The training is carried out by officers and non-commissioned officers,
who together are the military schoolmasters of the nation, and, like
other proficient schoolmasters, are paid for their services by which
they live. Broadly speaking, there are in Germany no professional
soldiers except the officers and non-commissioned officers, from whom a
high standard of capacity as instructors and trainers during peace and
as leaders in war is demanded and obtained.
The high degree of military proficiency which the German army has
acquired is due to the excellence of the training given by the officers
and to the thoroughness with which, during a course of two or three
years, that training can be imparted. The great numbers which can be put
into the field are due to the practice of passing the whole male
population, so far as it is physically qualified, through this training,
so that the army in war represents the whole of the best manhood of the
country between the ages of twenty and forty.
The total of three millions which has been given above is that which was
mentioned by Prince Bismarck in a speech to the Reichstag in 1887. The
increase of population since that date has considerably augmented the
figures for the present time, and the corresponding total to-day
slightly exceeds four millions.
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