Note 78 — Chapter XXI · Summary and Conclusions

Von Moltke is reported to have said on one occasion in the Reichstag: "Our Great General Staff is so much persuaded of the advantages to be derived from obtaining the initiative at the outset of a war that it prefers to construct railways rather than forts. An additional railway, crossing the whole country, makes a difference of two days in the assembling of the army, and advances the operations proportionately." "In the concentration of armies," says von der Goltz in "The Conduct of War," "we reckon almost by hours."