Last but not least, under the heading of the organization comes the financial aspect. Out of the five milliards of francs, the war indemnity paid by France to Germany in 1871, 200,000,000 marks in gold coin, mostly French, were put away as the nucleus of a ready war chest. In a little medieval-looking watch tower, the Julius Thurm near Spandau, lies this ever-increasing driving force of the mightiest war engine the world has ever seen. Ever increasing, for quietly and unobtrusively 6,000,000 marks in newly minted gold coins are taken year by year and added to the store. On the first of October each year since 1871, three ammunition wagons full of bright and glittering twenty-mark pieces clatter over the drawbridge and these pieces are stored away in the steel-plate subterranean chambers of the Julius Thurm, ready at an instant's notice to furnish the sinews to the man wielding this force. This is a tremendous power in itself, for there are now close to 500,000,000 marks ($120,000,000) in minted gold coinage in storage there. This provides the necessary funds for the German army for ten calendar months. The authorities have no necessity to ask the country, warring politicians--in this instance the Reichstag--for money to start a campaign. They have got it ready to hand. Once war is declared and started, if needed they'll get the rest.
This money is under the sole control of military authorities. It has often been declared a myth. I know it to be a fact. Notwithstanding the financial straits Germany has gone through at times or may go through, this money will never be touched. It is there for one purpose only and that purpose is war. Needless to say, it is amply guarded. Triple posts in this garrison town, devices to flood instantly the whole under fifteen feet of water from the river Havel, are but items in the system of protection. Twice a year the Emperor in person, or his heir apparent, personally inspects his war chest. Mechanical-balanced devices are employed to check the correct weight. It is a marvelously simple mechanism by means of which in less than two hours the whole of this vast hoard of gold can be accurately checked and the absence of a single gold piece detected.
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.