Part 26 (1/2)

”You know, Marche, that there are three strata of fighting men in Germany--the regular army, the 'reserve,' and the Landwehr. It is a mistake into which many fall to believe that the reserve is the rear of the regular army. The war strength of a regiment is just double its peace strength, and the increment is the reserve.

The blending of the two in time of war is complete; the medalled men of 1866 and of the Holstein campaign, called up from the reserve, are welded into the same ranks with the young soldiers who are serving their first period of three years. It is an utter mistake to think of the Prussian army or the Prussian reserves as a militia like yours or ours. The Prussian reserve man has three years active service with his colours to point back to. Have ours?

The mobilization machine grinds its grinding in this wise. The whole country is divided into districts, in the central city of each of which are the headquarters of the army corps recruited from that district. Thence is sent forth the edict for mobilization to the towns, the villages, and the quiet country parishes. From the forge, from the harvest, from the store, from the school-room, blacksmiths, farmers, clerks, school-masters drop everything at an hour's notice.

”The contingent of a village is sent to headquarters. On the route it meets other contingents until the rendezvous is reached.

And then--the transformation! A yokel enters--a soldier leaves.

The slouch has gone from his shoulders, his chest is thrown forward, his legs straightened, his chin 'well off the stock,'

his step brisk, his carriage military. They are tough as whip-cord, sober, docile, and terribly in earnest. They are orderly, decent, and reputable. They need no sentries, and none are placed; they never get drunk, they are not riotous, and the barrack gates are never infested by those hordes of soldiers'

women.”

He paused and puffed at his cigar thoughtfully.

”They are such soldiers as the world has not yet seen. Marching?

I saw them striding steadily forward with the thermometer at eighty-five in the shade, with needle-gun, heavy knapsack, eighty rounds of ammunition, huge great-coat, camp-kettle, sword, spade, water-bottle, haversack, and lots of odds and ends dangling about them, with perhaps a loaf or two under one arm. Sunstroke? No.

Why? Sobriety. No absinthe there, Mr. Marche.”

”We beat those men at Saarbruck,” said Jack.

Grahame laughed good-humouredly.

”At Saarbruck, when war was declared, the total German garrison consisted of a battalion of infantry and a regiment of Uhlans.

Frossard and his whole corps were looking across at Saarbruck over the ridges of the Spicheren, and n.o.body had the means of knowing what everybody knows now, the reason, so discreditable to French organization, which prevented him from blowing out of his path the few pickets and patrols, and invading the territory which had its frontier only nominally guarded. I was in Saarbruck at the time, and I had the pleasure of dodging sh.e.l.ls there, too.

Why, we were all asking each other if it were possible that the Frenchmen did not know the weakness of the land. Our Uhlans and infantry were manipulated dexterously to make a battalion look like a brigade; but we had an army corps in front of us. We held the place by sheer impudence.”

”I know it,” said Jack; ”it makes me ill to think of it.”

”It ought to make Frossard ill! Had a French army of invasion pushed on through Saint-Johann on the 2d of August and marched rapidly into the interior, the Germans could not possibly have concentrated their scattered regiments, and it is my firm conviction that Napoleon would have seen the Rhine without having had to fight a pitched battle. Well, Marche, I drink to neither one side nor the other, but--here's to the men with backbones.

Prosit!”

They laughed and clinked gla.s.ses. Grahame finished his bottle, rose, politely stifled a yawn, and looked humourously at Jack.

”There are two beds in my room; will you take one?” said the young fellow.

”Thank you, I will,” said Grahame, ”and as soon as you please, my dear fellow.”

So Jack led the way and ushered the other into a huge room with two beds, seemingly lost in distant diagonal corners. Grahame promptly kicked off his boots, and sat down on his bed.

”I saw a funny thing in Saarbruck,” he said. ”It was right in the midst of a cannonade--the sh.e.l.ls were smas.h.i.+ng the chimneys on the Hotel Hagen and raising h.e.l.l generally. And right in the midst of the whole blessed mess, cool as a cuc.u.mber, came sauntering a real live British swell with a coat adorned with field-gla.s.ses and girdle and a dozen pockets, an eye-gla.s.s, a dog that seemed dearer to him than life, and a drawl that had not been perceptibly quickened by the French cannon. He-aw-had been going eastward somewhere to-aw-Constantinople, or Saint-Petersburg, or-aw-somewhere, when he-aw-heard that it might be amusing at Saarbruck. A sh.e.l.l knocked a cart-load of tiles around his head, and he looked at it through his eye-gla.s.s. Marche, I never laughed so in my life. He's a good fellow, though--he's trotting about with the Hohenzollern Regiment now, and, really, I miss him. His name is Hesketh--”

”Not Sir Thorald?” cried Jack.

”Eh?--yes, that's the man. Know him?”

”A little,” said Jack, laughing, and went out, bidding Graham good-night, and promising to have him roused at dawn.

”Aren't you going to turn in?” called Grahame, fearful of having inconvenienced Jack in his own quarters.