A story worth interpolating here on account of its military significance has reference to a rumour that the German Emperor had addressed a letter to the Dowager-Empress of Russia, calling her “cousin,” in an attempt to induce her to use her good offices with the Tsar in order to bring about peace. This missive eventually reached the headquarters of the Grand-duke Nicholas, who is said to have returned it to the Tsar with the laconic comment: “If you do, our armies will mutiny, and there will be a revolution in all the Russias.” It is only a soldier’s story, but it explains, especially in the final sentence, why Russia has beaten the Austrian, German, and Austro-German armies successively. Nothing could be more noteworthy as emphasising the Russian record of initial difficulties triumphed over than the preponderance of Austro-German railway power in the vast war-area. General Kuropatkin, the Tsar’s Commander-in-Chief in the war with Japan, had as far back as 1900 called attention to this marked superiority in the Central Powers’ means of transport. Doubtless upon his initiative, the Russian railway lines along the Polish frontier were improved to a certain extent. But, as Austria and Germany were correspondingly busy, doubtless much of what Kuropatkin had written more than a dozen years before remained true in 1914--indeed, the celerity with which the enemy were enabled to rush masses of troops to all their frontiers must have been one of the earliest things to impress any student of the struggle. This is how Kuropatkin phrased his plea for a good deal more energy in the matters of railway development: “By the expenditure of vast sums of money, Germany has made ready in the most comprehensive sense to march rapidly across our borders with an army of one million men. She has seventeen lines of railway (twenty-three tracks) leading to our frontiers, which would enable her to send to the front more than five hundred troop-trains daily. She can concentrate the greater part of her armed forces on our frontier within a few days of the declaration of war; while, apart from this question of speedy mobilisation, she has at her command far greater technical resources, such as light railways, artillery, ordnance, and engineering stores, particularly for telegraphs, mobile siege parks, etc., than we have. She has also made most careful preparation for a determined defence of her own border provinces, especially those of Eastern Prussia. “The first-class fortresses of Thorn, Königsberg, and Posen are improved yearly, entrenched camps are built at the most important junctions, and material lies ready stacked for the rapid semi-permanent fortification of field positions. The crossing-places on the Vistula have been rapidly placed in a state of defence, as have also the various towns and large villages. The whole population, indeed, is making ready for a national struggle.