The Rise of Rail-Power in War and Conquest, 1833-1914

RISE OF RAIL POWER IN WAR & CONQUEST 1833-1914


IN WAR AND CONQUEST 1833-1914 WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHY
BY EDWIN A. PRATT Author of A History of Inland Transport, Railways and their Rates, etc.
LONDON P. S. KING & SON, LTD. ORCHARD HOUSE WESTMINSTER 1915



The extent to which railways are being used in the present War of the Nations has taken quite by surprise a world whose military historians, in their accounts of what armies have done or have failed to do on the battle-field in the past, have too often disregarded such matters of detail as to how the armies got there and the possible effect of good or defective transport conditions, including the maintenance of supplies and communications, on the whole course of a campaign.
In the gigantic struggle now proceeding, these matters of detail are found to be of transcendant importance. The part which railways are playing in the struggle has, indeed—in keeping with the magnitude of the struggle itself—assumed proportions unexampled in history. Whilst this is so it is, nevertheless, a remarkable fact that although much has been said as to the conditions of military unpreparedness in which the outbreak of hostilities in August, 1914, found the Allies, there has, so far as I am aware, been no suggestion of any inability on the part of the railways to meet, at once, from the very moment war was declared, all the requirements of military transport. In this respect, indeed, the organisation, the preparedness, and the efficiency throughout alike of the British and of the French railways have been fully equal to those of the German railways themselves.