LAND AND WATEE 
October 17, 1914 
main lines, therefore, are only to be taken as a very 
incomplete and elementary iudication of the tull 
opportunities of communication which the AUies 
enjoy. The corresponding main communications ot 
the German Powers I have marked in full lines. 
Even from such an elementary sketch certain 
main features emerge. In the first place the Germanic 
Powers are seen to possess one prune advantage 
coupled with one prime disadvautiige. 
Tlie prime advantage is that they stand united 
in place and time, as also, largely, in spirit. They 
are each well served, moreover, by railway communi- 
cations j)ennitting them to pass troops and guns from 
west to east and east to west continually. 
Now the prime material disadvantage which the 
Germanic Powers, our enemies, suffer is not remotely 
connected with this advantage of theirs. This dis- 
advantage is a more or less complete blockade. 
The Germanic Powers can pass troops and guns 
from frontier to frontier speedily. AVhy ? Because 
they are inland powers holding the centre of Europe, 
the one the Baltic Plain, the other the Valley of the 
Danube. And both the Baltic Plain and the "^'alley 
of the Danube nm east and west. For the mountain 
ranges which might mterfere with communication do 
not run across these main lines, but parallel to them. 
But this same fact that our enemies are in the midst 
of Europe makes possible their more or less complete 
blockade by sea, which in its turn is due to the 
superiority of the British Fleet. 
"When we say that it is to the advantage of the 
Germanic powers to be thus packed together, with 
main communications running east and west, \^ e mean 
something like what is meant in smaller fields of 
strategy by the term " interior lines." 
For instance, supposing Russia, with her great 
numbers, could send troops and guns to Belgium in 
three or four days, it would be obviously of immense 
advantage to the Allies in the Western field of war. 
But Russia cannot do this. Such an expedition 
would mean thousands upon thousands of miles of 
steam, weeks upon weeks of time, and an impossible 
calculation of organised detail. Germany, on the 
other hand, can send a large body of troops from the 
Russian field of operations to the Belgian field of 
operations in a less number of days than the number 
of mouths that would be required for bringing a 
Russian body to the West. And this power of acting 
upon interior lines of communication has a further 
important advantage : you can use youi- knowledge 
of the two combined fields. Eastern and Western, 
immcdiaieli/. A big Russian success or failm-e upon 
the Vistula is felt aud acted upon immediately in the 
shape of reinforcements or withdrawal of Germanic 
troops to or fi-ora the Eastern and from or to 
the Western field. A double campaign is "felt" 
more faithfully and acutely by the people sitting in 
the middle tlian it can be by the people poundiiu' at 
the two outside edges. The knowledge of what is 
going on at a circumference can be more thorouohly 
co-ordinated from a centre than from a periphery. 
Ihe Allies have mdeed to-day the telegraph, which 
eliminates what would have been an almost insujieraljle 
difliculty a hundred years ago ; but co-ordination by 
telegi-ara with people whom you cannot meet and see 
at every few days' interval is another thing from 
co-ordination by personal interview between com- 
manders or thch- envoys none of whom arc twenty- 
Hours from your centre. ^ 
Serious, however, as these material advantages are 
to the central Powers, they arc certainly outvvei<rhod 
especially xu the later phase of the goaeril cmpS m! 
by the corresponding disadvantages ; for the blockade 
of certain prime materials, even where it is not 
absolute, is a most serious thing for a modem 
belligerent and a particularly serious thing for that 
belligerent if he is a Prussian. 
All war connotes a lavish expenditure of most 
things usually husbande'l, from human life to horse 
flesh. But Prussian war particularly depends upon 
the power of this lavish expenditure. The whole 
spirit of Prussian warfare is to win at once, and the 
whole weakness for Prussia lies in the inability of the 
Prussian commander, text-book or professor, to tell 
you what is to be done in case of a pi'ogi-essive defeat. 
The successes of Prussia in this war have been 
successes due to immediate and expensive attack, of 
heavy artillery against fortification, of close formation 
in overwhelming numbers in the field, and of forced 
rapid marching. I do not belittle this spirit. It is 
one of the two only ways of winning. AVhat I am 
pointing out is that it involves a lavish, a spendthrift, 
expenditure of everything in the sweep forward to 
succeed once and for all. 
So there we have two important things pointing 
to the necessity of very rapid immediate supply if 
Prussia and her Ally are to win. First, that all war 
involves this enormous consumption as in a matter of 
life and death. Secondly, that in pai-ticular Prussian 
war demands it. 
But there is a third element favouring blockade 
to-day. Modern war demands such expenditure in a 
peculiar degi'ee, because modem war deals with the 
maximum numbers of men, horses, material, fuel, and 
all the rest of it : it mobilises a whole nation. 
There is yet a fourth factor advantaging the 
blockaders and disadvantaging the blockaded in 
modern war, and that is the peculiar nature of certain 
indispensable materials for modern war. 
It so happens that modern war requires for its 
conduct a whole category of materials such as petrol, 
copper and certain of the chemicals necessary to the 
production of high explosives, which materials are 
not miiversally discovered, are mostly extra-European 
in origin, and depend for their introduction to Central 
Europe mainly upon sea-borne commerce. 
Consider, for instance, the position of tl;e 
Germanic Powers in the matter of petrol. AVithout 
petrol you cannot fly, and without jictrol your tran- 
sport — at least in Western Europe — is grievously 
hampered. Well, the main supplies of petrol come 
from Asia, from America, from the Russian Cauca- 
sian region, from Roumania, and from Galicia. Of 
aU these fields the Roumanian alone is, in theory at 
least (of what is actually happening I saj^ nothing), 
open readily to supply the Germanic Powers. And even 
if this field were as open practically as it is in the 
theory of international law, a Russian ad\'ance 
southward over the Hungarian Plain would intercept 
it, and has already partially intercepted it. 
Imagine the positions reversed, and the import- 
ance of this factor of disadvantage will appear. 
Supposing the main sources of petrol in the Avorld lay 
within Austria-Hungary and the German Empire, 
see what an advantage our enemies would then 
possess ! As it is that ad\'antage is exactly, or 
nearly exacth' transferred to the British and their 
AUies. 
Having said so much on the material advantages 
and disadvantages of the position occupied at this 
moment by the Germanic Powers in the centre of 
Europe, let us turn to the moral account and strike 
a balance. It is important to do so, because upon 
the moral factor ever^'thing ultimately depends — • 
