GERMAN ARMY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 261, 2 October 1936, Page 8

GERMAN ARMY

LIFE OF DISCIPLINE. FROM THE AGE OF 10 TO 22. The efleet of the new German military service regulations, providing for two years’ service, on the career ol German youth from childhood to maturity, will be that he will undergo discipline and be in uniform from the age of ten to twenty-two, at which age he can decide for himself whether he ishes to continue to do do. His career will be as follows: — At the age of ten, the German boy enters the junior division of the Hitler Youth.

At the age of fourteen he exchanges his blue uniform for a brown one. At eighteen, lie may become a fullfledged Storm Trooper. At nineteen, he changes his brown uniform for the grey green of the Labour Corps, and, At twenty, he dons army field grey for two years. For the educated classes, the new two-year service law means that a professional career cannot begin until the age of 26. UndergradiVte studies will begin after the age of 22 is reached, with graduation at 26 or 28 or 29 in some of the scientific faculties.

The argument adduced in Germany for the inevitableness of the German step leads back, it is pointed out, to M. Barthou’s rejection of the German disarmament proposals, in favour of a French alliance with Russia. By restoring her military sovereignty, Germany, it is declared, restored the balnnoe cf military power in Europe, the refusal of the other Powers to disarm having left Germany with no other alternative. The most striking lesson of this and previous military announcements, in the view of the Berlin correspondent of the Times, London, is the freedom of movement which gives the totalitarian system dangerous advantages over the democratic. There was no Parliamentary struggle such as precedes the prolongation of military service in other countries; no anxious consideration of the effect on the estimates. All that was needed was two signatures. r lho announcement might have been suddenly made just as well some months hence when the preparations were completed, as was probably the original intention, or many months ago, when they were, begun. A glance at the stages of development since German rearmament began—long before it was openly admitted —points to the conclusion, according to the Times correspondent, that Germany will have precisely the military forces she wants, as she wants them, and can organise them, and that increases will be made known, if at all, precisely when and as it may seem expedient for reasons of home or foreign policy, or both. Rightly or wrongly, according to the Paris correspondent of the Times, the French people see in this, latest development yet one more sign that Herr Hitler’s “Men Kampf,” and not the famous “Peace Plan,” forms the mainspring of German foreign policy.