In Germany, a motor transport subvention scheme was inaugurated in 1908. At that time a limited number of German manufacturers were producing considerable quantities of heavy motor vehicles, more especially for export, but it was becoming evident that some very substantial encouragement would be needed to make the home market sufficiently active to be of any real utility to the War Office. Consequently, a scheme was got out which was openly stated to be “a scheme for popularising the use of mechanical transport,” or, in other words, a scheme for persuading business houses to adopt a species of transport which, without Government aid, would represent an uneconomical and consequently undesirable feature of an industrial concern. The German Government decided in favour of heavy motor lorries, capable of carrying 4 tons and hauling an additional 2 tons on a trailer. These trailers, contrary to usual commercial practice, are fitted with rubber tyres, since this addition is found to ease the work of hauling by some 25 to 30 per cent. The total subsidy for a subvention train consisting of a power lorry and rubber-tyred trailer amounts to something in the neighbourhood of £450 spread over a period of five years. The choice of a heavy type of vehicle was probably justified by the need for limiting the length of the transport columns destined to accompany enormous armies. At the same time consideration has evidently shown that there are grave disadvantages to the use of such heavy cars, and recent regulations have provided more stringent stipulations as to maximum weight. When the subvention scheme had been in operation for five years, figures were got out indicative of its results up to the end of March, 1913. During this period 825 army trains were subsidised, namely, 743 in Prussia and the other states whose armies are under Prussian control, and 82 in Bavaria. In addition, some 400 lorries of very similar types were sold in Germany outside the scheme, making about 1,200 trains available for use at that time. Allowing for increase in the interval which has since elapsed, we may perhaps put the total available at the outbreak of war at about 1,600. Captain Davidson estimates that the German Army requires for transport purposes about 2,000 of its trains, but this figure presumably does not take into account the needs of the whole of the Landwehr and Landsturm. It is admitted that the normal British Expeditionary Force requires about 1,000 3-ton vehicles, which would correspond in capacity to about 500 of the German trains. Consequently, 2,000 of the German trains would apparently only be about sufficient for an army four times the size of our Expeditionary Force. Similarly, the estimate that France needs about 5,000 vehicles of the 3-ton type apparently does not take into account the complete mobilisation of reserves.