A General Sketch of the European War: The First Phase

by Hilaire Belloc

Secondly, the French established a policy whereby, if Paris were menaced in a future campaign, the Government should abandon that central point, and, in spite of the grave inconvenience proceeding from the way in which all material communications centred upon the capital and all established offices were grouped there, would withdraw the whole central system of government to Bordeaux, and leave Paris to defend itself, precisely as though it were of no more importance than any other fortified point. They would recognize the strategic values of the district; they would deliberately sacrifice its political and sentimental value. They would never again run the risk of losing a campaign because one particular area of the national soil happened to be occupied. The plans of their armies and the instructions of their Staff particularly warned commanders against disturbing any defensive scheme by too great an anxiety to save Paris.

If this were the disadvantage geographically of France, what was that of Russia?

Russia's geographical disadvantage was twofold. First, she had no outlet to an open sea in Europe save through the arctic port of Archangel. This port was naturally closed for nearly half the year, and how long it might be artificially kept partially open by ice-breakers it remained for the war to prove. But even if it were kept open the whole year in this precarious fashion, it lay on the farther side of hundreds of miles of waste and deserted land connected only with the active centre of Russia by one narrow-gauge line of railway with very little rolling stock. The great eastern port of Vladivostok was nearly as heavily handicapped, and its immense distance from the scene of operations in the West, with which it was only connected by a line six thousand miles long, was another drawback. Russia might, indeed, by the favour of neutrals or of Allies, use warm water ports. If the Turks should remain neutral and permit supply to reach her through the Dardanelles, the Black Sea ports were open all the year round, and Port Arthur (nearly as far off as Vladivostok) was also open in the Far East. But the Baltic, in a war with Germany, was closed to her. Certain goods from outside could reach her from Scandinavia, round by land along the north of the Baltic, but very slowly and at great expense. It so happened also that, as the war proceeded, this question of supply became unexpectedly important, because all parties found the expenditure of heavy artillery high-explosive ammunition far larger than had been calculated for, and Russia was particularly weak therein and dependent upon the West. This disadvantage under which Russia lay was largely the cause of her embarrassment, and of the prolongation of hostilities in the winter that followed the declaration of war.

The fact that Russia was ill supplied with railways, and hardly supplied at all with hard roads (in a climate where the thaw turned her deep soil into a mass of mud) is political rather than geographical, but it must be remembered in connection with this difficulty of supply.

If these, then, were the various disadvantages which geographical conditions had imposed upon the Allies, what were the corresponding advantages?

They were considerable, and may be thus tabulated:—

1. The western Allies stood between their enemies and the ocean. If they could maintain superiority at sea through the great size and efficiency of the British Fleet, and through its additional power when combined with the French, they could at the least embarrass, and perhaps ultimately starve out the enemy in certain essential materials of war. They could not reduce the enemy to famine, for with care his territories, so long as they were not ravaged, would be just self-supporting. The nitrates for his explosives the enemy could also command, and, in unlimited quantity, iron and coal. But the raw material of textiles for his clothing, cotton for his explosives, copper for his shell, cartridge cases, and electrical instruments, antimony for the hardening of the lead necessary to his small-arm ammunition, to some extent petrol for his aeroplanes and his motor-cars, and india-rubber for his tyres and other parts of machinery, he must obtain from abroad. That he would be able in part to obtain these through the good offices of neutrals was probable; but the Allied fleets in the West would certainly closely watch the extent of neutral imports, and attempt, with however much difficulty and with however partial success, to prevent those neutrals acting as a mere highroad by which such goods could pass into Germany and Austria. They would hardly allow, especially in the later phases of the war, Italy and Switzerland, Holland and Scandinavia, to act as open avenues for the supply of the Germanic body. Though they would have to go warily, and would find it essential to remain at peace with the nations whose commerce they thus hampered and in some sense controlled, the Allies in the West could in some measure, greater or less, embarrass the enemy in these matters.

Conversely, they could supply themselves freely with tropical and neutral goods, and even with munitions of war obtained from across the ocean, from Africa and from America.

So long as North-western France and the ports of Great Britain were free from the enemy this partial blockade would endure, and this freedom of supply for France and Britain from overseas would also endure.

2. The Allies had further the geographical advantage of marine transport for their troops—an important advantage to the French, who had a recruiting ground in North Africa, and to the British, who had a recruiting ground in their dominions oversea, and, above all, an advantage in that it permitted the constant reinforcement of the continental armies by increasing contingents arriving from these islands.