egions which Germany desired to control. Who
would have suffered? 3. If all countries adopted the German
idea of war what would be the condition of the world? 4. Has
any nation the right to impose its rule upon another people
because it believes its own ideals are the only true ones?

REFERENCES.--See page 26; also _Conquest and Kultur_
(C.P.I.); _War Cyclopedia_ (C.P.I.), under the headings
"German Military Autocracy" and "Pan-Germanism."

CHAPTER III

GERMAN MILITARISM

WHAT IS MILITARISM?--Militarism has been defined as "a policy which
maintains huge standing armies for purposes of aggression." It should be
noticed that the mere fact that a nation, through universal
conscription, maintains a large standing army in times of peace does not
convict it of militarism. Every one of the great European powers except
England maintained such an army, and yet Germany was the only one that
we can say had a militaristic government.

A more narrow definition of militarism is that form of government in
which the military power is in control, and with the slightest excuse
can and does override the civil authority. This had been the situation
in Germany for many years before the outbreak of the Great War.

Let us take a glance at the development of this sort of government.
After Napoleon conquered Prussia, early in the nineteenth century, one
of the conditions of peace was that Prussia should reduce her army to
not more than forty-two thousand men. In order that the country should
not again be so easily conquered, the king of Prussia enrolled the
permitted number of men for one year, then dismissed that group, and
enrolled another of the same size, and so on. Thus, in the course of ten
years, it would be possible for him to gather an army of four hundred
thousand men who had had at least one year of military training.

The officers of the army were drawn almost entirely from among the
land-owning nobility. The result was that there was gradually built up a
large class of military officers on the one hand, and, on the other, a
much larger class, the rank and file of the army. These men had become
used, in the army, to obeying implicitly all the commands of the
officers.

This led to several results. Since the officer class furnished also most
of the officials for the civil administration of the country, the
interests of the army came to be considered the same as the interests of
the countr