Take, for example, the whole question of militarism. As we see it, it is
a matter altogether of degree. For defense against what the German
considers the most terrible danger that he personally has to confront,
it has been necessary from time to time to change both the size and the
composition of his forces, whether offensive or defensive, and they
therefore have introduced compulsory military service, an idea which has
always been very offensive to Anglo-Saxons, but which in cases of dire
necessity they have been compelled to utilize themselves, as, for
example, during our own civil war, the abandonment of voluntary
enlistment and the introduction of the draft.
Now, the compulsory military service of the German means that every man
is for a period of his life drafted and trained as a soldier. Forty
years ago there were a great many men who escaped by reason of one or
another provision of the law. That number was steadily diminished until
within eighteen months, when finally it was proclaimed that every German
who could endure the severity of that training must undergo it, and that
was due to the fact that the military balance of power of which I spoke
had been so completely changed by the re-armament of Russia and by the
formation of the South Slav armies in the Balkan Peninsula.
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