One great mistake, however, made alike by historians, by writers in the Press, and by popular tradition, has been the attributing to Germany of a far higher degree of credit in regard to the alleged perfection of her preparations for the _Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71_ than she was really entitled to claim. Nor, indeed, has the fact been sufficiently recognised that the organisation eventually elaborated by Germany for the efficient conduct of her rail-transport in war had been evolved from studies, investigations, trials, experiments and tests (in actual warfare or otherwise) extending over a period of half a century or more, during which time, also, there was issued a bewildering mass of laws, rules and regulations, each more or less modifying those that had gone before and adding still further to the elaborate, if not the extremely complicated, machinery laboriously built up as the result of the universally recognised genius of the German people for organisation. The final great test of all this machinery was to be applied in 1914. Here, however, it must suffice, for present purposes, to show how the machinery itself was created and the form it finally assumed. Down to 1861 Prussia had done no more, in the way of organising military transport by rail, than issue a series of Ordinances dealing with the movement of large bodies of troops, such Ordinances being akin to those which all the leading countries of Europe had either compiled or were engaged in compiling. Directly influenced by the developments of the Civil War in America, Prussia took the further step, in 1864, of forming a Railway Section of her General Staff. This new body was actively employed in the furtherance of Prussia's interests in the Danish War of the same year, when confirmatory evidence was given of the advantages to be derived from the use of rail transport for military movements, journeys that would have taken the troops sixteen days by road being done within six days by rail. The organisation thus applied on a comparatively small scale in 1864 was further developed by Prussia in the _campaign of 1866_. On that occasion mobilisation and concentration of the Prussian troops were both carried out mainly by rail, under the direction of an Executive Commission consisting of an officer of the General Staff and a representative of the Ministry of Commerce. This Executive Commission sat in Berlin, and was assisted by Line Commissions operating on the different railways utilised for military purposes. Movements of troops by rail were certainly effected in one-third of the time they would have taken by road, while the Prussians, gaining a great advantage, by the rapidity of such movements, over Austria, routed her combined forces within seven days of crossing the frontier, and dictated terms of peace to her within a month.