army and navy, furthermore, were the natural organs for the continued military expansion advocated by these reactionaries. The officer corps reciprocated by leaning heavily toward the expansionist and nationalistic views of the reactionaries. Older generals and admirals were often men of broad outlook, who from long and intimate association with business leaders had come to accept much of the business man’s point of view, but the younger officers were mostly of a different breed.
The new officer caste was largely composed of sons of officers or of rural landowners, or sometimes even of peasants. Coming from such conservative backgrounds, they were given an even more conservative education. The army recruited most of its future officers at about the age of fourteen, and from that age on the young cadet was subjected to a narrow militaristic training which often made him incapable of understanding democratic concepts of government, or even the civilian mentality. Since these young officers were victims of over-indoctrination, it is not surprising that they increasingly found themselves in violent opposition to the trends of the time and completely out of sympathy with the more moderate and broadminded generals and admirals.
From the start the army had relied on the peasantry as its chief source for enlisted men, and a very special relationship had grown up between the army and the peasants. On the one hand, the army in general and army officers individually had a paternalistic interest in their men and saw to it that they were well cared for while in service, and thoroughly indoctrinated with