Having had a somewhat extensive railroad experience, both before and since the rebellion, I consider this Order of the Secretary of War to have been the very foundation of success; without it the whole railroad system, which had proved an important element in conducting military movements, would have been, not only a costly but ludicrous failure. The fact should be understood that the management of railroads is just as much a distinct profession as is that of the art of war, and should be so regarded. In _Europe_, Germany and Austria-Hungary were the first countries to attempt to solve problems that seemed to go to the very foundations of the practical usefulness of rail-transport in war. Various exhaustive studies thereon were written by railway or military authorities, and it may be of interest here to refer, more especially, to the views expressed by an eminent German authority, Baron M. M. von Weber, in "Die Schulung der Eisenbahnen," published in 1870.[7] Railway irregularities peculiar to war service were stated by this writer to be mainly of three kinds:--(i) Delays from unsatisfactory arrangements of the service and from the misemployment of rolling stock; (ii) temporary interruption of traffic owing to the crowding of transport masses at the stations or sidings; (iii) unsuitableness of the stations and conveyances for the required military services. The special reasons for the first of these causes he defined as (_a_) the absence of sufficient mutual comprehension between the military and the railway officials; (_b_) the strict limitation of the efficiency of individual railway authorities to their own lines only; (_c_) the ignorance of the entire staff of each line with regard to the details and service regulations of the neighbouring lines; and (_d_) the impracticability of employing certain modes of carrying on business beyond the circuit to which they belong. It should, however, be borne in mind that these criticisms of authorities and their staffs relate to the conditions of the German railway system in 1870, at which time, as told by H. Budde, in "Die französischen Eisenbahnen im Kriege 1870-71," there were in Germany fifteen separate Directions for State railways; five Directions of private railways operated by the State; and thirty-one Directions of private railways operated by companies--a total of fifty-one controlling bodies which, on an average, operated only 210 miles of line each. On the general question von Weber observed:-- The value in practice of mutual intelligence between military and railway officials has hitherto been far too slightly regarded.