farther side of hundreds of miles of waste and deserted land connected
only with the active centre of Russia by one narrow-gauge line of
railway with very little rolling stock. The great eastern port of
Vladivostok was nearly as heavily handicapped, and its immense
distance from the scene of operations in the West, with which it was
only connected by a line six thousand miles long, was another
drawback. Russia might, indeed, by the favour of neutrals or of
Allies, use warm water ports. If the Turks should remain neutral and
permit supply to reach her through the Dardanelles, the Black Sea
ports were open all the year round, and Port Arthur (nearly as far off
as Vladivostok) was also open in the Far East. But the Baltic, in a
war with Germany, was closed to her. Certain goods from outside could
reach her from Scandinavia, round by land along the north of the
Baltic, but very slowly and at great expense. It so happened also
that, as the war proceeded, this question of supply became
unexpectedly important, because all parties found the expenditure of
heavy artillery high-explosive ammunition far larger than had been
calculated for, and Russia was particularly weak therein and dependent
upon the West. This disadvantage under which Russia lay was largely
the cause of her embarrassment, and of the prolongation of hostilities
in the winter that followed the declaration of war.

The fact that Russia was ill supplied with railways, and hardly
supplied at all with hard roads (in a climate where the thaw turned
her deep soil into a mass of mud) is political rather than
geographical, but it must be remembered in connection with this
difficulty of supply.

If these, then, were the various disadvantages which geographical
conditions had imposed upon the Allies, what were the corresponding