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TO BELGIUM 197
not see, but I had by now become familiar with its varied hfe.
So off we went, ratthng and jolting, towards Sedan.
These wondrous bags, what tales did they not iiave to tell
of the life at the front ! One almost seemed to hear the old
refrain :
" Lich Vatcrland, juaf^st ruhi^ sein !
" How often
had I not seen the soldiers sitting over their letters home—at
the Cuirassier barracks in Vouziers at tables rigged up with
planks and trestles, in streets and yards, using the mud-
guards of the cars or baggage-wagon cases as desks, or in
subterranean caves behind the trenches, where they lay on
their stomachs and wrote with their notebooks as backing for
the paper. If one were to take out a mail-bag haphazard and
make it into a big, thick volume, and then read this volume
from cover to cover, one could not fail to be impressed with
the merry and cheerful outlook of the German soldiers, their
faith in victory and their national vigour. One would look in
vain for a single word, a single suggestion of complaint over
long marches, excessive burdens, intolerable discipline, un-
necessary drill at odd moments in between the lighting, in-
sufficient or bad food. One would find that those who talk of
marches, say that had they been double as long they would
yet have managed them. As to weight of equipment, it is
simply not mentioned. Discipline ! If anybody mentioned
it, he would say something like this :
" Thank goodness we
have officers who know what they want and take out of us
what we can give, who punish if there is anything to be
punished and who dare maintain that absolute discipline
amongst the troops without which no army can win," " These
qualities," they would add, " are possessed by our officers, and
that is why we obey them, love them, trust them blindly, and
gladly follow them into the fire." Germans understand that
silk gloves are out of place in a military education. They
demand from their officers that inflexible, iron severity which
is necessary for the proper moulding of an army into a whole,
into an ever-ready instrument, and they do not permit anti-
military agitation to foment that passive resistance against
the leaders which is often discernible elsewhere. The German
knows his power. He knows that it is the military discipline
which pervades every fibre of the country’s body that has
given them their strength. But they are not slaves, they are
masters primarily of their own will and of their own actions.
Does anyone think that this imaginary volume would
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