Such, in detail, is the political embarrassment to German strategy produced by the geographical situation and the political traditions of Hungary itself, and of Hungary’s connection with the Hapsburgs at Vienna.  Let us now turn to the even more important embarrassment caused to German strategy by the corner positions of the four essential areas of German territory.

This last political weakness attached to geographical condition concerns the German Empire alone.

Let us suppose a Power concerned to defend itself against invasion and situated between two groups of enemies, from the left and from the right, we will again call that Power A, the enemy upon the right M, and the enemy upon the left N, the first attacking along the lines XX, and the second along the lines YY.

Let us suppose that A has political reasons for particularly desiring to save from invasion four districts, the importance of which I have indicated on Sketch 12 by shading, and which I have numbered 1, 2, 3, 4.

[Illustration:  Sketch 11.]

Let us suppose that those four districts happen to lie at the four exposed corners of the area which A has to defend.  The Government of A knows it to be essential to success in the war that his territory should not be invaded.  Or, at least, if it is invaded, it must not, under peril of collapse, be invaded in the shaded areas.

It is apparent upon the very face of such a diagram, that with the all-important shaded areas situated in the corners of his quadrilateral, A is heavily embarrassed.  He must disperse his forces in order to protect all four.  If wastage of men compels him to shorten his line on the right against M, he will be immediately anxious as to whether he can dare sacrifice 4 to save 2, or whether he should run the dreadful risk of sacrificing 2 to save 4.

[Illustration:  Sketch 12.]

If wastage compels him to shorten his defensive line upon the left, he is in a similar quandary between 1 and 3.

The whole situation is one in which he is quite certain that a defensive war, long before he is pushed to extremities, will compel him to “scrap” one of the four corners, yet each one is, for some political reason, especially dear to him and even perhaps necessary to him.  Each he desires, with alternating anxieties and indecisions, to preserve at all costs from invasion; yet he cannot, as he is forced upon the defensive, preserve all four.

Here, again, the ideal situation for him would be to possess against the invader some such arrangement as is suggested by Sketch 11.  In this arrangement, if one were compelled unfortunately to consider four special districts as more important than the mass of one’s territory, one would have the advantage of knowing that they were clearly distinguishable into less and more important, and the further advantage of knowing that the more important the territory was, the more central it was and the better protected against invasion.