THE STRATEGICAL GEOGRAPHY OP EUROPE. 
191 
France is bounded in great part by other states, were the Rhine, the 
Yosges and the great places, admirably situated, of Metz and Strasburg. 
All these are now German, and prepared with extraordinary skill and 
lavish resources to resist a French offensive a entrance. So serious is 
the situation, that except through neutral territory, it is very hard for 
ingenious theorists to draw up any good scheme for a French assault on 
Germany, that offers a fair chance of success, especially as there is now 
small hope of detaching South Germans from the Fatherland. I have 
not time to dwell on these most interesting problems. They would 
take a lecture to themselves, but with your Secretary’s permission, I 
propose to add Sironi’s Views on some of them by way of an appendix 1 
Had we time, it would be well to show the great advantage of the 
command of the sea. The English all through the 18th century and in 
Napoleon’s days with little trouble, and no serious danger to themselves, 
perplexed the French ; their fleets complicated the French plans and 
always rendered them insecure. Napoleon could not bring an army 
into Italy except over the Alps, simply because Lord Keith was 
cruising off Genoa. An English force at the head of the Adriatic would 
be a serious threat to a French army moving from the Adige to Vienna. 
In 1807 an English fleet and army in the Elbe would have imperilled 
the French forces that were concentrating on the Pasarge. At the height 
of his power, when Napoleon’s corps had marched from the St. Cenis to the 
Semmering Pass, and from the Seine to the Niemen,and from the Danube 
to the Tagus, a small English force was quietly landed in Lusitania ; 
nor did it rest till it had mortally aggravated that Spanish ulcer which 
ruined him and had carried the standard of the descendant of thePlantage- 
nets into the sunny lands by the Adourand the Garonne, which more than 
four centuries before had been governed by the Black Prince. 
And now this short study of topography has brought us to our own lands 
“ the greatest and the best in all the main” ; “ those precious gems set in 
a silver sea,” and as we look upon them on the map a certain glow of 
enthusiastic patriotism must pervade the souls of the dullest. Suppose 
among the other marvellous events of which the womb of our 
mighty mother is pregnant, an invasion of our Continent by the mighty 
Republic across the Atlantic could be conceived, the three bastions of 
Europe would be Scandinavia, the North-west of France and the 
North-west of Spain, and to these the United Kingdom would be the 
outwork. Thus these merely theoretical words of the modern Italian 
Sironi set forth the strategical might of our isles, as it also appeared in 
the days of Elizabeth to the English sage, whose mighty and subtle 
intellect saw through the veil of mystery that envelops the records of 
our past and the hopes for our future. Lord Bacon said that “ he that 
commands the sea is at great liberty, and may take as much and as 
little of the war as he will ; whereas those that be strongest by land are 
many times nevertheless in great straits. Surely at this day with us 
of Europe, the vantage of strength at sea, which is one of this kingdom 
of Great Britain is great; both because most of the kingdoms of Europe 
are not wholly inland, but girt with sea most part of their compass, 
and because the wealth of both Indies seems in great part but an 
accessory to the command of the sea.” And so indeed it has been and 
it is. Colonel Maurice, a member of your own body, has pointed out not 
long ago how an English fleet could still, if our people so pleased, put 
the very strongest by land in very great straits indeed. For the rest 
1 In the Appendix Sironi’s Views will be found in a French translation. 
