On the day the German mobilization was ordered we traveled with some Americans from the western border to Berlin.  These Americans said:  “We do not know much about your army, but judging by what we have seen in these days there prevails in it and all its arrangements such system that it must win.  System must win every time.”  In this saying there is, indeed, much of truth—­order and system are the basis upon which the mighty organization of our army is built.

Now a word concerning the German officer.  He, too, has been much maligned, he is often misunderstood by foreigners, and yet we believe that the people of the United States in particular must be able to understand the German officer.  One of the greatest sons of free America, George Washington, gave his countrymen the advice to select only gentlemen as officers, and it is according to this principle that the officers of the German Army and Navy are chosen.  Their selection is made, moreover, upon a democratic basis, in that the officers’ corps of the various regiments decide for themselves whether they will or will not accept as a comrade the person whose name is proposed to them.

One sees that the German Army is not, as many say, a tremendous machine, but rather a great, living organism, which draws its strength and lifeblood from all classes of the whole German folk.  The German Army can develop its entire strength only in a war which the folk approve, that is, when a defensive war has been forced upon them.  That this is true will have been realized by our friends in the United States before this comes into their hands.

The German fleet is in like manner a weapon of defense.  It was very small up to the end of the last century, but has since then been consistently built up according to the ground principles which Mr. Roosevelt has so often in his powerful manner laid down for the American fleet.  The question has often been asked, what is there for the German fleet to defend, since the German coastline is so short?  The answer is that the strength of a fleet must not be made to depend upon the length of coastlines, but upon how many ships and how much merchandise go out from and enter the harbors, how great oversea interests there are, how large the colonies are and how they are situated, and, finally, how strong the sea powers are with which Germany may have to carry on a war and how they are situated.  To meet all these requirements there is but one remedy, namely, either that our fleet shall be strong enough to prevent the strongest sea power from conducting war against us, or that, if war does come, it shall be able so to battle against the mightiest opponent that the latter shall be seriously weakened.