January 20, 1916. 
LAND AND WATliR 
CONTROL OF THE LEVANT. 
By HILAIRE BELLOC. 
THE mere strategics of war are often 
compared by a very loose simile to 
chess. Indeed the simile is so loose 
that it is exceedingly misleading, and 
has caused too many students of military history 
to state in merely mathematical term 5 problems 
which are essentially organic and human. 
But there is at least this great point in com- 
mon .between the strategics of a widely-developed 
campaign and a game of chess ; that not the best 
player in the world can see more than a few moves 
ahead. In other words, there is in both forms of 
effort the factor which may be called " uncon- 
trolled " development. In both things one may 
say that the development of each situation in turn 
is ultimately controlled, because each is ultimately 
created by the human will acting upon certain 
known materials. But everybody knows that 
when you play chess you arrive at one situation 
after another, which is the product of two opposing 
wills and never, or hardly ever, entirely foreseen 
by either of those wills. 
Now there has arisen in the mere strategics 
of the Levant (I mean by "mere" stategics the 
strategic problems there presented as distinct 
from the political problems intermixed with them) 
a situation which many are beginning to realise, 
but which certainly neither the enemy nor the 
Allies intended a short while ago. Briefly, this 
situation may be deiined as " the control of the 
Levant through the possession by the Allies of 
interior lines." 
It is an exceedingly important point in the 
mere theory of this war. It may well become in 
the next few weeks a capital point in the practice 
of the war. 
Not that the great war can possibly be 
decided south of the Danube or east of the Adriatic, 
but that subsidiary operations morally damaging 
to the enemy or to ourselves, and certainly creat- 
ing for either party a drain in men and material, 
may develop here in such a fashion as to affect all 
the rest of the war ; just as the Peninsula frorn 
1808 onwards affected the fortune of Napoleon, 
though that fortune was not decided until Leipsic, 
nor e\'en given a downward direction until the 
Russian blunder of 1812. 
In order to appreciate what is meant by this 
formula " the strategic control of the Levant by 
the Allies through their possession of interior lines," 
I will, with my readers' leave, begin at the begin- 
ning. For though everybody knows the elements 
of so simple a statement, the more fundamental 
one's origins in a description the clearer the 
result. 
To " possess interior lines " means to be so 
situated that one can concentrate upon a suc- 
cession of decisive points more rapidly than one's 
opponent. 
The crudest and simplest example of course, is 
the position of forces within an ample semicircle, 
the communications within which are of the same 
type and number as the communications outside. 
Supposing there is a man commanding a force 
from the Centre A and he has to deal with an 
[Copyright in America by " The New York American."] 
enemy in equal numbers who must attack him at 
some point of the half-circle B C D, it is clear that 
the Genetal Officer in command at A will be able 
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to concentrate against such an attack more rapidly 
than his enemy will ; supposing always that his 
.enemy and he have the same sort of communica- 
tions at their disposal — equally good roads and 
railways, equally ample rolling stock and all the 
rest of it. 
Any movement that the enemy with, let us sa}', 
his headquarters at E, makes against the semi- 
circle lines BCD involves greater distances and 
therefore presumably a greater expenditure of 
time than is the case with his opponent at A. 
The General Officer in command at E is manoeuv- 
ring to attack A somewhere along the line BCD. 
He can only send his forces from place to place by 
following the outer lines parallel to the semicircle 
BCD. He sends orders for instance, to his force 
at e, e, e to concentrate at F and .there deliver their 
attack upon A's force within the semicircle. A can 
gather a similar force in much shorter time, getting 
his men from a, a, a. Because, in a number of 
concentric or parallel curves the inner ones will 
always be shortei' than the outer ones. Con- 
versely, if A takes the initiative he can gather 
his men to surprise E at such a point as F more 
rapidly than E can gather his men to meet that 
surprise. And, in general, any'. Commander 
possesses essentially interior lines when he has 
the advantage of rapidity in concentration against 
any threatened point over his opponent. 
Therefore the above rule of thumb text-book 
type of diagram to explain what is meant by 
" interior lines " requii-es a modification, par- 
ticularh' important in modern times. 
We take it for granted in that elementary 
sketch that time can be measured by distance. 
But, as a matter of fact, this never has been quite 
accurately the case, and in modern times with 
the use of the railway and of the steamship it is 
hardlv ever the case. In the old days wheu men 
marched bv roads, when good roads were few 
