Austro-Hungary, chiefly central in location, have the strategic and even
the commercial value of their coasts reduced by the long, tortuous
course which connects them with the open ocean. Therefore, we find
Russia planning to make a great port at Ekaterina Harbor on the
northernmost point of her Lapland coast, where an out-runner from the
Gulf Stream ensures an ice-free port on the open sea.[250] An admirable
combination of central and peripheral location is seen in the United
States. Here the value of periphery is greatly enhanced by the
interoceanic location of the country; and the danger of entanglements
arising from a marked central location is reduced by the simplicity of
the political neighborhood. But our country has paid for this security
by an historical aloofness and poverty of influence. Civilized countries
which are wholly central in their location are very few, only nine in
all. Six of these are mountain or plateau states, like Switzerland and
Abyssinia, which have used the fortress character of their land to
resist conquest, and have preferred independence to the commercial
advantages to be gained only by affiliation with their peripheral
neighbors.

[Sidenote: Inland and coastward expansion.]

Central and peripheral location presuppose and supplement one another.
One people inhabits the interior of an island or continent whose rim is
occupied by another. The first suffers from exclusion from the sea and
therefore strives to get a strip of coast. The coast people feel the
drawback of their narrow foothold upon the land, want a broader base in
order to exploit fully the advantages of their maritime location, fear
the pressure of their hinterland when the great forces there imprisoned
shall begin to move; so they tend to expand inland to strengthen
themselves and weaken the neighbor in their rear. The English colonies