Russia's geographical disadvantage was twofold. First, she had no outlet to an open sea in Europe save through the arctic port of Archangel. This port was naturally closed for nearly half the year, and how long it might be artificially kept partially open by ice-breakers it remained for the war to prove. But even if it were kept open the whole year in this precarious fashion, it lay on the 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 advantages? They were considerable, and may be thus tabulated:--