strong as steel. It was only by those two years of obedience that a young man learned to command. One knew the trained soldier by his gait.
This was the school for the German nation, and it MY STRUGGLE “9 was not for no reason that the inveterate hatred of those whose envy and greed required that the State should be powerless and its citizens weaponless was concentrated upon it.
To the form of State and the Army were added the incomparable body of officials in the old Empire.
Germany was the best organized and best adminis¬ tered country in the world. However much one might call the German State officials pedantic bureaucrats, this was no better in other States ; on the contrary, it was worse. Other States did not possess that wonderful solidity of the apparatus or the character of incorruptible honour in those who belonged to it. Better to be rather pedantic, if honest and faithful, than enlightened and modern if, at the same time, inferior in character and —as often happens to-day—ignorant and incompetent.