ecame
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
advantages?

They were considerable, and may be thus tabulated:--

1. The western Allies stood between their enemies and the ocean. If
they could maintain superiority at sea through the great size and
efficiency of the British Fleet, and through its additional power when
combined with the French, they could at the least embarrass, and
perhaps ultimately starve out the enemy in certain essential materials
of war. They could not reduce the enemy to famine, for with care his
territories, so long as they were not ravaged, would be just
self-supporting. The nitrates for his explosives the enemy could also
command, and, in unlimited quantity, iron and coal. But the raw
material of textiles for his clothing, cotton for his explosives,
copper for his shell, cartridge cases, and electrical instruments,
antimony for the hardening of the lead necessary to his small-arm
ammunition, to some extent petrol for his aeroplanes and his
motor-cars, and india-rubber for his tyres and other parts of
machinery, he must obtain from abroad. That he would be able in part
to obtain these through the good offices of neutrals was probable; but
the Allied fleets in the West would certainly closely watch the extent
of neutral imports, and attempt, with however much difficulty and with
however partial success, to prevent those neutrals acting as a mere
highroad by which such goods could pass into Germany and Austria. They
would hardly allow, especially in the later phases of the war, Italy
and Switzerland, Holland and Scandinavia, to act as open avenues for
the supply of the Germanic body. Though they would have to go warily,
and would find it