Although admission to these unions is generally, and probably always,
obtained by ballot, they are not clubs in any ordinary sense of the
word. Each has a habitation or lodge, called a Kneipe, or drinking-
hall, and a fencing-room, or a share in the use of one, but there is no
set of apartments corresponding to a club, nor intended for the same
manifold purposes. The organisation and object of the union require no
such conveniences.

The Korps rank highest in estimation and are generally the most
exclusive. In a country where caste prejudice has attained to such
gigantic proportions as it has in Germany, its effects are felt very
early in life; and in Universities where every advantage of education
is placed within easy reach of the very poorest, a course of lectures
for a term often costing but one pound sterling, it is impossible that
there should not be circles formed, in a regular scale, by young men
whose fortunes are more or less alike. Upon these social and financial
distinctions the Korps have grown to be what they are.

Every Korps has three orders of members, and three regular officers,
to each of whom, is assigned one department in the management of the
associations. The orders consist of two regular and one irregular. The
lowest and least important, is considered irregular, and those who are
not admitted further have no claim to anything but a place in the
drinking-hall, and the protection of the regular Korps. They may be men
of any age, but are generally students who are prevented from fighting
by some physical defect, or by the serious objection of their parents,
without whose consent no one is supposed to be admitted to the full
fellowship of the union.