The best army training is that which simulates, as far as possible, the actual conditions that might arise in the case of real war. That is why the maneuvers that were held in the East at various times during the past decade have been of tremendous value. They should be repeated and the railroads should be asked to play their part at a moment's notice. To play that part well at so short a notice means planning in advance. The New Haven railroad recently, on the occasion of the Harvard-Yale game and the inauguration of Yale Bowl, brought sixty-five trains carrying 33,409 passengers into New Haven between 9:26 A.M. and 2:00 P.M.--the record passenger movement in the history of American railroading. Not one of those trains was late, not even to the fraction of a minute. In the very first hour of the afternoon, 22 trains, 221 passenger coaches all told, arrived at an interval of slightly over two minutes--226 passengers to the minute. And the detraining and entraining of these passengers was accomplished with military precision. But the New Haven's remarkable performance was the result of planning--planning to the last detail. No wonder that John A. Droege, its general superintendent, is qualified to speak of the military possibilities of the railroad. But Droege knows that advance plans are of vital necessity. Of course, our railroads have met difficult situations when it has become absolutely necessary. The Ohio floods of three years ago proved their ability to meet a great emergency in a great manner. In a few hours many miles of their tracks were completely washed away, hundreds of bridges destroyed, their lines thrown into apparently hopeless confusion. Yet the railroaders never lost their heads. They arranged to reroute their through trains. Then and there it was that the Lake Shore railroad--running from Buffalo to Chicago--showed its resources. For it took upon its broad shoulders the trains from all these completely blocked lines--the Pennsylvania, the Baltimore and Ohio, and the Erie--and for long days tripled its ordinary traffic without apparently feeling the great overload. Yet this traffic was in some sense routine and it was moving over one of the most generously equipped railroads in America. The military plan, as we have already seen, may have to make large strategic use of railroad lines of comparatively unimportant strength. It is here that the definite plan--from the superintendent's office upward--counts. It is gratifying to know that the military bill provides an opportunity for the construction of such a plan, gratifying to know that the War College at Washington has succeeded in its detailed study of the use of our railroads in time of war. [Illustration: _An outline map of the United States showing the railroad routes of greatest strategic military importance._]