operation of Belgium. If, as was
believed to be almost certain, Prussian morals being what they are,
the Prussian guarantee to respect Belgian neutrality would be torn up
at the outbreak of war, then three great fortresses--Liege, Namur, and
Antwerp--would hold up the enemy's advance in this quarter, and
perform the function of delay which the obsolete armament of the
north-eastern French frontier could not perform. We shall see, when we
come to the conflicting theories of warfare held by the various
belligerents, what a grievous miscalculation this was, and how largely
it accounted for the first disasters of the war. But, at any rate, let
us remember, as our first point, the absence of any natural line of
defence in France as against a German invasion, remembering, also,
that the French would necessarily, at the beginning of any war, be
upon the defensive on account of their inferior numbers. Had France,
for instance, had along her frontiers, and just within them, such a
line as Germany possesses in the Rhine, she would have fallen back at
the outset upon that line. But she has no such advantage.

(_b_) The second disadvantage of the French geographically is one
immixed with political considerations. The French have for centuries
produced, and have for two thousand years believed in, central
government. For at least three hundred years all the life of the
nation has centred upon Paris; all the railways and all the great
system of roads and most of the waterways of the north similarly have
Paris for their nucleus. Now, this central ganglion of the whole
French organism is but 120 miles from the frontier, ten days' easy
marching. An enemy coming in from the north-east not only finds no
natural obstacle in his way, but has Paris as nearly within his grasp
as, say, Cologne is within the grasp of a French invasion of North
Germany. This feature has had the most important consequences upon the
whole of French history. It was particularly the determining point of
1870.

To meet the handicap, the French of our generation have combined two
policies.

First, they have fortified the whole region of Paris so thoroughly
that it has sometimes been called "a fortified province;" an area of
nearly thirty miles across at its narrowest, and of something like
from seven to eight hundred square miles, is comprised within this
plan.

The weakness of this in the face of modern fire will again be dealt
with when we come to the conflict