enemy in these matters.

Conversely, they could supply themselves freely with tropical and
neutral goods, and even with munitions of war obtained from across the
ocean, from Africa and from America.

So long as North-western France and the ports of Great Britain were
free from the enemy this partial blockade would endure, and this
freedom of supply for France and Britain from overseas would also
endure.

2. The Allies had further the geographical advantage of marine
transport for their troops--an important advantage to the French, who
had a recruiting ground in North Africa, and to the British, who had a
recruiting ground in their dominions oversea, and, above all, an
advantage in that it permitted the constant reinforcement of the
continental armies by increasing contingents arriving from these
islands.

* * * * *

Of geographical advantages attaching to the position of Russia only
one can be discovered, and it consists in the immense extent and unity
of the Russian Empire. This permitted operations upon a western front
from the Baltic to the Carpathians, or rather to the Roumanian border,
which vast line could never be firmly held against them by the enemy
when once the Russians had trained and equipped a superior number of
men. The German forces were sufficient, as events proved, long to
maintain a strict cordon upon the shorter front between the Swiss
frontiers and the sea, but upon the other side of the great field,