On the Paris-Lyon railway a collection of 7,500 loaded trucks had accumulated at a time when a great truck shortage began to be felt, and the whole of these, together with the provisions and the materials they contained, fell into the hands of the Germans, whose total haul of wagons, including those captured at Metz and other places, numbered no fewer than 16,000. The wagons thus taken were first used by them for their own military transport during the remainder of the war; were then utilised for ordinary traffic on lines in Germany, and were eventually returned to France. Not only, therefore, had the French failed to get from these 16,000 railway wagons the benefit they should have derived from their use but, in blocking their lines with them under such conditions that it was impossible to save them from capture, they conferred a material advantage on the enemy, providing him with supplies, and increasing his own means both of transport and of attack on themselves. The proportions of the German haul of wagons would, probably, have been larger still had not some of the French railway companies, on seeing the advance the enemy was making, assumed the responsibility of stopping traffic on certain of their lines and sending off their rolling stock to a place of safety. In taking this action they adopted a course based alike on precedent and prudence, and one fully warranted by the principle of keeping railway rolling stock designed for purposes of defence from being utilised by the enemy for his own purposes of attack. CHAPTER XIII ORGANISATION IN FRANCE While, on the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war, Germany began, as we have seen in Chapter X., to improve her own system of military rail-transport, with a view to remedying the faults developed therein, France applied herself with equal, if not with even greater, determination and perseverance to the task of creating for herself a system which, in her case, had been entirely lacking. Recognising alike her own shortcomings, the imperative need to prepare for future contingencies, and the still more important part that railways would inevitably play in the next great war in which she might be engaged, France resolved to create, in time of peace, and as an indispensable factor in her scheme of national defence, a system of military transport comprehensive in its scope, complete in its working details, and leaving nothing to chance. Everything was to be foreseen, provided for, and, as far as circumstances would permit, tested in advance.