The transport of the portions of the army from their peace quarters to the places of assembly selected for the commencement of operations has been referred to in the account of the campaign of 1866. It was then effected partly by marching, partly by railway. Immediately after that campaign the veteran critic Jomini, in an essay upon its lessons, urged the importance of "the serious study of the modifications which railways will cause from this time onwards in the general direction of the operations of war, i.e. in strategy," and spoke of the want of this study as "the gap at present existing in the theory of the art of war."[[5]] The gap, one would think, had been pretty well filled up already by a staff which in twenty-one days had moved 197,000 men, 55,000 horses, and 5,300 military vehicles over distances varying from 120 to 360 miles without a single accident, and without any serious departure from the pre-arranged time-tables.
The great general staff has a special division devoted to the manipulation of railways in war, and the attempt is made to give every officer of the general staff the benefit of a period of service in this particular branch.
The production of maps for the army is so closely connected with the study of the various probable theatres of war that the two duties cannot safely be entrusted to different institutions. In Germany the principal government geographical establishment is a branch of the great general staff, the officers employed in it being on the auxiliary list. This service is arranged in three departments, the trigonometric, the topographic, and the cartographic, all of which are under the supervision of the chief of the National Survey, who is himself a subordinate of the chief of the general staff of the army.
[[1]] See Part I. Chap. IV.
[[2]] The details of this organization have been modified in recent years.
[[3]] Registrande der Geographisch-Statistischen Abtheilung des Grossen Generalstabes. Berlin, 1869-83.
[[4]] See a lecture delivered at the Royal United Service Institution in 1875 by the late Major-General, then Major C. B. Brackenbury, R.A., entitled "The Intelligence Duties of the Staff at Home and Abroad," in reading which, however, the date of its production should be remembered.
[[5]] Jomini, Troisième Appendice au Précis de l'Art de la Guerre. Paris, 1866.