One especially noticeable feature brought out by this map is the fact that, in addition to the innumerable railway lines built either to the frontiers or establishing intercommunication and exchange of traffic between those lines themselves, there is an almost unbroken series running parallel to the coasts of _Pomerania_ and _East Prussia_, and thence southward all along and close to the frontiers of Russia and Russian Poland. In this way troops can be moved, not only by different routes _to_ many points along the Baltic coast or the Russian frontier, but, also, _from_ one of these coastal or frontier points direct to another, as may be desired. The strategical significance of this arrangement is sufficiently obvious; but any possible doubt as to the purpose aimed at is removed by some observations thereon made by Joesten, who further says in his "Geschichte und System der Eisenbahnbenutzung im Kriege":-- If it is true that, generally speaking, the best railways for general purposes constitute excellent lines of communication for armies, it is no less true that good, or very good, strategical lines cannot, and ought not to, in all cases constitute good commercial lines. In support of this assertion one can refer to the immense extent of railway lines on the coasts of Pomerania. These lines, which are of the first importance from a strategical point of view, have only a moderate value from a commercial standpoint, considering that they do not connect the interior of the country with any district providing goods or passenger traffic on a material scale, and only provide means of communication between localities having identical needs. What is thus admitted in regard to the coastal railways of Pomerania applies no less to many, if not to most, of the frontier lines in East Prussia, West Prussia and Silesia. Not only, again, is the number of German lines going to the frontiers, and no farther, out of all proportion to the number of those providing for international communication, but the map on which these observations are based shows that between 1900 and 1910 there were added to the Prussian State system many lines which (1) established additional transverse links between those already going to the Russian frontier, (2) provided alternative routes thereto, or (3) supplemented the lines which skirt the frontier, a few miles inland, by branches going therefrom to strategic points actually on the frontier itself.