Faulty, therefore, as had been the conditions under which the line was constructed, the results nevertheless established definitely the principle that, in such campaigns as the one in Abyssinia, military railways might serve an extremely useful purpose in facilitating the transport of troops and supplies. The Abyssinian experiences did, however, further show the desirability of any country likely to find itself in a position requiring the construction of military railways--as an aid to wars small or great--creating in advance an organisation designed to enable it, as far as possible, to meet promptly whatever emergency might arise, without the risk of having to deal with defective material, unsatisfactory labour, and administrative mismanagement. The same lesson was to be enforced by other expeditions in which England has taken part, and, down to the period when improvements in our system--or lack of system--began to be effected, there was much scope for criticism as to the way in which military railways, designed to facilitate operations undertaken in countries having a lack of communications, had been either constructed or worked. Writing, in 1882, in the "Professional Papers" of the Royal Engineers (Chatham) on "Railways for Military Communication in the Field," Col. J. P. Maquay, R.E., observed in regard to what had been the experiences to that date:-- In most of the wars that England has undertaken during the past thirty years, attempts have been made to construct railways for the transport of stores and materials from the base of operations. This base must necessarily be on the sea coast for a country situated as England is. These railways have not been successful chiefly because, when war had broken out, such material was hastily got together as seemed most suitable to the occasion; and, further, the construction of these lines was not carried out on any system. It is not surprising, therefore, that our military railways were never completed in time to be of much use to the troops they were intended to serve. FRANCO-GERMAN WAR In the Franco-German War of 1870-71 the Germans constructed two military railways--(1) a line, twenty-two miles in length, connecting Remilly, on the Saarbrück Railway, with Pont à Mousson, on the Metz-Frouard line; and (2) a loop line, three miles long, passing round the tunnel at Nanteuil, blown up by the French. Special interest attached to these two lines inasmuch as they were the result of construction work done, not in anticipation of a war, or even immediately preceding hostilities, but during the course of an active campaign. In addition to this, they afforded an opportunity for showing what Prussia could do, under pressure, with the Construction Corps she had formed in order, among other things, to meet just such contingencies as those that now arose.