There is no doubt that the German siege and bombardment of Paris, involving as they did the concentration in a small space of very large masses of men and heavy expenditure of artillery ammunition, would have been wholly impossible without the railways. Also, the view that the German use of the railways to deploy their forces at the opening of the campaign as a supreme masterpiece of the military art is amply justified, though we have seen that this triumph was only achieved at the cost of disrupting the train apparatus before the war against France even got under way. Between these two phases of the struggle, however, the railways do not seem to have played a very important role, partly because of difficulties with the lines themselves and partly because of the impossibility of keeping the railheads within a reasonable distance of the advancing troops. Most surprising, however, is the fact that none of this had much influence on the course of operations, or indeed caused Moltke any great concern... (p.96)