ng lieutenant and
ruled over by all the wives of his superior officers!

To try to marry money is considered praiseworthy and correct in
German military circles. In Prussia a lieutenant in peace times
receives for the first three years 60 pounds a year, from the
fourth to the sixth year 85 pounds, from the seventh to the ninth
year 99 pounds, from the tenth to the twelfth year 110 pounds, and
after the twelfth year 130 pounds a year. A captain receives from
the first to the fourth year 170 pounds, from the fifth to the
eighth year 230 pounds, and the ninth year and after 355 pounds.

Thus it is that no young lady, however ugly, need be without an
officer husband if she has money enough to buy one. If he has not
a private income, the Government forbids him to marry until his pay
is sufficient. That point is seldom reached before he is
thirty-five years of age. Marriage helps him out of the
difficulty, and since the army is so deified in the Fatherland that
the highest ambition of nearly every girl is to marry an officer,
his opportunity of trading shoulder-knots for a dowry is excellent.

The efforts of some women to increase their fortune sufficiently to
enable them to invest in a military better-half are pathetic from
an Anglo-Saxon point of view. One woman who requested an interview
with me said that as I was an American correspondent I might be
able to advise her how she could dispose of a collection of
autographs to some American millionaire. She explained that her
financial condition was not so good as formerly, but she was
desperate to better it as she was in love with an officer, who,
although he loved her, would have to marry another if she could not
increase her income. The autographs she showed me were from Prince
Henry of Prussia, Prince Bulow and other notables, and most of them
were signed to private letters.

Take the story of Marie and Fritz, both of whom I knew in a
garrison city in eastern Germany. Nothing could illustrate better
the difference between the German attitude and our own on certain
matters. She was a charming, lovable girl of nineteen engaged to
an impecunious young lieutenant a few years older. They moved in
the best circle in the _Garnisonstadt_.

Two years after their engagement her father lost heavily in
business and could no longer afford to settle 5,000 pounds on her
to enable them to marry.

It mattered not; theirs was true love, and they would wait until
his pay