TECHNICAL MATTERS 53

or Frenchman, who at least never betrays his Fatherland.

The German cannot afford to abandon that uprightness which was the palladium of his old civil service, for he lacks the other political qualities which help to render almost all other foreign nations immune from the poison of corruption. Even during the last generation one could notice the harmful influence of the materialism which was penetrating into the upper classes of Germany, in the shape of a weakening of character, a diminution of that positive idealism which the German nation will always have to exert in the interests of its own self-preservation. For it is only by proud, unselfish devotion to the State that it can counterbalance the deficiencies of its geographical position, its bad frontiers, its limited area, its jealous neighbours, its religious differences, and its too young and too uncertain national sentiment.

As then chance gave me for my first important task the development of the torpedo arm, and was so kind to me that we were able to overtake the performances of other navies in the same province, I was able to obtain at the same time an insight into the workings of the mind of a factory director. But I was glad when the torpedo boat brought me back to my natural field of activity, viz. tactics. In my whole progress the line of development from the technical to the organizing side by way of tactics has been repeated again and again.

Stosch opposed the torpedo boat, which had already