pointed moment. Perhaps
on the journey over some submarine might delay the ship, but the
destroyers were there on the alert, and the submarine was but an amusing
episode. On the other side the process was carried on with equal
efficiency. Before the American doughboy could realize that he was in
France he was in his quarters, just like home, in the base camps behind
the fighting line and it was this miracle of transportation that won the
war.

A study of transportation construction in other countries showed that
actual construction of railroads had been suspended in some cases, and
in others retarded, but in not a few instances hastened by the war.
Brazil experienced a more nearly complete suspension of railroad
building than any of the other countries, but preparation was made for
prompt resumption of construction, with the return of more normal
conditions.

The Chinese building program also had been affected unfavorably by the
war. Nevertheless, there were important additions made, aggregating
approximately 800 miles during the war. Of the lines completed in 1917,
two are of especial significance. One of these, a 140-mile section of
the Canton-Hankow line, a link in the route between South China and
Peking. The other is a 60-mile feeder of the Trans-Siberian Railway in
Manchuria. A line was extended from South Manchuria into Mongolia, the
first railroad to penetrate this territory. Financial arrangements were
made for the early construction of a line across Southern Manchuria and
for another connecting the Peking-Hankow and Tientsin-Pukow lines.

Construction in Siberia proceeded rapidly. The completion, in 1915, of
the Amur River division of the Trans-Siberian in the east, together with
the extension in 1913 of the Ekaterinburg-Tiumen line to Omsk in the
west, gave virtually a double track from European Russia to Vladivostok.

The notable achievement in Africa was the continuation of the southern
rail link in the Cape-to-Cairo route. This line was completed to Bukama
on the navigable Congo, 2,600 miles from Capetown. The railway in German
East Africa, was extended to Lake Tanganyika on the eve of the war,
making a rail-water line across the center of the continent. The
railroad from Lobito Bay was extended eastward to Katanga, a rich
mineral region of the Belgian Congo, and, with the road already reaching
the Indian Ocean at Beira, gave a second east and west transcontinental
line. A permanent standard gauge rail