LAND AND WATER 
January 2, 1915. 
Thionville and Metz, and then upon the Vosges 
exactly as the present line does. I have marked it 
3, 3, 3. 
Supposing the Allies to respect the neutrality 
of Holland, this line we can perceive at once to 
have quite obvious advantages. It is hardly two- 
thirds of the original line in length ; it has three 
great fortresses upon its front, nearly half of its 
trajectory is taken up with the difficult and highly 
defensible country of the Ardennes in the north 
and the Vosges upon the south; and, lastly, it 
keeps German soil intact. 
That line, the Liege-Metz line, we can quite 
safely say is at once the obvious and the only 
second shorter line upon which, with reduced effec- 
tives, a German retirement could safely be made. 
But, unfortunately for Germany, German 
problems are not as yet — nor perhaps will ever be 
— purely strategical in this war. They are grossly 
interfered with by political considerations. To 
fall back upon this obvious second line is to give 
up Belgium and Antwerp and all hope of threat- 
ening Great Britain. It is to confess the begin- 
ning of the end. It is morally certain that such a 
confession will not be m.ade by such confused 
thinkers until it is too late. 
This second line, the line, Li^ge-Metz-the 
Vosges, once abandoned, there is no other. The 
line of the Rhine, in spite of its great fortresses, is 
not one upon which a force seeking concentration 
could retire. One has but to look at the map to 
see that this is so. It is a line which, in all its 
convolutions, is almost as long as the present line, 
and before a German Army should retire to it, that 
