Between the two groups, Eastern and Western, is all the space of Germany—the space separating Aberdeen from London. Between each part of each pair, in spite of an excellent railway system, is the block in the one case of the Ardennes and the Eifel, in the other of empty, ill-communicated Poland. But each is strategically a separate thing; the political value of each a separate thing; the embarrassment between all four insuperable.
Such is the situation imposed by the geography of the European continent upon our enemies, with the opportunities and the drawbacks which that situation affords and imposes.
I repeat, upon the balance, our enemies had geographical opportunities far superior to our own.
Our power of partial blockade (to which I will return in a moment) is more than counterbalanced by the separation which Nature has determined between the two groups of Allies. The ice of the North, the Narrows of the Dardanelles, establish this, as do the Narrows of the Scandinavian Straits.
The necessity of fighting upon two fronts, to which our enemies are compelled, is more than compensated by that natural arrangement of the Danube valley and of the Baltic plain which adds to the advantage of a central situation the power of rapid communication between East and West; while the chief embarrassment of our enemies in their geographical arrangement, which is the outlying situation of Hungary coupled with the presence of four vital regions at the four external corners of the German Empire, is rather political than geographical in nature.
I will now turn to the converse advantages and disadvantages afforded and imposed by geographical conditions upon the Allies.
The Geographical Advantages and Disadvantages of the Allies.
It has been apparent from the above in what way the geographical circumstance of Germany and Austria-Hungary advantaged and disadvantaged those two empires in the course of a war against East and West.
Let us next see how the Allies were advantaged and disadvantaged by their position.