LAND AND WATER 
December 5, 1914. 
(d) The Suez Canal is flanked all the way 
along on the defensive side by a railway, which 
(from Port Said and from Lsmailia) connects with 
the bases of supply further inland. There is iiothinc; 
of the sort on the eastern side, from which the 
offensive would come. 
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(e) It is flanke?d on all its southern part by a 
fresh water canal. There is no similar supply of 
fresh Avater on tlie furtlier ofi'enslAe side. 
(f) It offers for the most part a clear field of 
fire to the eastward, i.e., towards ground over wliich 
the invader would come. The banks thrown up by 
the digging, and hiding the desert sand from tlie 
water level, are not high enough as a rule to baxdk 
heavy gun-fire from a modern ship of war, and guns 
of sufficient power can be mounted higher from the 
deck. 
This last advantage the canal has is also the 
least perfect. For there are at least five positions 
along the canal where an offensive from the 
east has the advantage of higher banks and is 
thus screened from gun-fire aimed from ships in 
the canal. 
Heights, or ratlier dunes, behind which 
howitzers, aiming at the fixed target the canal 
affords, could lie under cover are not infrequent. 
But obstacles actually impeding fire from the canal 
permit a close approach to the canal, the mounting 
of guns commanding the water and the construction 
of bridges. 
In other words, there are certain places on the 
trajectory of the canal where the defensive must 
occupy the eastern hank where there is an oppor- 
tunity for the offensive by occupying it to dominate 
a crossing. 
These opportunities are five in number. 
There is none for the first 45 kilometres from 
the Mediterranean. Then the old lake, dried l)ut 
flat in the east, is a complete field of fire. Up to 
Kantara, " the bridge," where the old coast road 
strikes the present line of the canal there is no 
opportunity for a crossing. Just south of El 
Kantara a slight group of heights occurs. The next 
group is just south of lsmailia. The third is just 
south of that point in what is called " the plateau 
of the Hyena." The fourth is a few miles further 
on in the shape of sand dunes, which involve a 
cutting after the " broad " on which lsmailia stands. 
Then come the Bitter Lakes, where no crossing is 
possible ; ^nd between the Bitter Lakes and Suez 
the only obstacle is the 40-foot bank at the issue 
from the Bitter Lakes. 
There are, I believe, no other positions save 
these from which a bridging covdd be attempted. 
Of one main factor, the hardness of the sand to 
the east, and the possibility of moving heavy guns 
over it in various places, I know nothing, nor can 
I usefully discuss the state of the ground for 
entrenching, in which I am equally ignorant. 
THE CARPATHIAN SYSTEM IN THE 
PRESENT WAR. 
THE war has now reached a phase in which 
it has become important for us to grasp 
the nature of the Carpathian mountain 
system, of the part it must play in any 
great campaign in Eastern Europe, and 
of the part it has already begun to play this week 
in the struggle between Austria-Hungary and 
Russia. 
Upon the accompanying sketch map I give the 
rough outline of this mountain system, marking 
with a single line the boundary where the hill 
country ends and the plain begins, and with hatch- 
8-- 
