But France is likely to pay for
all this; sooner or later some new rescript will tell us that the
valley of tribulation is our portion and inheritance.
It is one of his ambitions to put an end to class warfare in Germany.
To this end he begins, with his usual tact, by denouncing the
capitalists (that is to say; the wealth of the middle class) to the
workers, and then holds up the scandalous luxury of the aristocracy in
the army to the contempt of the bourgeois.
One of his most brilliant and at the same time most futile efforts, is
his rescript on the subject of the shortage of officers for the army.
As the army itself is steadily increasing every day, it should have
been easy in each regiment for him, gradually and quite quietly, to
increase the number of officers drawn from the middle-class; indeed,
the change would have practically effected itself, for the Minister of
War had a hundred-and-one means of bringing it about. But this
rescript has put a check on what might otherwise have been a natural
process of change, and unless William now settles matters with a high
hand, it will cease. In every regiment the aristocracy provides the
great majority of officers; bourgeois candidates for admission to the
service are liable to be black-balled, just as they might be at any
club; it is now safe to predict that they will henceforward be regarded
with less favour than ever, and that generals, colonels, majors and the
rest will form up into a solid phalanx, to prevent the Emperor's
platonic _proteges_ from getting in.
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