"It is unjust to depreciate the reserves from the industrial districts and the big towns as compared with those from the rural districts. The latter may perhaps be endowed with greater physical fitness and endurance, but as regards those aptitudes in regard to present-day methods of warfare and the use of modern technical weapons for the purposes of war, which must be possessed even by the man in the ranks, the urban population, in view of their quicker intelligence, will undoubtedly possess certain advantages."[14] If, before the War, certain prejudices on this head existed in the officers' corps, they have perished as the result of the War, equally with many others. It is our duty to concede full recognition to the human personality in all our troops. Present-day social conditions, no less than the achievements of our national army as a whole in the course of the War, demand this. A national army cannot be other than a democratic organisation. The task of the officers is in high degree a social task--social, that is to say, in an aristocratic sense; for what has rendered our army so efficient has been precisely the thoroughly aristocratic organisation of the officers' corps upon a democratic basis. Prince Bülow says very justly in reference to Scharnhorst's army reforms: "Through the material of the national army, an institution of a democratic nature, runs a thread of the modern aristocracy. The happy thought of making entry into the corps of officers contingent upon election by the corps of officers made it possible in the structure of the national army to take account of the structure of the nation. Probably nothing in the past, as in the present, has to such a degree assured the superiority of our army as the fact that the leading position, which is the natural due of those who rank highest in intellect and education, has been retained by them in the army.... The World War has shown that devotion and contempt of death are the common heritage of every German soldier. But it has also been a song of praise of mutual confidence between officers and men, such as the world has never seen.... The spirit of German militarism, as Prussia first developed it and Germany adopted it, is every whit as monarchical as it is aristocratic and democratic, and it would cease to be German and the mighty expression of German imperial military power and military efficiency if it were to change. If our enemies, to whom with God's help our militarism will bring defeat, abuse it, we know that we must preserve it, for to us it means victory and the future of Germany."[15]