88 TRANSPORTATION 



commercial law are closely connected with the transformation of 

 maritime commerce and navigation. 1 



It would be of great interest to pursue the effect of transportation 

 on the forms of political organizations and on the utterances of 

 political life, and to investigate to what extent one has already 

 become conscious of these effects in scientific treatment. 



Only the connection of transportation with the physical develop- 

 ment of power of nations and its valuation from the point of view of 

 modern military science shall be discussed here. 



Modern strategy has to take into consideration three new factors 

 which arose in their beginning in the Franco-Prussian War, but 

 were not considered at all in earlier times. They are: The levy of 

 the whole national force for war, the progress of technical science, 

 and the development of transportation. The concentration of the 

 army formed by the entire armed nation, the sending of auxiliary 

 troops, their gathering at certain points, the care for provisions, are 

 conditioned by the organization of transportation. The mercenary 

 armies of the epoch of Frederick the Great must collect and keep 

 the whole amount of provisions that were needed in a campaign 

 before the war in a place as near as possible to the frontier. This 

 depot contained provisions, supplies of arms and ammunition, 

 materials for artillery, engineering, workshops of all kinds, even 

 barracks for recruits, and formed the basis of operation, which was 

 protected by fortresses. When the armies marched on, in most 

 favorable cases after ten days' march, a new basis had to be estab- 

 lished; this was the reason of the long duration of former campaigns 

 and of the lack of display of force and energy in comparison to the 

 present. Although Napoleon brought the system of requisition, 

 the sustenance of his army through the means drawn from the 

 enemy's country, to highest perfection, yet he could not entirely act 

 without establishing such " spaces of basis," as especially his prepa- 

 rations for the war against Russia (1812) demonstrate. In present 

 days these conditions are completely altered by the railway trans- 

 portation. Storing up supply in a prepared basis has become unneces- 

 sary, since reserve forces and any kind of provisions and materials 

 can be moved within a few days from the remotest districts as far as 

 the railroad is operated. The administration of the Prussian army 

 ought to have kept, according to old regulations, a supply of pro- 

 visions amounting, outside of the fortresses, to one or two years' 

 supply of rye and to one half-year's or one year's supply of oats. 

 Instead of observing this regulation, the supplies had been dimin- 

 ished, during the years preceding the declaration of war against 

 France, so that the supply for the need in time of peace would have 

 been sufficient for but few months ; at the time of harvest for an even 



1 1. Band, 1891, S. 336. 



