A Little Garrison

At a garrison masquerade, a colonel dressed as a Polish farmer drinks from the officers' common champagne fund, while officers and their wives dance, flirt and judge one another's costumes. Fritz Oswald Bilse's novel places German army life within this small social world, where rank reaches into parties as well as service. Its comic portraits include Frau Captain Stark, whose elaborate mermaid costume becomes an occasion for anxious calculation and unkind observation.

The introduction presents the story as a criticism of military corruption, describing favoritism, debt, gambling and abuses of authority. It also recounts the court proceedings prompted by Bilse's portrayal of conditions in garrison towns. The contrast between public military prestige and the conduct of individual officers gives the book its particular interest. Readers can approach it as a social novel about an institution through the habits, ambitions and tensions of the people who belong to it.