Note 70 — Chapter XVI · THE TRAINING OF THE CAVALRY OFFICER

Prince Kraft points out how great a price a German officer pays for the swagger of belonging to a cavalry regiment. He enlarges on the trials to health entailed thereby, the long work in the riding school, with the shakes and jars given to the bowels and spine, which in many cases have sown the seeds of chronic illness, even during their first year of service as lieutenants, owing to which some of them have been invalided before their time. Then he goes on to point out the expenses entailed by good chargers and their upkeep. Finally, he says that in the German cavalry in no regiment can an officer live unless he can afford to pay £100 a year out of his own pocket, and so he reckons that a cavalry officer before he has twenty years’ service has expended £2000, that is, has sacrificed that sum to the Fatherland.