In these circumstances any close adherence to ideal systems has, indeed, not been practicable; yet the activity shown in Germany in providing either new or adapted strategical lines of railway has been beyond all question. Such activity has been especially manifest since the Franco-German war of 1870-1. It is, indeed, the case that during the last twenty-five years there have been constant representations by Prussian trading interests that the railways in Westphalia and Rhineland, numerous as they might appear to be, were unequal to the industrial needs of those districts. The reasons for these conditions were that the Administration, eager to secure railway "profits," had neglected to provide adequately for improvements, widenings and extensions of line, and for additions to rolling stock. No one, however, is likely to suggest that Prussia has shown any lack of enterprise in the construction of strategical lines which would enable her to concentrate great masses of troops on her frontiers with the utmost dispatch. "The rivalry between neighbouring States," writes von der Goltz in "The Conduct of War," "has had the effect of causing perfectly new lines to be constructed solely for military reasons. Strategical railways constitute a special feature of our time"; and in no country has this fact been recognised more clearly, and acted upon more thoroughly, than in Germany. It would, nevertheless, be a mistake to attempt to form a reliable estimate of the situation, from a strategical point of view, on the basis of the ordinary German railway maps, and certain reproductions thereof recently offered in the English Press have been wholly misleading. Not only may these maps be hopelessly out of date--one, for instance, that was published in a military journal in the autumn of 1914 contained none of the strategical lines built by Prussia since 1900 for troop movements in the direction of Belgium--but they invariably draw no distinction between State-owned lines which do come into consideration in regard to military transports and agricultural or other lines--including many narrow-gauge ones--which serve local purposes only and are still owned by private companies, the State not having thought it necessary in the general interest to take them over. A more accurate idea of the real bearings of German railways on the military and strategical situation can be gathered from the large map ("Kartenbeilage I") which accompanies the "Bericht" presented to the Kaiser, in 1911, by the Prussian Minister of Public Works under the title of "Die Verwaltung der öffentlichen Arbeiten in Preussen, 1900 bis 1910." On this map a clear distinction is drawn between State-owned and company-owned lines, while difference in colouring shows the additions made to the State system during the decade either by construction of new lines or by State acquisition of existing lines.