s 2-3/4 miles from Gerolstein, a town principally of
comic-opera fame, and yet over this short distance, between the two
villages, there are laid down six parallel lines of rail, besides
numerous additional sidings.... Few of these lines, it is to be
noted, cross the frontier. Three of them, as late as last May (this
was written in the fall of 1914), led to blind terminals within a
day's march of it--the double line from Cologne via Stolberg to
Weiwertz, the double line from Cologne via Junkerath and Weiwertz to
St. With and the double line from Remagen via Hillesheim and Pelm to
Pronsfeld."

"Another point that is noticeable," says another observer, quoted in
the same article, "is that provision exists everywhere at these new
junctions and extensions for avoiding an upline crossing a down line
on the level, the upline is carried over the down line by a bridge,
involving long embankments on both sides (so new that as yet nothing
has had time to grow on them) at great expense, but enormously
simplifying traffic problems, when it comes to a question of full
troop trains pushing through at the rate of one every quarter of an
hour, and the empty cars returning eastward at the same rate.

"The detraining stations are of sufficient length to accommodate the
longest troop train (ten cars) easily, and they generally have at
least four sidings apart from the through up and down lines.
Moreover, at almost every station there are two lines of sidings
long enough for troop trains, so that they can be used to some
extent as detraining stations, and so that a couple of troop trains
can be held up at any time while traffic continues uninterrupted."

Such facts of railway preparedness explain, in a great measure, the
means whereby Germany was able to launch upon the Belgian,
Luxemburg, and French frontiers such a vast array of fully equipped
troops almost at the moment of the outbreak of the war. It must be
left to the reader to determine whether there is any connection
between this activity of railroad building in a district
industrially inactive on a frontier that was always held inviolate;
and the violation of that territory by means of these very
railroads. Facts remain facts, however, and the absolutely admitted
facts declare that German mobilization was directed, not at the
French frontier, but at the frontier of Luxemburg and Belgium,
especially at the great Belgian plain, commanded and dominated by
the great fortress of Lie