Considering the exclusiveness of our upper classes and their increasing estrangement from their own people, the Army might have worked as a blessing if it avoided, at any rate, isolating the so-called intelligenzia within its ranks. It was a fault that it was not so ; but what institution on this earth is faultless ? But in spite of that the good side was so preponderant that the few lapses were much under the average of human imper¬ fections.
The greatest service performed by the Army of the old Empire was that in an epoch of general counting by majority of heads it placed the heads above the majority. Against the Jewish-democratic idea of blind worship of majorities the Army held aloft that of faith in personality ; for it taught what the later period most needed. In the sink of general softness and effeminacy there shot up in the ranks of the Army each year 350,000 young men in the pride of their strength, who in two years’ training forgot the softness of youth and acquired bodies