ms will be pressed in
every conceivable manner--by public sentiment, by economic
considerations, by mere strategy, by a political tradition, by the
influence of men powerful with the Prussian monarchy, whose homes and
wealth are threatened. "If I am to hold Belgium, I must give up
Alsace. How dare I do that? To save Silesia I must expose East
Prussia. How dare I? I am at bay, and the East must at all costs be
saved. I will hold Prussia and Silesia, but to withdraw from Belgium
and from beyond the Rhine is defeat." The whole thing is an embroglio.
That conclusion is necessary and inexorable. It would not appear at
all until, or if, numerical weakness imposed on the enemy a gradual
concentration of the defensive; but once that numerical weakness has
come, the fatal choices must be made. It may be that a strict, silent,
and virile resolution, such as saved France this summer, a
preparedness for particular sacrifices calculated beforehand, will
determine first some one retirement and then another. It may
be--though it is not in the modern Prussian temperament--that a
defensive as prolonged as possible will be attempted even with
inferior numbers, and that, as circumstances may dictate,
Alsace-Lorraine or Belgium, Silesia or East Prussia will be the first
to be deliberately sacrificed; but one must be, and, it would seem,
another after, and in the difficulty of choice a wound to the German
strategy will come.

The four corners are differently defensible--Alsace-Lorraine and
Belgium only by artifice, and with great numbers of men; Silesia only
so long as Austria (and Hungary) stand firm. East Prussia has her
natural arrangement of lakes to make invasion tedious, and to permit
defence with small numbers.

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 parti