This work examines in depth the role and potential of mechanical traction - that is, steam or motor-driven traction engines, road locomotives and early automobiles - for military logistics and transport in warfare. The author, Lieutenant-Colonel Layriz, traces the development of traction engines, their early use in war (for example in the Franco-Prussian War, the Russo-Turkish conflict and the Boer War), and explores how mechanical traction may supplement or even replace animal and horse-drawn transport in campaigns. He assesses the conditions under which mechanical traction becomes necessary (e.g., when railways cannot supply the front, or when animal teams are over-burdened) and analyses technical features such as the design of road locomotives, cranes, traction drums, winding gear and the special requirements of military use (rugged terrain, weak bridges, operations in retreat or advance). He also comments on the emerging role of the automobile as a traction engine and the implications of mechanisation for future armies. The work is richly illustrated with plates and drawings of traction engines, early motor-vehicles, and armoured road trains. Overall the book offers a forward-looking appraisal of mechanised road transport for warfare at the turn of the 20th century. Lieutenant-Colonel Otfried Layriz was a German artillery officer who took a keen interest in military transport technology around the turn of the century. Little detailed biographical information is readily available, but it is known that he published works such as Die Automobilen für schwere Lasten und ihre Bedeutung für militärische Verwendung (1901) and Altes und Neues aus der Kriegstechnik?Betrachtungen über ihre Verwendung im Feldkrieg (1908). His experience and reflections on mechanical traction reflect the evolving thinking in European armies about mechanisation. R. B. Marston, his translator into English, added footnotes and an appendix covering the use of traction engines in the South African War and the early ?Thousand Mile Trial? of motor cars, thereby broadening Layriz?s German perspective to an Anglo-American readership.