GERMANY AND HER NEIGHBORS 231 



a few hundred years, they might have had the strength and self- 

 control to sink their racial differences and unite into a nation as 

 competent as Germany. 



Perhaps the reader will say: "Why choose Serbia? Why not 

 talk about Belgium? Germany hit her as hard as she hit Serbia." 

 True, but the contrast between Belgium and Serbia is one of the 

 best illustrations of the point we are making. Belgium suffered 

 because she was small. How much has she cost Germany, how- 

 ever, compared with what Serbia has cost ? At the end, after four 

 years of fighting, a Belgian army still held an important part of 

 the battle- front. How Germany would have rejoiced to substitute 

 Serbians for Belgians along that front ! She would have broken 

 through in a week behind the British and would have seized the 

 channel ports. 



Take another of Germany's eastern antagonists, Roumania. 

 Here, too, we have a country whose climate, like that of Serbia, 

 is not bad, but is merely by no means so stimulating as that of 

 Germany and Belgium. What happened? Roumania went into 

 the war for motives far lower than those which actuated the Bel- 

 gians. She looked out mainly for her own selfish interests, and 

 she reaped a bitter harvest. Belgium reaped an even more bitter 

 harvest, but she has a twofold satisfaction. She knows that she 

 fought only in self-defense. She also knows that having begun 

 to fight she never lost her grip, while Roumania, being once 

 defeated, ceased to be a factor of any importance. 



When we come to Russia we find a country larger than Germany, 

 and from that point of view able to fight on equal terms. In other 

 respects, however, the fight was very unequal. Russia is a 

 northern country and has none of the disadvantages of the torrid 

 zone. Yet her climate is a terrible handicap. I know that in this 

 chapter I shall seem to some readers to go beyond the limits of 

 reason in the importance which I ascribe to climate, but remember 

 what it does in New York. Remember that a change of only one 

 degree in the mean temperature has an easily measurable effect 



