ntle, or, if like the officers
after 1710 he wore none, he traced with his sword on the ground a
square grave. After the reconciliation followed a banquet. Frequent and
unpunished was the presumption of the officers toward the civilian
officials, and brutal violence against the weak. Even the sensitiveness
of officers for their honour, which then developed itself in the
Prussian army, had no high moral authority; it was a very imperfect
substitute for manly virtue, for it pardoned great vices and privileged
meannesses. But it was an important step in advance for thousands of
wild disorderly men.

Through it, was first brought forth in the Prussian army a devotion on
the part of the nobles, perhaps too exclusive, to the idea of a State.
It was first in the army of the Hohenzollerns that the idea penetrated
into the minds of both officers and soldiers, that a man owed his life
to his father-land. In no part of Germany have brave soldiers been
wanting to die for their banner; but the merit of the Hohenzollerns,
the rough, reckless leaders of a wild army, was, that while they
themselves lived, worked and did good and evil for their State, with
unbounded devotion, they also knew how to give to their army, besides
respect for their flag, a patriotic feeling of duty. From the school of
Frederic William I. sprang forth the army with which Frederic II. won
his battles, which made the Prussian State of the last century the most
terrible power in Europe, and by its blood and its victories excited in
the whole nation the enthusiastic feeling that within the German
frontiers was a fatherland, of which every individual might be proud,
and to struggle and to die for which would bring the highest honour and
the highest fame to every child of the country.

And this advance in German civilisation was contributed to, not only by
the favoured men who, with gorgets and sashes, sat as comrades with the
Colonel Frederic William on the stools of his "collegium," but also by
the much tormented soldiers, who were constrained by blows to discharge
their guns for their Sovereign's State.

But before speaking of the advantages of the government of a great
King, we will give a narrative, by a Prussian recruit and deserter, of
the sufferings occasioned by the old military system, in which the life
of an insignificant individual is delineated.

The narrator is the Swiss Ulrich Braecker, the man of Toggenburg, whose
autobiography has been often pri