[p. 486]
With the multitude of its inhabitants, their warlike talents, the readiness of their lords to shed their blood, with its wealth in the dead as well as the living requisites of war, no country is more defenceless, none more incapable, not of conquering, but only of defending itself, than Germany. Not even the attempts at defence, the mere striving, is significant or honourable.
The military power consists, as is well known, of the military of the larger and smaller estates. As regards the latter, these armies, hosts, army corps, or whatever one wishes to call them, can usually be no more than police and parade soldiers, not warriors who know nothing higher than the glory of their army and service. The military spirit that lifts the heart of every warrior of a great army at the words “our army”, this pride in his estate and service, the soul of an army, cannot thrive in the town guard of an imperial city, the bodyguard of an abbot. The kind of respect which the sight of the uniform of great armies awakens for the as yet unknown individual who wears it cannot fall to the uniform of an imperial city. “I have been 20, 30 years in this service” carries, in the mouth of the bravest soldier of a small estate of the Empire, an entirely different feeling and effect from that in the mouth of an officer of a great army, for the self-feeling of the man and the respect of others for him grows with the greatness of the whole to which he belongs; he shares in the glory which centuries have heaped upon it.
The insignificance of the isolated small military corps, through their small number, need not be increased still further by clumsiness and other unfavourable arrangements. It must have very great disadvantages that, at the outbreak of a war, the smaller estates first recruit their soldiers, often appoint the officers only now, and so send untrained people into the field; that one estate has to supply the drummer, the
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