The Sun.
London, England, 1867-06-06 00:00:00

Railways in Time of War.

The Army Transport Committee, over which Lord
Strat'maim presided, had to consider the subject of
railway transport, and in their report, dated in
March last, they state the chief arrangements which
should be made for the organisation of this branch
of the service. They consider that the introduction
of railway conveyance need not complicate the ques-
tion of ordinary military transport. Railway trans-
port requires an organisation of its own. While the
railway affords facilities, it greatly adds to the
casualties and risks attending the supply of troops,
not only from the chance of interruption and damage
to the permanent way by the enemy, but also from
the difficulty of keeping up transport communication
between the railway line and the forces to be sup-
plied. Lieut.-Colonel Reilly, R.H.A., in a memo-
randum on Prussian transport, remarks that it
requires little to stop a railway or disarrange traffic
if the -enemy is enterprising and the population
hostile ; in the late German campaign the Landwehr
had to supply strong guards along the line, and at
the principal stations, and at each of the principal
stations a staff officer was in charge. With all their
advantages the commissariat did not succeed in feed-
ing the soldiers as we should require it to do, and
Lieut.-Colonel Reilly was informed by a surgeon
that the men of his division were many days without
animal food, and from the day before until the
day after Koniggratz the whole army was with-
out rations; but this partial failure was owing
to the parsimony of the Government inducing the
people to drive their herds into the woods. Lord
Straithnairn observes that though the Prussian
armies moved to within sight of Vienna mainly by
railroad, and without a great proportion of army
transport, it must be recollected that this was done
after great successes, and with a thorough know-
ledge of the depressed morale of their antagonist,
which made that forward movement safe. The
only occasion, he says, on which railway transport
supersedes army or animal transport is when the
country concerned is completely in possession of an
army, as, for instance, before Sebastopol ; but even
there the ammunition and supplies had to be con-
veyed from the terminus by animal transport or
hand to. the troops, and of course animal transport
would have been indispensable for a forward move-
ment, which could not have been avoided if the
Russians had not evacuated Sebastopol, or if the
base of operations had been transferred (as was
contemplated) from the Crimea to 11Iingrelia or
Georgia. No General in the field which he is dis-
puting with an enemy is justified in diminishing the
amount of animal transport, because he has the
assistance, which is purely partial, of rail, any more
than he would had he the use, also purely partial,
of sea or inland water transport. Captain H. W.
Gordon, principal superintendent of stores at
Woolwich, stated also in his evidence before the
Committee that he cannot send a 9-ton gun to
Portsmouth by rail, although the railway comes
into the arsenal ; the permanent way, he believes,
is not sufficently strong, and there is no truck that
can take the gun.