War and Conquest is timely, it differs from most of the war books of the past three years in at least two important respects: first, it consists very largely in a presentation of facts, and not merely in a formulation of opinions; and secondly, it makes no attempt to carry the investigation beyond the outbreak of the World War in 1914. The purpose of the work is to describe in detail the policies and practices in the utilization of rail-power for military purposes that had been developed up to that time, to indicate the nature and possibilities of this factor in warfare as it was "imposed upon mankind in 1914, to undergo a development and an application on a wider, more impressive, and more terrible scale than the world had ever seen before".
The title of Mr. Pratt's book is fairly indicative of its scope and character. Its viewpoint is uniformly historical. It emphasizes the rise of the various aspects of rail-power, the continuous historic evolution of railway transportation for a period of eighty years (1833–1914), in all the leading countries of the world and under the stress of all the important military combats of modern times, as an instrument of warfare. The earliest proposals for utilizing the railways for military purposes were made in Germany in 1833, but
the American Civil War was practically the beginning of things as regards the scientific use of railways for war, and … many of the problems connected therewith were either started in the United States or were actually worked out there, precedents being established and examples being set which the rest of the world had simply to follow, adapt or perfect.
Accordingly, considerable space is devoted to a discussion of the use of railways in the Civil War. Moreover, in dealing with such special problems as the establishment of a distinct military organization for railway destruction and restoration, the adjustment of railway control between the military and technical (railway) elements, the development of special devices for the protection of railways, the utilization of armored trains and railway ambulance transport, attention is repeatedly directed to the fact that the initial steps in all these matters, and substantial progress in some of them, must be traced to our Civil War. The development of rail-power is further exemplified by a detailed account of the use of railroads in the Franco-Prussian War, the Boer War, and the Russo-Japanese War, and special treatment is accorded to the employment of "military railways" in various campaigns, and to the nature of the German strategical railways.
As illustrations of the European policy of preparedness for war in time of peace, applied to the problem of rail-power, there is presented a detailed description of the development and present character of the organization of the transportation systems of Germany, France, and England, for military purposes. It is interesting to note that Germany's campaign for the organization of rail-power dates from the early thirties, but received especial impetus from the experience of our Civil War
