While the food supplies for the German troops were thus blocking the railway lines--or, alternatively, were going bad on account either of the heated conditions of the closed wagons or of exposure to the weather after unloading--many of the German troops were suffering severe privations from lack of adequate nourishment; and they would have suffered still more but for the provision-trains or stores of supplies seized from the French at Metz, Forbach, Verdun, Dôle, Le Hans, and elsewhere. If, indeed, the French had only refrained from rushing their own supplies to the extreme front in excessive quantities, or if they had destroyed those they could not remove in time, the invaders would, on various occasions, have found themselves in a condition bordering on starvation. Even as it was, they were often reduced to the necessity of dependence on their "iron" rations. Difficulty was especially experienced in feeding the army of occupation during the investment of Paris. The supplies received by train from Germany were equal to scarcely one half of the actual requirements; a resort to "requisitions" on the French territory occupied yielded inadequate results; and the making of a regular daily money-allowance to officers and men, so that they could purchase their own supplies in the open market or otherwise, was, at first, far from satisfactory. It was, in fact, only owing to the most strenuous effort on the part of the responsible officers, both during the investment of Paris and in earlier phases of the war, that the German troops were often saved from actual want.[21] The main reasons for the defects and shortcomings thus developed in a scheme on which so much care and preparation had been bestowed were (1) that, while based on fundamentally sound principles, the scheme in its actual application threw too great a strain on the department of the Inspector-General of Communications, which, as we have seen, was expected to look after, not only rail transport, but route marching, telegraphs, postal arrangements, and a great variety of other things besides; (2) that, owing to the larger number of Army Corps, it was no longer possible, as had been done in 1866, to place a separate line of railway at the disposal of each, so as to allow the said department to superintend the traffic on the basis of its own organisation; and (3) the absence of a central administration specially designed (_a_) to act as an intermediary and to ensure co-operation and mutual working between the various Line Commissions and, also, between the individuals and administrations, both military and civil, engaged in the conduct of rail-transport; and (_b_) to control the traffic as a whole, avoiding difficulties, blocks and delays assuring a prompt and efficient distribution of supplies, and guaranteeing the utilisation of rolling stock to the best advantage.