The North-to-South line allowed of an easy movement of troops between the military headquarters at Keetmanshoop and Windhoek, or vice versâ. According to the original estimates this line was not to be completed before 1913. Special reasons for urgency--as to the nature of which it would be easy to speculate--led, however, to the line being opened for traffic on March 8, 1912. From Windhoek, also, troops were supplied to Gobabis, situate 100 miles east of the capital and about forty miles west of the Bechuanaland frontier. Gobabis became a German military station in 1895. Provided with a well-equipped fort, it became the chief strategical position on the eastern border of German South-West Africa. A railway connecting Gobabis with Windhoek was to have been commenced in 1915. From Windhoek, as already told, there is rail communication with Swakopmund. Grootfontein, the terminus, on the east, of the Swakopmund-Otavi line, had been a military station since 1899. Its special significance lay in the fact that it was the nearest point of approach by rail to the "Caprivi Strip," along which the German troops, conveyed as far as Grootfontein by rail, were to make their invasion of the adjoining British territory of Rhodesia. Troop movements in this direction would have been further facilitated by a link at Karibib connecting the Swakopmund-Otavi-Grootfontein line with the one to Windhoek and thence to the military headquarters at Keetmanshoop. Karibib was itself a military base, in addition to having large railway offices and workshops. With, therefore, the minor exceptions, the system of railways in German South-West Africa had been designed or developed in accordance with plans which had for their basis an eventual attack on British territory in three separate directions--(1) Cape Province, (2) Bechuanaland and (3) Rhodesia. The Southern and the North-to-South lines had, also, been built exclusively with the standard Cape gauge of 3 ft. 6 in., so that, when "der Tag" arrived, and German succeeded British supremacy in South Africa, these particular lines could be continued in order to link up with those which the Germans would then expect to take over from Cape Province. Keetmanshoop was eventually to be converted from a terminus to a stopping-place on a through line of German railway from Lüderitzbucht to Kimberley, the effect of which, it was pointed out, would be to shorten the distance from Europe to Bulawayo by 1,300 miles as compared with the journey via the Cape. Surveys had been made for extensions (1) from Keetmanshoop, via Hasuur, to the Union frontier near Rietfontein, and (2) from Kalkfontein, on the southern branch, to Ukamas, also on the frontier and in the direction of Upington, in Union territory. Each of these additions would have carried the original scheme a stage further, though it was not, apparently, thought wise to make them before "der Tag" actually arrived.