s beginning
in a modest central location about the sources of the Dwina, Dnieper and
Volga, was aided by the physical unity of its unobstructed plains, which
facilitated political combination. Hence, on every side it burst through
its encompassing neighbors and stretched its boundaries to the
untenanted frontier of the sea. Central location was the undoing of the
Transvaal Republic. Its efforts to expand to the Indian Ocean were
blocked by its powerful British rival at every point--at Delagoa Bay in
1875 by treaty with Portugal, at Santa Lucia Bay in 1884, and through
Swaziland in 1894. The Orange Free State was maimed in the same way
when, in 1868, she tried to stretch out an arm through Basutoland to the
sea.[249] Here even weak neighbors were effective to curtail the seaward
growth of these inland states, because they were made the tools of one
strong, rapacious neighbor. A central position teaches always the lesson
of vigilance and preparedness for hostilities, as the Boer equipment in
1899, the military organization of Germany, and the bristling fortresses
on the Swiss Alpine passes prove.

[Sidenote: Mutual relations between center and periphery.]

How intimate and necessary are the relations between central and
peripheral location is shown by the fact that all states strive to
combine the two. In countries like Norway, France, Spain, Japan, Korea
and Chile, peripheral location predominates, and therefore confers upon
them at once the security and commercial accessibility which result from
contact with the sea. Other countries, like Russia, Germany and
Austro-Hungary, chiefly central in location, have the strategic and even
the commercial value of their coasts reduced by the long, tortuous
course which connects them with the open ocean. Therefore, we find
Russia planning to make a great port at Ekaterina Harbor on the
northernmost point of her Lapland coast, where an out-runner from the
Gulf Stream ensures an ice-free port on the open sea.[250] An admirable
combination of central and peripheral location is seen in the United
States. Here the value of periphery is greatly enhanced by the
interoceanic location of the country; and the danger of entanglements
arising from a marked central location is reduced by the simplicity of
the political neighborhood. But our country has paid for this security
by an historical aloofness and poverty of influence. Civilized countries
which are wholly central in their location are