Transcriber's note: The source of this book is the Web Archive "http://www.archive.org/details/jenorsedan00beyerich".
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The German original of this novel had a larger circulation in the firstyear of its career than any novel of our days, close upon one quarter of amillion copies having been sold. It was praised by some as a superb piece ofimaginative literature of the realistic school: by others it has beenanathematised as a libel on the great army that made Modern Germany. The truthabout it is probably best summarised in the words of a reviewer of the "DailyMail":--
"The author holds up the mirror with impartiality, without fear orpassion, and with an unmistakably friendly intention, and asks, 'Whereart thou going? Towards Jena or Sedan?'"
It is perhaps unnecessary to remind the English reader in explanation ofthe title that Jena stands for French supremacy and German defeat--Sedan forGerman victory and a French débâcle; but he should be warned that in thistruthful mirror of life there may be details liable to shock insular notions.The author could not shrink from such in the fulfilment of his task, which wasto give the truth--the whole truth and nothing but the truth. His work must bejudged not only as a novel (and assuredly as such it is a most admirable andartistic piece of work), but it must be regarded also as the cry of a patriotwho loves his country above anything in the world. This is most completelyrealised in the following opening sentences of a long and careful review givento the original by the"Spectator":--
"The Englishman who is acutely distressed by the report of shortcomings inthe German Army can hardly be human. The frank pleasure which the Germans tookin our troubles is too recent to be quite forgotten, even by a people soforgetful as we are. But for all that, only those who crave for the 'wickedjoys of the soul,' which grow, the poet tells us, near by the gates ofhell, can lay down Herr Beyerlein's story without a sense of sadness. In spiteof its freshness and its humour, there breathes through it that note ofdisappointment, almost of lassitude, which is not seldom audible in Germanyto-day. If is as though the nation, which has travelled such an astonishingdistance in the last thirty years, were pausing to ask, 'Is this all thathas come of it?'
"Herr Beyerlein's theme is the decadence of the German Army. That it isdecadent he has no doubt at all, and he is a close, careful and not unfriendlyobserver. But the writer who deals boldly and broadly with the German Army is inreality dealing with a much larger subject. The British Army is a piece cut fromthe stuff of which the nation is made, and shaped to a particular end. InGermany the whole material of the nation passes through the Army, and is to someextent shaped and coloured in the process; if does not come out precisely as itwent in. German military training is an iron pressure to which men cannot besubmitted for two years at an impressionable age and remain unchanged.
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