That an invading German army would meet with fewer difficulties than ours if we marched into Prussia;
That certain territory might be taken from us;
That we might take Prussian territory from Germany, but that the population of the conquered provinces would always be hostile to us, on account of the difference in their state of civilization, national ties, and traditional sentiment;
That both Russia and Germany are such great nations that neither could possibly accept a loss of territory nor rest until it had been regained; and
“That, taking everything into consideration, it would not suit Germany, and it would certainly not suit us, to go to war for the sake of altering the existing frontier.”
3. Austro-Hungarian Frontier.—Austro-Hungary, 243,043 square miles in area, is larger than Germany, and in 1900 its population was 45,600,000; but while the German nation is exceedingly homogeneous and patriotic, the people of Austro-Hungary consist of many races. Of its population, 24·1 per cent. is German; the numerous Slav groups comprise 47 per cent. (Bohemians, Moravians, and Slovaks, 16·9 per cent.; Croatian-Servians, 11 per cent.; Poles, 8 per cent.; Rusins, 8 per cent.; Slavonians, 3 per cent.); Hungarians, 16·2 per cent.; Roumanians, 6·6 per cent.; Jews, 4·5 per cent.; and Italians, 1·6 per cent. As regards the feeling of these various races towards Russia, the Germans who live at a distance from our frontiers are not hostile; the Hungarians, if not open enemies, are, at any rate, unfriendly on account of the part we took in suppressing the rebellion of 1849, and their latent dislike is fanned by the greatest of the Slav groups, the Poles. The rest of the Slavs are sympathetic with their kinsmen in Russia, but the main motive for this sentiment is fear lest they should be absorbed by the Germans or Magyars.
The Austrian frontiers are nowhere simple, but ever since the conclusion of the Triple Alliance she has turned her attention—in a military sense—almost exclusively to her Russian frontier. On glancing at the map, one’s first thought is that the natural boundary between the two countries should run along the Carpathian range, but the actual frontier is a long way on the Russian side of it. Galicia forms, so to speak, a glacis of this main obstacle (the Carpathians) running down towards Russia, and it has recently grown up into a splendidly prepared entrenched camp, connected to the other provinces of Austro-Hungary by numerous roads across the Carpathians. It is strongly fortified and stocked with supplies of every nature, both for a protracted defence or an advance in force into Russia. Austria can now concentrate 1,000,000 men in this area within a very short space of time. For 760 miles we have a common frontier, and the upper reaches of the Vistula—from Nepolomnitsa to Zavikhost—and a small stretch of the Dniester, with its tributary, the Zbruoz, form a natural boundary in this direction. These rivers, however, possess no strategic value. The frontier is crossed by four lines of railway:
(a) At Granitsa, on the Warsaw-Ivangorod line.
(b) At Radziviloff.
(c) At Volochisk.