would not have been sufficient; and there were no means of keeping up the numbers of officers and doctors. But our greatest danger lay in the inferiority of our railways. After 1882 we made great advances in efficiency, but only arrived at such a point that we were able to carry out a concentration on the frontier in double the time it would have taken our neighbours, so that not only were we condemned to the defensive, but our forces coming up in succession would be destroyed in detail. Since the lesson of 1870–71, we had become reconciled to the fact that we should never be able to catch up Germany in speed of mobilization, but we had flattered ourselves that in this respect we were ahead of Austria. Some ten or eleven years ago we were undeceived on this point also. The Austrian War Department had succeeded in working wonders in preparing the probable area of operations on our side for both attack and defence, and, owing to the many strategic lines of rail constructed through the Carpathians, this range had ceased to be a dangerous obstacle in rear of their advanced position.[38] Besides the sums allotted for the ordinary expenditure on the army, both the Austrians and the Germans had had recourse to extraordinary and special grants; thus their storehouses were filled, their fortresses well built and equipped, and their roads constructed. Not only did our lack of funds handicap us in these directions, but our backward state of development proved an insuperable bar, especially as regards the construction of railways. With our neighbours, the directions in which strategic lines of rail were required coincided generally with their economic alignment. With us the two requirements were at variance, and each strategic line proposed on our side met with the opposition of the Finance Department as being economically unsound. In the Far East we had little trouble for many years. Though our frontier with China was 6,000 miles long, it was not till 1880—twenty-seven years ago—that the increase in Japan’s military power and the awakening of China compelled us to think about strengthening our position in that quarter.