The presence, at every important link in the chain of rail communication, of a Commission designed to secure regularity and efficiency in the traffic arrangements should avoid confusion, congestion and delay. The association, on each of these Commissions, of the military and technical elements, with a strict definition of their respective powers, duties and responsibilities, should ensure the best use of the available transport facilities under conditions in themselves practicable, and without the risk either of friction between the representatives of the two interests or, alternatively, of any interference with the railway services owing to contradictory or impossible orders being given by individual officers acting on their own responsibility. The setting up of the supply depôts and regulating stations along the line of communication should prevent (i) the rushing through of supplies in excessive quantities to the extreme front; (ii) the congestion of railway lines and stations; (iii) the undue accumulation of provisions at one point, with a corresponding deficiency elsewhere, and (iv) the possibility of large stocks being eventually seized by the enemy and made use of by him to his own advantage. The measures adopted both to prevent any excessive employment of railway wagons as storehouses on wheels and to secure their prompt unloading should afford a greater guarantee of the best utilisation of rolling stock under conditions of, possibly, extreme urgency. Finally, the unification of control, the co-ordination of the many different services involved, and the harmony of working established between all the various sections on the line of communication linking up the interior of the country with the troops in the fighting line should assure, not only the nearest possible approach to complete efficiency in the transport conditions, but the conferring of great advantages on the armies concerned, with a proportionate increase of their strength in the field. The effect of all these things on the military position of France must needs be great. Had France controlled a rail-transport organisation such as this--instead of none at all--in 1870-71; and had Germany controlled a system no better than what we have seen to be the admittedly imperfect one she put into operation on that occasion, the results of the Franco-German war and the subsequent course of events in Europe might alike have been wholly different.