GERMAN PREPAREDNESS.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 July 1915, Page 11 (Supplement)

GERMAN PREPAREDNESS.

SUM 10 Cl'liloUS INSTANCES. Sonic curious instances of the careful and deliberate preparations made by the Germans fir the present war are. cited by Mr. Hoy Norton, an American writer, in tlie December number of the Contemporary Review. For about a year previous to the outbreak of hostilities, Mr. Norton was travelling in Germany, and lie is convinced that the German Govcrninent is mainly responsible for the calamity which lias come upon the civilised world. He declares (1) that not until the eve of the war were the Herman military and naval perparations complete; C2) that the Austro-Servian embroglio was not in itself sufficient cause for Garmany to go to war had she not been ready and eager; (3) that it was not well known in inner and upper circles that the. military clique wanted nothing more than a pretext; (4) that the war spirit was kindled and stimulated by freely-distributed newspapers; (5) that Germany was making ready for war days before any situation warranted the supposition that she was in any wise involved; and (li) that, days before such a situation arrived many of her trusted ollicials had been quitely warned that war was coming.

The actual operations of the war have given a sinister significance to many things which lie observed during the first half of the last year. Perhaps the most remarkable of these things was what he saw at Cologne on February 11, when he "blundered" into what he learned to be a military stores-yard. Among several strange things there were tiny locomotives laid on flats oir which they could be run by an ingenious contrivance of rails. Also, there were other flats loaded, some with sections of tracks fastened on cup ties (i.e., sleepers that can be laid on the .surface of the earth), and some with miniature bridges. It was plain that with this plant alone I a temporary railway, including bridge?, could be laid almost anywhere in an incredibly short space of time, provided that enough men were available. Before he could finish his examination of the yard, Mr. Norton was ordered off, but I the official who directed him out told i him that what he had seen were conI struction outfits. Of the use actually 1 made of these outfits he learned subsequently from a Dutchman who had been a refugee in Germany and had reached his home on August 30. In the. course jof a letter this Dutchman wrote: I "Never, I believe, did a country so thoroughly get ready for war. 1 saw th«! oddest spectacle—the building of a railway behind a battlefield. They had diminutive little engines and rails in sections so that they could be bolted together, and even bridges that could be put across ravines in a twinkling. Flat cars that could be carried by hand and dropped on the rails, great strings of them. Up to the nearest point of battle came, on the regular railway, this small one. At thepoint where we were, it came up against the soldiers. It seemed to me that hundreds of men had been training for this, for in but a few minutes that small,, portable train was buzzing backward and forward on its own small portable -'ails, distributing food supplies. It was great work, I can tell you. I have an Idea that in time of battle it would be possible for those sturdy little trains to shift troops to critical or endangered points at the rate of perhaps 'JO miles an hour, keep ammunition, batteries, etc., moving at this same rate, and of course be of inestimable use in clearing off the wounded. A portable railway for a battle field struck me as coming about as close to making i war by machinery as anything I have ever heard of. J did not have a chance, however, to see it working under Are, for, being practically a prisoner, I was hurried onward and away from the scene." Mr Norton found scattered over Germany numbers of "switch" or " shunting" yards, capable of entraining tens of thousands of soldiers in a few hours - yards where from ten to twenty passenger trains could be drawn up at one time, and some of these "queer yards," as he thought them, equipped With electric lighting plants, were out in places where there were not a dozen houses in sight. In some of the yards situated at central points for rural mobilisation, there were long trains of troop cars, waiting for use in war. He learnt, too, of a test mobilisation, during which 20,000 men were assembled at ten o'clock one morning, made a camp complete, were reviewed, entrained, and detrained. Just seven hours later there -.).!. KJ.)>|orri put! HJOJIIIJiUd AV.IJ. tt Aq dn p.uojaop pui) Jor pojiw iiuwq ojjm I[V 'jdAl p,rl»nbl}Ul! 111 IJO MO.Vi qjiii.w jo IBOIU 'h.i.ujouioooi 001 0} Oi mojj muk di[ '(,\ ounj' uo 'u,)uU!«dU>[ ,wo[oq Hollies „iui!l„ a jy -poqjtHsip \ioo<[ ma;» puq aanpl aqi ■jnqi .woqs o) kmuS puHJuiuj) pun tqjqap d.\w Suiqpm s«.w tamed for the' purpose. Tlie curious American asked one of the train men down the track. The reply he got was see," said the man, "these engines are no longer good enough for heavy or fast traffic, so as soon as they become obsolete, they are sent to the resurve. They are all of them good enough to shift troop trains, and therefore are never destroyed.- They are all frequently lired up and tested in regular form. Those fellows outh there do nothing else. That is their business, just to keep those engines in order and fit for troop duty. There are dozens of such depots over Germany." "How on earth would you man tliem in case of war ': asked Mr Norton, whereupon the man answered:—"The headquarters know to the ton what each one of these can pull, how fast, where the troop cars are that it will pull, and every man that would ride behind one. line has the number of the ear he would rid' 1 in, and for ever so many men there is waiting somewhere a reserve engineer and stoker. The best locomotives would be the first out of the reserve, and so on, down to the ones that can barely do 15 kilometers per' I hour."

As early as July !8. that is to suv, live days' before 'the despatch of the Austrian nitimatum to Serviu, Mr -Norton noted astounding war activity at the fortified Baltic port of riwin'emucnde. The fortifications had already lieen closed to the public. The oiliing was llllcd with torpedo-boats and destroyers. All night long flashlights played and guns boomed. The next morning, though sentries kept the curious from encroaching on the scene, Mr Norton actually saw men working nt (he torpedo-tubes, while war aeroplanes made trial flights over the city and the harbor. A few days later at flask', liu learnt, from an indignant switchman that the Herman railways were ordering all their empty trucks to be returned from everywhere, and lie lion of the Archduke Kerdiuand.; afterwards discovered that this infloiv of empty Herman carriages and trucks had been so large at other frontier stations that two \veek>> before war n:b declared the Herman yards were full, hi face of fads like these, Mr Norton could come to no other conclusion than that the Herman authorities had deliberately made up their minds to precipitate war, even before the assaosini-

pilch that seems possible. Indeed as I wick. ' I

.lust as the forces of Nature and science, have been subdued and harnessed in machinery of bewildering variety and untold power, so has the human clement been disciplined to the highest a general synonym for capacity and efficiency, it would by no means be inappropriate, to use the one word, Elsought ever to take twenty; nothing moved or carried two yards where one should be enough.