The German Army

THERE are many ways of describing an army, or an automobile, or any other thing that is too complicated to be grasped at a glance. To list the component parts is the easiest way, and the poorest. That clock, I may' say, is a box enclosing a mechanism consisting of fifteen wheels, two hands, one pendulum-and you will want to interrupt me to say: "We can't remember catalogues. Try to explain what makes it tick." This, I hope, will be a lecture without statistics or diagrams. Something makes the German army tick in a way that is more or less disconcerting to people who do not sleep well. You are probably more interested in knowing what makes it tick so noticeably and reliably than you are in numbers or sub-divisions. Organization, equipment and like subjects have become familiar enough to you, or will become familiar to you while you are here, by reason of the number of German problems and texts that form a part of the course, and through general reading of literature relating to the present war. Your familiarity with this side of the topic compels me to depart from the accepted rule which governs these lectures on foreign armies and present the German army from a different angle.