. Indeed, every German is a soldier. I do not mean, of course, that every German actually drills and studies the tactics of war every year; but until he is beyond the years of military service he is always on call, and he looks upon himself as a soldier of the empire. Indeed, after the German has finished his regular compulsory service, he is called back from time to time for a few weeks to keep him in training, to drill him in the new formations, or to give him a clear understanding of new arms and ammunition. His life is divided into exact periods — the actual service period, the reserve period, the landwehr period, and the landsturm period; and the mili...