3 OCTOBER 1903, Page 19

The discipline of the German Army, and especially of the

Prussian section of it, appears to be as terrible as it was in the days when Thackeray described the Prussian career of Barry Lyndon. Since January 1st of the present year there have been a hundred and fifty-nine convictions of officers and nori-commissioned officers for cruelty to their men, eighty of which occurred in July, August, and September. The number of prosecutions can, of course, bear no proportion to the number of grievances, and the record, which is official, is exciting grave attention among a population in which every man must pass through the barracks. It is probable that the reduction in the term of service increases what Germans call the " intensiveness " of the training ; but the German non-commissioned officer is apt to become one of the harshest of mankind. It would seem to be time for the Emperor to interfere, and so make all cruelty to conscripts "bad form"; but the dislike to quarrel in any way with their great caste of officers has been a tradition with the Prussian Kings, and though many Prussian officers reprobate any resort to violence, they cannot bear to see their corporate authority weakened. The legal sentences, too, are so heavy as almost to teach cruelty, ten years' penal servitude having recently been inflicted on a soldier who "chaffed" his non. commissioned superior when off duty. Doubtless the man was insolent, but what a penalty !