The various Regulations here in question have been supplemented from time to time by _Field Service Regulations_, the first series of which, issued under date May 23, 1887, was designed to take the place of the Ordinances of 1861 relating to the movement by rail of great bodies of troops. These Field Service Regulations of 1887 constituted an epoch in the military history of Germany. They were regarded at the time as offering a resumé of the most advanced ideas of Moltke, if not, also, as the crowning glory of military organisation in the reign of William I; and they certainly exercised a powerful influence on German military literature. They were, further, the starting-point of a prolonged series of similar Regulations, all amending, modifying, adding to, or abbreviating their predecessors. These changes led to the issue, on January 1, 1900, of a new edition, based on the exhaustive studies of a Commission of fourteen members; and still later revisions resulted in the publication of a further series on March 22, 1908.[23]
Here, then, we get still further evidence of the keenness with which Germany has followed up, in times of peace, her preparations for war, while the Field Service Regulations, no less than the other Regulations already detailed, show the important place that military rail-transport holds in the view of those responsible in Germany for the making of these arrangements. "Railways," it is declared in the Regulations of 1908, "exercise a decisive influence on the whole conduct of a war. They are of the greatest importance for mobilising and concentrating the army, and for maintaining it in a state of efficiency, and they enable portions of it to be transported from one place to another during the operations." What the Field Service Regulations do is to present in concentrated and compact form the working details, in respect to field service requirements, of those other and fuller Regulations which cover the whole ground of military transport in general.
Taking these various sources of information, the nature of the organisation that Germany has thus effected as the result of so many years of study and experience may be summarised as follows:--
In time of peace the authorities entrusted with the task of ensuring, by their preparations in advance, the success of the whole system of military rail-transport include (1) the Minister of War; the Prussian Chief of the General Staff of the Army; the members of the Railway Section of the Great General Staff, the Line Commissions and the Station Commissions; authorities concerned in the forwarding, transport and receiving of supplies, and representatives of the Commissariat department; and (2) the Imperial Chancellor, the Imperial Railway Bureau, the Imperial Administration of Posts and Telegraphs, and the various railway administrations.