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THE STRATEGICAL GEOGRAPHY OF EUROPE. 
ginians, Romans, Goths, Moors, English and French have in turn 
experienced the difficulties which nature rather than art has interposed 
between Spaniards and their invaders. The writings of Caesar and the 
exploits of Vercingetorix point out to modern Frenchmen the way to 
future victories. The immortal Corsican followed the very route by 
which the illustrious Marlborough, a century before, had carried the 
standard of St. George to the banks of the Isar and celebrated, in the 
words of the Kaiser Leopold the fame of his people in lands where the very 
name of England had hitherto been unknown. The Visigoths, Swedes, 
the Poles left their memorials in the territories between the Vistula and 
the Dnieper which saw the glory of Napoleon in 1807, at Friedland, 
and his doom in 1812. Many a barbaric chief and many a Roman 
legion operated between the Danube and the Po long before Suwarrow’s 
Cossacks bathed their horses in the Ticino, or Napoleon’s divisions 
marched from the Mincio across the Save and the Drave towards the 
capital of Austria. Around and past the great ramparts of the 
Carpathians the barbaric East surged for generations before rushing 
south over the Danube and carrying darkness and ruin into Greece, 
Italy, and Southern Germany, and to the walls of the capital of the 
Eastern Empire. These invaders trembled in turn before other Eastern 
heroes whose crescents were borne from Central Asia into the valley of the 
Euphrates and thence across the Hellespont into Constantinople itself, 
and thence to the regions of the Bulgarians and the Huns. 
“ There is nothing new under the sun,” and we have listened during 
the last few days to the words of a powerful German soldier and 
statesman crying aloud to his countrymen to “ Awake, arise, or be for 
ever fallen,” for behind them and before them were gathering storms 
of war, more terrible than any recorded in the annals of their race. 
Eastward the Muscovites were hovering along the Vistula and the 
frontier of Galicia, and Westward the Gauls were arming themselves 
along the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhone. The fateful words of 
Von Caprivi expressed not only his own Fatherland’s dangers, they 
caused a throbbing of the heart among the dwellers by the Temes, the 
Morava, and the Inn, and the astute Italians remembered the sack of 
Aqueleia and took counsel together amidst the ruins of the Forum. 
As the signs of the times now appear, it would not be at all surprising 
if the people of Eastern Europe were to hurl themselves again upon 
Western Europe in our generation. 
Broadly speaking there are three main lines of invasion from the 
East; first, by the North German plain ; second, up the valley of the 
Danube as far as South Germany ; and third, into Northern Italy from 
the valley of the Danube between Belgrade and Komorn. The first 
two tend to draw together and to converge on the Middle Rhine between 
Coblentz and Basle, and the third opens up the countries bordering on 
the Mediterranean. A glance at any map will show that Russia as a 
salient obtrudes itself, as it were, into Northern Germany and along the 
Northern frontiers of Bohemia and Hungary. Russia is within about 
180 miles of Berlin, whereas the Germans are a long cry from Moscow 
and St. Petersburg. Moreover, East Prussia from the Vistula to the 
Niemen would be absolutely cut off from the rest of Germany by a 
Russian force moving North from Warsaw ; so also a movement of 
Russians South-xvest from Warsaw into Moravia, and on Vienna, would 
compel the forces of Galicia and Hungary to form front to flank, if not 
isolate them from South Germany, but not, unless they were held by 
