It must be attributed to the army of the old Reich as its highest merit that at a time when heads were generally counted by majorities, it placed heads above the majority.

Confronted with the Jewish-democratic idea of a blind worship of numbers, the army sustained belief in personality.

And thus it trained what the new epoch most urgently needed: men. In the morass of a universally spreading softening and effeminization, each year three hundred and fifty thousand vigorous young men sprang from the ranks of the army, men who in their two years’ train¬ ing had lost the softness of youth and achieved bodies hard as steel. The young man who practiced obedience during this time could then learn to command. By his very step you could recog¬ nize the soldier who had done his service.

This was the highest school of the German nation, and it was not for nothing that the bitterest hatred of those who from envy and greed needed and desired the impotence of the Reich and the defenselessness of its citizens was concentrated on it.

What many Germans in their blindness or ill will did not want to see was recognized by the foreign world: the German army was the mightiest weapon serving the freedom of the German nation and the sustenance of its children.