Civil railway officials have been heard to say that attacks by the enemy are not nearly so disturbing to traffic as the arrival of a friendly General with his force. It was under these circumstances that Sir Percy Girouard saw from the first the necessity for having in South Africa, for the duration of the war, a staff of officers whose business it would be, as he himself defines their duties, (_a_) to keep the military commanders fully informed of the capacity and possibilities of the railway, and to convey their orders and requests to the civil railway staff; and (_b_) to protect the civil railway administration from interference by military commanders and commandants of posts; in fact, to act as intermediaries between the army and the civil railway officials. In arriving at this conclusion Sir Percy was especially impressed by the rail transport experiences of France in her war with Prussia in 1870-1; and in his Report he gives a digest of Jacqmin's facts and recommendations by way of further justifying the step that he himself took. He thought it absolutely necessary that the staff of the Director of Railways should be paramount on the railway, and that no officer should be able to give any orders to railway staff officers or other railway officials unless fighting was actually proceeding at that spot. "This," he adds, "was the system adopted with great success by the Germans, the want of which caused such chaos on the French railways, and the correctness of which has been entirely established by the experience of this war. It is not too much to say that, unless it had been adopted in South Africa, the chaos would have been past belief." The _Military Railway Controlling-Staff_ created, in accordance with these principles and policy, to co-operate with the technical working staff under the Director of Railways, was constituted as follows:--