Germany's foreign trade was practically at a standstill. From the port of Hamburg her argosies of manufactures no longer went forth to the world in return for raw material. Her many ships, from the enormous passenger steamers to the small tramps which had brought her tribute with their carrying trade, were idle. She could manufacture, then, only for home consumption and all her plants that had been manufacturing for export began producing for her armies. The energies of the one hundred and twenty-five millions of people, men, women and children, in Germany and Austria-Hungary were wholly occupied in making war. Their object must be to push the walls back as far as they could, and so to punish Russia or France that one or the other would yield a separate peace. The aim of British statesmanship must be to hold the Allies together at any expense and keep Germany from breaking the siege. If more nations could be brought in against Germany, that would strengthen the siege lines and lengthen the front the Central Powers were building. Through the winter of 1914-15 the diplomats of the Allies and the Central Powers in Rome fought for Italy's hand with all the skill and resources of trained European diplomacy. Responding to the sentiment for the recovery of Trentino and Trieste which she considered ethnologically and geographically a part of her domain she was to throw in her fortunes with the Allies against her old enemy, Austria. Serbia had her troops still on the boundary of the Danube and the Save. Rumania, facing Austria with Russia on her flank, also much courted, was even more coy than Italy. Bulgaria, with her excellent army, was on the flank of Serbia and blocked the road to Turkey. Little Greece was another state watching the conflict with the selfish interest of a small spectator, trying to judge which side would be the victor. Russia of the steppes and the multitudes of men was short of munitions; her plants were incapable of making sufficient supplies. The Baltic was closed to her by the German navy, Archangel was frozen in and the closing of the passage of the Dardanelles shut her off from the Mediterranean. She was in touch with the sea only in the Far East, with the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains between her and the manufacturing regions of the United States. Her crop of wheat, which she exchanged for manufactured goods in time of peace was no less interned than the manufactured products of Germany. If the Dardanelles were opened she could empty her granaries and receive arms and munitions in return. Therefore, the first winter of the war, while their main armies were intrenched in colder climes, both sides turned their attention to the southeast. In November the Turks had joined the Central Powers, thus flying in the face of the historical Turkish policy, so cleverly applied by Abdul Hamid, in playing one European power against another and profiting by their international differences.