ABSTRACT
Europe had been described as an armed camp twenty-five years before the Austro-Prussian war; but the description only became literally true after the application of the principle of compulsory military service upon the most extensive scale. A nation in arms, a whole people organised for war, a battle-front covering a league-long frontier, offered possibilities and presented difficulties unknown to the great captains of war. The sailors of Columbus and the Spanish conquerors of America had transported syphilis into Europe, an evil gift with their gold. The employment of the new means of transport offered problems which soldiers were slow to understand. The strategic usefulness of railways in war was first realised by civilians. In the Franco-Prussian war nearly 100,000 Germans were engaged in protecting the railways behind the fighting line. The Austro-Prussian war followed too closely upon the American Civil war for the combatants in Europe to profit by all its lessons.
