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CONCENTRATION
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veyance of military supplies of all kinds, and to prevent a total suspension of its ordinary traffic, on which the existence of the civil population depends.
German railways are not specially adapted to the use of troops. Like those of our own country, they were constructed to meet the requirements of peace, not those of war, and by some even of the double lined, owing to certain defects, it is hardly possible to despatch more than one troop train per hour.[1] Under the most favourable conditions, it takes five days to despatch a complete army corps, with its first and second lines of transport, in 118 trains[2] each of fifty or sixty carriages, from any given station, for, as General von Schellendorff points out, "entraining and detrain-
- ↑ These defects "are often connected with difficulties of an engineering or technical nature as regards the laying out of the line, and, consequently, are by no means easily remedied." —The Duties of the General Staff, pp. 332, 333, by General Bronsart von Schellendorff.
- ↑ This includes six supply trains.—Ibid. p. 340.
