Russia by this great stride toward her goal is working with causes, satisfied to let the effects follow at their leisure.  She has gained the best portion of Persia, comprising the six largest cities and the most important lines of communication radiating from the capital.[252] This country will make a solid base for her further advance to the Persian Gulf; and, when developed by Russian enterprise in railroad building and commerce, it will make a heavy weight bearing down upon the coast.  The Muscovite area which is pressing upon England’s Persian littoral reaches from Ispahan and Yezd to the far-away shores of the Arctic Ocean.

[Sidenote:  Periphery as goal of expansion.]

In the essentially complementary character of interior and periphery are rooted all these coastward and landward movements of expansion.  Where an equilibrium seems to have been reached, the peoples who have accepted either the one or the other one-sided location have generally for the time being ceased to grow.  Such a location has therefore a passive character.  But the surprising elasticity of many nations may start up an unexpected activity which will upset this equilibrium.  Where the central location is that of small mountain states, which are handicapped by limited resources and population, like Nepal and Afghanistan, or overshadowed by far more powerful neighbors, like Switzerland, the passive character is plain enough.  In the case of larger states, like Servia, Abyssinia, and Bolivia, which offer the material and geographical base for larger populations than they now support, it is often difficult to say whether progression or retrogression is to be their fate.  As a rule, however, the expulsion of a people from a peripheral point of advantage and their confinement in the interior gives the sign of national decay, as did Poland’s loss of her Baltic seaboard.  Russia’s loss of her Manchurian port and the resignation of her ambition on the Chinese coasts is at least a serious check.  On the other hand, if an inland country enclosed by neighbors succeeds in somewhere getting a maritime outlet, the sign is hopeful.  The century-old political slogan of Hungary, “To the sea, Magyars!” has borne fruit in the Adriatic harbor of Fiume, which is to-day the pride of the nation and in no small degree a basis for its hope of autonomy.  The history of Montenegro took on a new phase when from its mountain seclusion it recently secured the short strip of seaboard which it had won and lost so often.  Such peripheral holdings are the lungs through which states breathe.

[Sidenote:  Reaction between center and periphery.]