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OCR
THE VITAL ISSUE 13
PARADE OF RUSSIAN GUNS IN BERLIN.
Picture shows the Brandenburg Arch in back ground. To judge from the crowds of men, there
is plenty of fighting stock left in Germany's capital.
TRUTH ABOUT GERMANY
Army and Navy.
There can be no greater contrast than that be-
tween the United States and Germany in one of the
most important questions of existence with which
a state is confronted. In its whole history the United
States has never had a foreign, hostile force of in-
vaders upon its territory, foreign armies have never
laid waste its fields. Until late in the last century,
however, Germany was the battlefield for the then
most powerful nations of Europe. The numerous
German states and provinces, too, fought among them-
selves, often on behalf of foreign powers. The Eu-
ropean great powers of that day were able, unhin-
dered and unpunished, to take for themselves piece
after piece of German territory. In the United States,
on the other hand, it was years before the steadily
increasing population attained to the boundaries set
for it by nature.
Our Bismarck was finally able, in the years from
1864 to 1871, to create a great empire from the many
small German states. As he himself often remarked,
lzmuezrer, this was possible only because his policies
and diplomacy rested upon and were supported by a
well trained and powerful army. How the German
Empire came into being at that time is well known. A
war was necessary because of the fact that the then
so powerful France did not desire that North and
South Germany should unite. She was not able to
prevent this union, was defeated and had to give
b:u‘l< to us two old German provinces which she had
stolen from the Germans. The old Field Marshal van
Jlnltlvr said not lony after the war of 1870-71 that the
(ivrmans would still have to defend Alsace-Lorraine
for fifty years more. Perhaps he little realised how
prophetic his r&'0r(1's T('('?‘(’, but he and those who fol-
lowed him, the German emperors and the German war
ministers, prepared themselves for this coming de-
fensive struggle and unremittingly devoted their at-
tention to the German army.
Germany’s Dangerous Neighbors.
From 1887 on there had been no doubt that in the
event of war with France we should have to reckon
also with Russia. This meant that the army must
be strong enough to be equal to the coming fight on
two borders-a tremendous demand upon the resources
of a land when one considers that a peaceful people,
devoted to agriculture, industry and trade, must live
for decades in the constant expectation of being
obliged, be it tomorrow, be it in ten years, to fight
for its life against its two great military neighbors
simultaneously. There are, moreover, the great
money expenditures, and also the burden of uni-
versal military service, which, as is well known,
requires every able-bodied male German to serve
a number of years with the colors, and later to
hold himself ready, first as a reservist, then as mem-
ber of the Landwehr, and finally as member of the
Landsturm, to spring to arms at the call of his supreme
war lord, the German Emperor. A warlike, militant
nation would not long have endured such conditions,
but would have compelled a war and carried it through
swiftly. As Bismarck said, however, the German
army, since it is an army of the folk itself, is not a
weapon for frivolous aggression. Since the German
army, when it is summoned to war, represents the
whole German people, and since the whole German
people is peaceably disposed, it follows that the army
can only be a defensive organization. If war comes,
millions of Germans must go to the front, must leave
their parents, their families, their children. They