TRANSPORTATION
One of the most important parts of the organization is the question of transportation. Hannibal's campaigns against Cæsar and Napoleon's central European wars owed their success in a great measure, if not wholly, to their quickness of motion. This applies about tenfold in modern warfare. In actual armament the leading powers in Europe are practically on a par. The personnel, as regards personal courage, stamina, elan, or whatever you wish to call it, is fairly equal also. There is little difference in the individual prowess of French, Russian, English, and German soldiers. This is well known to military experts. The difference is mainly a question of discipline, technique, and preparedness, the main factor being, as indicated, the ability to throw the greater number of troops in the shortest possible time against the enemy at any given point, without exhausting man and beast unnecessarily and enervating the country to be traversed. It is therefore necessary to have numerous arteries of traffic at disposal. This will lead us later to the question of victualization, Germany following closely one of Moltke's axioms: "March separately, but fight conjointly."
Only in a country where all railroads, highways, and waterways, and where post and telegraph are owned and controlled by the state, is it possible to evolve and perfect a system of transportation such as is at the disposal of the German General Staff. Every mile of German railroads, especially the ones built within the last twenty years, has been constructed mainly for strategical reasons. Taking Berlin as the center you will find on looking at a German, more especially a Prussian, railroad map, close similarity to a spider's web. From Berlin you will see trunk lines extending in an almost direct route to her French and Russian frontiers. Not single or double, but treble and quadruple lines of steel converging with other strategic lines at certain points such as Magdeburg, Hanover, Nordhausen, Kassel, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Cologne, or Strassburg--to name but a few. Places such as enumerated are invariably provincial commandos, having garrisons, arsenals, and depots on a large scale.
The capacity of the railroad yards for handling large bodies of men and vast amounts of goods swiftly is judiciously studied. At any given time, especially at tense political moments, at every large strategical railway center in Germany there are a certain number of trucks and engines kept for military purposes only--sometimes, as in the Rhine division during the acute period of the Morocco question, with steam up.
As previously related, 90 per cent. of all the railway officials are ex-soldiers. Five minutes after the signing of the mobilization orders by the Emperor, the whole of the railway system would be under direct military control. Specially trained transportation and railway experts on the General Staff would take over the direction of affairs. Besides this, there exists in the German standing army a number of Eisenbahn Regimenter (railway corps)--all trained railroad builders and mechanics. Elaborate time-tables and transportation cards are in readiness to be put into operation on the instant of mobilization, superseding the civil time-tables of peace. Theoretically and practically the schedules are tested twice a year during the big maneuvers.
The same applies to the waterways and highroads of the Empire. A keen observer will often wonder at the broadness, solidness, and excellent state of repair of the chaussees and country roads, out of all proportion to the little traffic passing along. They are simply strategical arteries kept up by the state for military purposes. The heads of the transportation and railway corps in Berlin sit before the huge glass-covered tables where the whole of the German railway system to its minutest detail is shown in relief, and they by pressing various single buttons can conduct an endless chain of trains to any given point of the Empire.
To show the accurate workings of this system I shall relate an incident. During the Kaiser maneuvers in West Prussia a few years ago I happened to be at headquarters in Berlin delivering some plans and records of the English Midland Railway system when a General Staff Officer entered the signal hall and made inquiries as to the whereabouts of a certain train having a regiment on board destined to a certain part of the maneuver field. One of the operators through the simple manipulation of some ivory keys in the short space of two and a half minutes (as I was keenly interested, I timed it) could show the exact spot of the train between two stations, the train being over 310 miles distant from Berlin.
As every class A1 vessel in the merchant marine of Germany, especially the passenger boats of the big steamship lines, can be pressed into government service, so can all motor vehicles, taxis, and trucks owned either privately or by corporations be called upon if considered necessary. Through this vast and far-reaching system of transportation Germany is enabled to throw a million fully equipped men on to either of her frontiers within forty-eight hours. She can double this host in sixty hours more.