Do our readers remember the account in Thackeray's "Barry Lyndon"
of the cruelty of German military dis- cipline ? Wherever the satirist obtained his facts, he did not over-colour them, for Prince George of Saxony, Commander of the 12th Army Corps, has found it necessary to issue a circular warning all Colonels that they must check cruelty among non-commissioned officers. Some frightful instances of torture are given in the circular. One serjeant ordered a recruit to raise a can of boiling coffee above his head five hundred times, till the wretched man's muscles gave way, and the coffee streamed over his face. A second flogged a recruit with a belt till he was carried into hospital. A third made a bombardier present arms eighteen hundred times, till he fainted from exertion. A fourth ordered men in their nightshirts to go through their exercises on a January night, and to light cigars while marching at the double ; and so on, and so on. The immense power necessarily confided to German non-eommissioned officers, who have to lick short- service recruits into shape at once, develops malignity in the cruel, so that even during the reign of the present Emperor, general orders on the subject have been twice necessary. No wonder that under such circumstances suicide is the special disease of the German Army, and that the Socialist leaders boast of making converts even in the ranks.
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