Officer Factory. Hans Hellmut Kirst

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      “Let me have your attention a moment, fellows!" said Captain Ratshelm after looking at his watch. “We’ve just got time to sharpen up our wits a little, in accordance with the principle Mens sana in corpore sano, you know. You all understand what that means?"

      There was hardly anyone who didn't understand what that meant. It meant that before his last great closing number, before the last communal exertion of the day, Captain Ratshelm intended to indulge in a little theoretical work. Noncommissioned officers might be content to know how a thing was done, but officers needed to know why it was done. It was to this end therefore that Captain Ratshelm collected his cadets around him in a semicircle and asked searchingly: “Why actually do we play games?"

      “I often ask myself that!" whispered a cadet at the back.

      Captain Ratshelm ignored this, chiefly because it never occurred to him that anyone would have dared to whisper in his presence. He gazed straight into the keen, eager faces of the cadets. For one of the slogans of the training school, laid down by the course commanders, stated that there were no questions to which an officer did not have an answer.

      Ratshelm looked at Hochbauer with a momentary tingle of pleasure at the cadet's fine, upstanding appearance. His fine blue eyes, betraying both confidence and humility, radiated his respect for his commanding officer. Siegfried must have had something of the same look when his glance rested on Kriemhilde. And Hochbauer thrust his powerful, manly chin slightly forward, a gesture equivalent to the raised hand of the eager schoolboy denoting that he was burning to be asked.

      “Well, Hochbauer?" asked the Captain. A shiver ran down the cadet's spine as he sprang to attention in exemplary fashion, looked his superior officer straight in the eye, and spoke out: “Games steel the body, sir, but a healthy body contains a healthy mind as well. Games make one versatile, and versatility is one of the finest qualities in the German character."

      It was as if the answer had been turned out by a machine —curt, crisp and precise. In short, beyond reproach. Ratshelm was very pleased. He nodded and said: “Good, Hochbauer."

      Hochbauer seemed to swell with pride and happiness, though his face remained admirably self-controlled. He stayed as rigid as ever, with the merest flicker of a smile playing about his lips. But his eyes radiated warmth. He bared his teeth slightly, almost imperceptibly. They too were splendid and he would have made an admirable toothpaste advertisement: Healthy teeth denote a healthy mind—officers prefer Blendol.

      But Ratshelm continued his theoretical instruction with the question: " Are games an officer's concern?"

      “Only in so far as his subordinates have to play them," whispered the cadet at the back.

      But a cadet in front gave the required answer: "An officer is concerned with everything that promotes military efficiency, instills discipline and maintains and indeed develops a high standard of general fitness. Games are an excellent way of improving military discipline. A good officer organizes games and takes part in them himself; he has to set an example in everything."

      Ratshelm decided that that would do. The excellent answers were fully up to the standard of the earlier performance. He had every reason to be content with this section of his and could only hope and pray that the successor of the late Lieutenant Barkow would prove worthy of them. Such first-rate human material deserved the greatest possible care.

      Captain Ratshelm now gave orders for the run round the gym to begin, planning that it should last about twenty minutes. To guarantee a good steady pace he put Hochbauer in front, and, to prevent any weakening in the center, made Kramer, the section senior, bring up the rear. Off they trotted in this formation.

      Letting his glance wander up from the cadets' legs to their faces, Ratshelm was surprised to find the correct expression of enthusiasm missing. In vain he searched for that fine eager glow of manly zest which should have distinguished the officers of the future, particularly those whose privilege it was to grow to their full stature under his tutelage.

      But perhaps the sudden death of Lieutenant Barkow had depressed the cadets. It might have been, too, that the regrettably incomplete funeral ceremony of the early afternoon had made an unfavorable impression on them. Then there was the unpleasantness of the investigation being conducted by Judge-Advocate Wirrmann into the Barkow affair —an unavoidable procedure, perhaps, but one well calculated to bewilder them.

      Thinking along these lines, Ratshelm found the situation deeply moving. Young men who had been selected to be officers, he told himself, needed to be shown the importance of esprit de corps in the circle to which they aspired. So, acting on a spontaneous impulse, he once again gathered H Section about him.

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