them, and “could turn against the one or the other, or even attack both at once, if it were strong enough.” The grounds for these conclusions, succinctly stated, were the conformation of the frontier, an angle flanked at each side by the neutral states of Switzerland and Luxemburg, restricting the space within which operations could be carried on; the possession of both banks of the Rhine below Lauterbourg; the superior facility of mobilization secured by the Germans, not only as regards the rapid transition of Corps from a peace to a war footing, but by the skilful use of six railway lines running to the Rhine and the Moselle; and, finally, the fact that, fronting south between those rivers, the advancing German Army would be directed against an adversary whose line of retreat, at least so far as railways were concerned, diverged, in each case, to a flank of any probable front of battle. The railway from Strasburg to Nancy traversed the Vosges at Saverne; the railway from Metz to Nancy on one side, and Thionville on the other, followed the valley of the Moselle; and as the important connecting branch from Metz to Verdun had not been constructed, it follows that the French Army in Lorraine had no direct railway line of retreat and supply. The railway from Metz to Strasburg, which crossed the Vosges by the defile of Bitsche and emerged in the Rhine valley at Hagenau, was, of course, nearly parallel to the German front, except for a short distance west of Bening. The frontier went eastward from Sierck, on the Moselle to Lauterbourg on the Rhine, and thence southerly to Basle. The hill range of the Vosges, starting from the Ballon d’Alsace, overlooking the Gap of Belfort, runs parallel to the river, and extends in a northerly direction beyond the French boundary, thrusting an irregular mass of uplands deep into the Palatinate, ending in the isolated Donnersberg. It follows that the main roads out of, as well as into, France were to the east and west of this chain, and it should be observed that the transverse passes were more numerous south than north of Bitsche, and that, practically, while detachments could move along the secluded valleys, there was no road available for large bodies and trains through the massive block of mountain and forest which occupies so considerable a space of the Palatinate. Thus, an army moving from Mainz upon Metz would turn the obstacle on the westward by Kaiserslautern and Landstuhl; while if Strasburg were the goal, it would march up the Rhine valley by Landau, and through the once famous Lines of the Lauter. If two armies, as really happened in 1870, advanced simultaneously on both roads, the connection between them is maintained by occupying Pirmasens, which is the central point on a country road running from Landau to Deux Ponts, and another going south-east to Wissembourg.