FOOTNOTES:
[78] Von Moltke is reported to have said on one occasion in the Reichstag: "Our Great General Staff is so much persuaded of the advantages to be derived from obtaining the initiative at the outset of a war that it prefers to construct railways rather than forts. An additional railway, crossing the whole country, makes a difference of two days in the assembling of the army, and advances the operations proportionately." "In the concentration of armies," says von der Goltz in "The Conduct of War," "we reckon almost by hours."
[79] "Without railroads, it is said, the siege of Paris would have been impossible" (Bigelow's "Principles of Strategy"). "During the siege of Paris one railway for some time fed the [German] army of, in round numbers, 200,000 men, brought up the siege materials and reinforcements averaging 2,000 to 3,000 men a day, and even, at one time, fed Prince Frederick Charles' army, as well, with very slight assistance from the exhausted theatre of war" (Hamley's "Operations of War").
[80] During the thirty-five days preceding the investment, Paris received by the Western Railway, alone, 72,442 tons of provisions and 67,716 head of cattle. But for these supplies she could not have endured so long a siege. In the revictualling of Paris, after the siege, the railways, though much restricted by the Germans, brought into the city, in the course of twenty days, 155,955 tons of provisions and 42,580 head of cattle.
[81] "The railways spare the troops fatigue," remarks Lieut.-Col. Tovey, R.E., in "The Elements of Strategy"; "but it may be that when they have to use their legs afterwards there will be more falling out and lagging behind, in consequence." Balck, in his "Taktik," says: "It is only in respect to the important consideration as to speed that the rail-transport of troops is to be preferred to road-marching. The real advantages of marching on foot—which was formerly the rule, and had the effect of 'separating the chaff from the wheat' and of preparing the men for the toils of fighting—are not counterbalanced by the fact that the troops arrive at the theatre of war in their full numbers. When time permits, marching on foot is preferable because it accustoms the men both to their new equipment and to marching in large bodies. After a long railway journey—on which the feet will have swollen and the new boots will have been especially troublesome—marching becomes particularly irksome, and the falling out of footsore men is very considerable. It is, nevertheless, the almost invariable rule that the troops shall begin their marching immediately they get to the end of the rail journey, since it may be a matter of great importance that the station at which they detrain should be cleared again as soon as possible."
[82] In alluding to the conditions under which Russian reinforcements were sent to Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War, General Kuropatkin writes ("The Russian Army and the Japanese War"): "In former days troops had to make long marches in full service order before they reached the battle-field. If properly conducted these marches hardened the men, and enabled units to settle down; all superfluous luggage was discarded; the weaker men were left behind; the officers and men got to know one another. But, nowadays, with railway transport, the results are very different. Going to the Far East, our men were crowded in railway carriages for as long as forty days at a time, out of the control of their officers, who were in different compartments. In the old and well-disciplined units in particular no harm was done; but in the case of newly-formed units ... it was most harmful."