Of the charges of brutality and severity I only know what the statistics tell me, that in an army of over 600,000 men there were some 500 cases brought to the notice of the superior officers last year. In 1911 there were 12,919 convictions for crimes and misdemeanors and 578 desertions. Of the 32,711 common soldiers in the Saxon army in 1911, 30 committed suicide; in 1909, 29; in 1905, 24; in 1901, 36; that is to say, roughly, one man per thousand. Of the why and wherefore I cannot say, but Saxony is a peculiarly overpopulated section of Germany, and the population is overdriven; and the German everywhere is a dreamy creature compared with us, of less toughness of fibre either morally or physically, and no doubt, here and there, under-exercising and over-thinking make the world seem to be a mad place and impossible to live in. Indeed, it is no place to live in for the best of us if we take it, or ourselves, too seriously. The German army is an educated army, as is no other army in the world, and there are the diseases peculiar to education to combat. A mediocre ability to think, and a limited intellectual experience, coupled with a craving for miscellaneous reading, breed new microbes almost as fast as science discovers remedies for the old ones. Bismarck's words, "Ohne Armee kein Deutschland," meant to him, and mean to-day, far more than that the army is necessary for defence. It is the best all-round democratic university in the world; it is a necessary antidote for the physical lethargy of the German race; it is essential to discipline; it is a cement for holding Germany together; it gives a much-worried and many-times-beaten people confidence; the poverty of the great bulk of its officers keeps the level of social expenditure on a sensible scale; it offers a brilliant example, in a material age, of men scorning ease for the service of their country; it keeps the peace in Europe; and until there is a second coming, of a Christ of pity, and patience, and peace, it is as good a substitute for that far-off divine event as puzzled man has to offer. It is silly and superficial to look upon the German army only as a menace, only as a cloud of provocations in glittering uniforms, only as a helmeted frown with a turned-up moustache. It is not, and I make no such claim for it, an army or an officers' corps of Puritans or of self-sacrificing saints, but it does partake of the dreamy, idealistic German nature, as does every other institution in Germany. Though, as a whole, it is a fighting machine, the various parts of it are not imbued with that spirit alone. The uneasy pessimism of the dreamer, which distrusts the comfortable solutions of the business-like politicians, and leaders, in their own and in other countries, is as noticeable in the army as in all other departments of German life.