378 
SUBALTERN OFFICERS. 
responsibility descends from tbe lieutenant to bis sergeant, from tbe 
sergeant to bis corporal, and so on down to tbe private soldier. Tbe 
Germans lay great stress upon tbe importance of maintaining intact 
tbis chain of responsibility, and senior officers are specially careful never 
to break tbe chain by giving orders to subordinates except through tbe 
proper channel. It is tbe thorough way in which responsibility is 
decentralised, and power delegated through all ranks, which is so 
marked a feature of the German regimental organization, which is 
indeed the backbone of that organization, and to which is due in a 
great degree the recent successes of the German army. 
6. In the German army there are no specialists. A specialist is 
essentially the creature of centralisation. He is an individual specially 
trained and specially paid to do the work of another person. Specialists 
therefore can have no locus standi in an army which is organised upon 
the principle that everyone should do his own work, and only his own 
work, and should not allow some one else to do it for him. Their 
existence would in fact strike at the very root of that regimental system, 
upon which, as has been pointed out above, so much value is placed in 
Germany. It is the regimental officers themselves who have to do the 
entire work of instruction in the German army, and in them is vested 
the whole responsibility for the practical and theoretical training of 
recruits. There are no riding masters, no gunnery instructors, no 
adjutants, orderly officers, sergeant-majors, and other similar individuals 
to come between German officers and their men. The Cavalry officers 
conduct the riding drill of their own troops, the Artillery subalterns 
teach the men of their own divisions the practice and theory of gunnery, 
and the Infantry officers carry on the work of musketry practice with¬ 
out the extraneous aid of trained instructors. Every German regimental 
officer is expected to be thoroughly conversant with the most minute 
details of drill and interior economy. He is moreover—and this is a 
most important point—not only required to know his work, but also to 
do it. Among German officers the cry of “ Sergeant-Major, go on ” 
is never heard. “ In my regiment/'’ a German officer once said to the 
writer,” it is our boast that we officers never ask our men to do what 
we cannot do ourselves.” It must not be supposed, however, that from 
the constant habit of imparting instruction, and from intimate associa¬ 
tion with their inferiors, the German officers allow themselves to be 
turned into drill sergeants; on the contrary, as Colonel Hale has pointed 
out, * the greatest care is taken that the time of officers is not wasted 
on the performance of nominal duties. Every officer has his own 
sergeants, who carry out the actual details of instruction under his 
immediate personal supervision ; and although his daily duty is—as it 
should be—chiefly concerned with small details, still the tendency of 
the German system is to economise the labour of officerand prevent 
their time being frittered away on trivial matters, j* while their more 
^Macmillan’s Magazine, July, 1868. “Notes on the German military system,” by 
Lient.-Colonel Lonsdale A. Hale, R.E. 
f “ The orderly officer with his inquiry as to ‘ complaints,’ ” wrote Colonel Hale, “ may 
be said not to exist in the German service. It is only in large garrisons that an ‘ offioier 
