_Tests_ of what were being planned or projected in France as precautionary measures, for application in war, could not, of course, be carried out exhaustively in peace; but many parts of the machinery designed came into daily use as a matter of ordinary routine. Full advantage was taken, also, of whatever opportunities did present themselves--in the form of exercises in partial mobilisation, reviews, and other occasions involving the movement by rail of large bodies of troops--to effect such trials as were possible of regulations and instructions already based on exhaustive studies by the military and railway authorities. In 1892 the results attained were so satisfactory that a German authority, Lieutenant Becker, writing in his book on "Der nächste Krieg und die deutschen Bahnverwaltungen," (Hanover, 1893,) concerning the trials in France, in that year, of the new conditions introduced by the law of December 28, 1888, was not only greatly impressed thereby but even appeared disposed to think that the French were becoming superior to the Germans in that very organisation which the latter had regarded as their own particular province. The following passages from his book may be worth recalling:-- Towards the middle of September, 1892, from a military railway station improvised for the occasion, there were sent off in less than eight hours forty-two trains conveying a complete Army Corps of 25,000 men. In their famous mobilisation test of 1887 the French despatched from the Toulouse station 150 military trains without interrupting the ordinary traffic, and without any accident. Such figures speak a significant language. They show what enormous masses of troops the railway can carry in the course of a few hours to a given point.... If I have referred to the results obtained by our neighbours on their railway systems, it is not because I have the least fear as to the final issue of the next war. Quite the contrary; but the fact does not prevent me from asking why the German Army cannot base on the railways of that country the same hopes which neighbouring countries are able to entertain in regard to theirs. The favourable impression thus given, even to a German critic, by the progress France was making in her creation, not so much _de novo_ as _ab ovo_, of a system of organised military rail-transport, were confirmed by many subsequent trials, experiments and experiences, all, in turn, leading to further improvements in matters of detail; but it was, indeed, the "nächste Krieg" concerning which Lieutenant Becker wrote that was to be the real test of the organisation which, during more than forty years of peace, France followed up with a zeal, a pertinacity and a thoroughness fully equal to those of Germany herself.