ary's connection with the Hapsburgs at
Vienna. Let us now turn to the even more important embarrassment
caused to German strategy by the corner positions of the four
essential areas of German territory.

This last political weakness attached to geographical condition
concerns the German Empire alone.

Let us suppose a Power concerned to defend itself against invasion and
situated between two groups of enemies, from the left and from the
right, we will again call that Power A, the enemy upon the right M,
and the enemy upon the left N, the first attacking along the lines XX,
and the second along the lines YY.

Let us suppose that A has _political_ reasons for particularly
desiring to save from invasion four districts, the importance of
which I have indicated on Sketch 12 by shading, and which I have
numbered 1, 2, 3, 4.

[Illustration: Sketch 11.]

Let us suppose that those four districts happen to lie at the four
exposed corners of the area which A has to defend. The Government of A
knows it to be essential to success in the war that his territory
should not be invaded. Or, at least, if it is invaded, it must not,
under peril of collapse, be invaded in the shaded areas.

It is apparent upon the very face of such a diagram, that with the
all-important shaded areas situated in the corners of his
quadrilateral, A is heavily embarrassed. He must disperse his forces
in order to protect all four. If wastage of men compels him to
shorten his line on the right against M, he will be immediately
anxious as to whether he can dare sacrifice 4 to save 2, or whether he
should run the dreadful risk of sacrificing 2 to save 4.

[Illustration: Sketch 12.]

If wastage compels him to shorten his defensive line upon the left, he
is in a similar quandary between 1 and 3.

The whole situation is one in which he is quite certain that a
defensive war, long before he is pushed to extremities, will compel
him to "scrap" one of the four corners, yet each one is, for some
political reason, especially dear to him and even perhaps necessary to
him. Each he desires, with alternating anxieties and indecisions, to
preserve at all costs from invasion; yet he cannot, as he is forced
upon the defensive, preserve all four.

Here, again, the ideal situation for him would be to possess against
the invader some such arrangement as is suggested by Sketch 11. In
this arrangement, if one were compelled unfortunately to consider four
special district