transports, the Allies were forced
to detail warships to keep guard at the entrance of the various ports
where these interned German liners might at any moment take to the high
seas.

In naval warfare the number of ships lost is no determining factor in
figuring the actual victory--the important thing being the existence or
nonexistence of the grand fleets of the combatants after the fighting is
finished. Viewed from such an angle, the fact that the Allies had left
no German ships at large other than those in the North Sea, cannot
entitle them to victory at the end of the first six months of war. So
long as a German fleet remained intact and interned in neutral ports,
naval victory for the Allies had not come, though naval supremacy was
indicated.

The fact was apparent, moreover, that while the Central Powers were
being deprived of all their trade on the seas, the world's commerce
endangered only by submarines was remaining wide open to the Allies.

PART III--THE WAR ON THE EASTERN FRONT

CHAPTER XLI

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE THEATRE OF WARFARE

World war--the prophecy of the ages--now threatened the foundations of
civilization. Whether or not the modern era was to fall under the sword,
as did the democracy of Greece and the mighty Roman Empire, was again to
be decided on battle grounds that for seventy centuries have devoured
the generations. The mountain passes were once more to reverberate with
the battle cry--the roar of guns, the clank of artillery, the tramp of
soldiery. The rivers were to run crimson with the blood of men; cities
were to fall before the invaders; ruin and death were to consume
nations. It was as though Xerxes, and Darius, and Alexander the Great,
and Hannibal, and all the warriors of old were to return to earth to
lead again gigantic armies over the ancient battle fields.

While the war was gaining momentum on the western battle grounds of
Europe, gigantic armies were gathering in the East--there to wage mighty
campaigns that were to hold in the balance the destiny of the great
Russian Empire, the empire of Austria, the Balkan kingdoms--Serbia,
Montenegro, Rumania, Bulgaria. The Turks were again to enter upon a war
of invasion. Greece once more was to tremble under the sword. Even Egypt
and Persia and Jerusalem itself, the battle grounds of the Assyrians,
the Babylonians, and the Trojans, the bloody fields of paganism and
early Christianity, were all to be awakened by