Put into a sentence, the changed warfare amounts to this: it is a
mobilization of material, of railroads, great guns, machine guns, food,
airplanes and other engines of destruction quite as much as it is a
mobilization of men.
The Germans won battle after battle at the beginning of the war because
of their system of strategic railways that made it possible to transport
huge armies to selected points in the shortest possible time both on the
eastern and the western fronts. Lacking a system of transportation to
match this, Russia lost the great battles that decided her fate, Belgium
was over-run, and France, once the border was passed, became a
battle-field upon which the Germans might extend their trench systems
over the face of the land.
Lacking strategic railways to match those of Germany, France evolved an
effective substitute in the modern system of automobile transportation.
When von Kluck swung aside from Paris in his first great rush, Gallieni
sent out from Paris an army in taxicabs that struck the exposed flank
and went far toward winning the first battle of the Marne. It was the
truck transportation system of the French along the famous "Sacred Road"
back of the battle line at Verdun that kept inviolate the motto of the
heroic town, "They Shall Not Pass." Motor trucks that brought American
reserves in a khaki flood won the second battle of the Marne.
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