In any case the masses, as such, can never rule. If mob-rule is consequently an absurdity in a State, how much more so is it in an army. The army which Russia now proclaims to be a national army is by no means efficient for purposes of war. The words of Treitschke are significant here: "A Republic is confronted with still more serious difficulties in the matter of a standing army. All history has shown that such an army, whose commissioned ranks are imbued with definite class feelings, will always be monarchically inclined."[16] Only under the absolute command of a war lord can an army achieve a really vigorous development. It cannot be emphasised too often what an immense debt the Prussian army--and therewith all Germany--owes to the Prussian Kings. Napoleon declared, when he was at St. Helena: "Armies are monarchical through and through."[17] This had been clearly exhibited in his own army, above all in the Imperial Guard, and in the spirit which animated the latter. The achievements of the French army under their great Emperor, and, equally so, those of the last world war, rested on a surer foundation than the _Spectateur Militaire_, with its empty phrase-mongering, was willing to admit, when it declared at the beginning of the sixties of last century[18]: "The French soldier sees in all his officers, from the sub-lieutenant to the marshal, merely his equals; he has the clear and certain conviction that he is inferior to them only in military rank. Neither training nor education nor birth produces an essential difference between them. The sense of equality is so strong that the sense of the ego completely disappears under the absolute domination of the law of discipline. To what enemy could such soldiers be inferior? What human might could successfully resist such soldiers as these, soldiers who stand on an equality with their officers and who are all heroes?" This is an instance of that thoroughly French notion of the supreme blessing of equality. How little it really signifies, and how far it is from being equivalent to freedom, has been demonstrated by the World War. Instead of a truly liberal State, we see in the French Republic a country enslaved by a plutocracy and governed by the arbitrary will of its English ally. Moreover, every army should esteem itself fortunate in possessing its own particular notion of discipline. We have in any case had sufficient experience of the blessings which our own discipline brings in its train to the welfare of the German Fatherland, and we intend to hold fast to it in the future.