Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 160, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1911 — DECAY OF THE GERMAN ARMY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

DECAY OF THE GERMAN ARMY

THE German army has always been considered the most perfect fighting machine In the world, but now Colonel Gaedke, an eminent military expert, discovers that it is laboring under an almost fatal weakness Germany, he says, is developing her industrial activities and her schools of applied science at the expense of her military spirit. The ranks of the army, of course, are kept filled by the compulsory service laws, but the regiments cannot obtain their full complement of subalterns. Every effort is being made by the military authorities to correct this state of affairs and the schoolboys are given such training as may breed In them the desire to become army officers. Our photograph shows a detachment of these youthful soldiers from the Berlin schools.