f Portugal by the guarantee of a largely increased sphere
of influence on the West Coast of Africa, plus the Belgian States of
the Congo.

Roumania and Switzerland remained neutral, the former to be a
battlefield for the neighbouring Powers, and the latter for the
present safe behind her ramparts of everlasting snow and ice.
Scandinavia also remained neutral, the sport of the rival diplomacies
of East and West, but not counted of sufficient importance to
materially influence the colossal struggle one way or the other.

In round numbers the Anglo-Teutonic Alliance had seven millions of
men on the war footing, including, of course, the Indian and Colonial
forces of the British Empire, while in case of necessity urgent
levies were expected to produce between two and three millions more.
Opposed to these, the Franco-Slavonian League had about ten millions
under arms, with nearly three millions in reserve.

As regards naval strength, the Alliance was able to pit rather more
than a thousand warships of all classes, and about the same number of
torpedo-boats, against nearly nine hundred warships and about seven
hundred torpedo-boats at the disposal of the League.

In addition to this latter armament, it is very necessary to name a
fleet of a hundred war-balloons of the type mentioned in an earlier
chapter, fifty of which belonged to Russia and fifty to France. No
other European Power possessed any engine of destruction that was
capable of being efficiently matched against the invention of M.
Riboult, who was now occupying the position of Director of the aerial
fleet in the service of the League.

It would be both a tedious repetition of sickening descriptions of
scenes of bloodshed and a useless waste of space, to enumerate in
detail all the series of conflicts by sea and land which resulted
from the collision of the tremendous forces which were thus arrayed
against each other in a conflict that was destined to be unparalleled
in the history of the human race.

To do so would be to occupy pages filled with more or less technical
descriptions of strategic movements, marches, and countermarches,
skirmishes, reconnaissances, and battles, which followed each other
with such unparalleled rapidity that the combined efforts of the war
correspondents of the European press proved entirely inadequate to
keep pace with them in the form of anything like a continuous
narrative.

It will therefore be necessary to ask the reader to