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.

* * * * *

Of geographical advantages attaching to the position of Russia only
one can be discovered, and it consists in the immense extent and unity
of the Russian Empire. This permitted operations upon a western front
from the Baltic to the Carpathians, or rather to the Roumanian border,
which vast line could never be firmly held against them by the enemy
when once the Russians had trained and equipped a superior number of
men. The German forces were sufficient, as events proved, long to
maintain a strict cordon upon the shorter front between the Swiss
frontiers and the sea, but upon the other side of the great field,
between the Baltic and the Carpathians, they could never hope to
establish one continued wall of resistance.

(2) THE OPPOSING STRENGTHS.

When nations go to war their probable fortunes, other things being
equal, are to be measured in numbers.

Other things being equal, the numbers one party can bring against the
other in men, coupled with the numbers of weapons, munitions, and
other material, will decide the issue.

But in European civilization other things are more or less equal.
Civilian historians are fond of explaining military results in many
other ways, particularly in terms of moral values that will flatter
the reader. But a military history, however elementary, is compelled
to recognize the truth that normally modern war in Europe has followed
the course of numbers