This inequality no longer exists. On paper Germany has a considerable superiority of numbers, namely twenty-five army corps against twenty-one, and her reserves are probably more numerous and better organised than those of the French. On the other hand, she is, according to the most reliable information, keeping four corps on the Russian frontier, and, therefore, the numbers available against France should certainly not show any superiority, and will probably show an inferiority when the Belgian and British armies are united along the line of the Meuse. For years German strategists have reckoned on having to fight both France and Russia at the same time, and they have professed themselves as being confident of undertaking such a gigantic task. Four corps especially trained under Von der Goltz to fight in more open formations were to hold the Russians, whilst the remaining twenty-one were to be flung with such rapidity against France as to obtain a decisive success before Russian intervention could make itself seriously felt. It is one thing to have twenty-one army corps ready to invade France, and quite another to find a suitable front on which to deploy them for such an invasion. All the time-honoured old routes for the invasion of France are practically closed to modern armies by the chain of fortresses which the French have constructed, and, vice versa, the old roads to Germany are closed to a French invasion. Therefore, French, German, and Belgian strategists have long recognised that the only route by which a modern German army could invade France and march on Paris would be via Belgium, and that declarations of neutrality would count but little in the strategic scale. It was to resist such a menace that the Belgians constructed two fortified camps at Liège and Namur. The old routes of 1870 present too many formidable obstacles to be overcome. A direct advance into France from Alsace would have found itself faced by the fortified front Belfort-Epinal-Toul, and Verdun, four formidable fortified camps, supported by forts on the heights overlooking the Moselle and Meuse. There are only two routes by which this line can be passed. That by way of Charmes, between Epinal and Toul, protected by the fort of Manonvillers, which would enable the Germans to enter Haut Marne and to gain the valley of the Seine, and the road to Paris via Bar-le-Duc, St. Dizier, and Troyes. This is the theatre of war of 1814, and also the road used by the Crown Prince after Froeschwiller, in 1870. But an invading army would have to take or mask all these entrenched camps, which would take a very long time, or else have his communications continually threatened.