THE VALUE OF FREE ACCESS TO THE BLACK SEA TO RUSSIA.

Thames Star, Volume VIII, Issue 2824, 4 March 1878, Page 3

THE VALUE OF FREE ACCESS TO THE BLACK SEA TO RUSSIA.

The importance for Unssin of possessing the command of the Blneir Sea and socuring the neutrality of Austria is well brought out in an able nrlicle by Geuerol .Leer, a Professor of the. Nicholas Staff College. The article is so interesting that 'I venture-to give a condensed translation (rf it :—v ■ „■ : ■ ' ; " In consequence of certam geograplucal and political conditions the seat of war in the Balkan Peninsula haa for us a very unfavorable appearance. Surrounded on three sides by seas which are uot in our power ('lie Black Sen, the Mediterranean, and the Adriatic), and the fourth side almost entirely shut in by Austria, except j n narrow opening between the Carpathians j and the mouth of tho Danube, from 80 lo ICD Tersts.it presents extremely disadvantageous conditions for invasion. It is. in fact, a bag with a narrow mouth. Our army has ,to crawl into the narrow opening, and then to advance by a long narrow corridor between two fences, 100 to 150 versts apart* neither of which belong to us.-- Thus we have the most unfavorable strategical conditions— a short base and a long line of operations. But the base is not only short; it is at the same time insufficiently protected. On tlie one side it leans on Austria, and on the other it reaches tb,e Danube, or the Black Sea. In a word, the base has all tho peculiarities which it ought not to have: it is short, its flanks are unprotected, and its rear is exposed along the whole of the northern Black Sea coast. Frtm all tbis wo may easily perceive how important is the part which Austria plays, and how rmportant it would be for j us to have the command of the Black Sea. The command of the Black Sea would I give us at once the possibility of extending out base, and at the same time would afford us that freedom of action and security in operations we had in the campaign of 1829. Besides this, by means of the fleet we could move at once considerable forces to the seat of war, and thereby accelerate the solution of the question. All the difference between our slow, undecided movements in the campaign of 1828 and our decided, brilliant operations in 1829 is to be explained by the co-operation of the fleet in the latter year. .Not less important in the strategical sense arc our political relations with Austria. An offensive alliance with Austria, like the co-operation of our fleet, would lengthen our base to the right and give us complete freedom of action. Without the co operation of the fleet and with the hostility or Austria, the advance of our army into the Balkan Peninsula would be completely imp^isi* ble, or would be at least an adventurous enterprise like tbnt of Charles XII. Things were almost in that condition at the b :ginning of the campaign of 1854. Hence, besides the main army of invasion, it would be necessary to have three special armies for protecting the two flanks and the rear of our base of operations. Supposing the main army to consist 150,0C0 men,the first supplementary army,, on the west coast of the Black Sea and on the Danube, should have about 100,000; the second, on the northern coast of the Black Sea, should have about the same number ; and the third, in the Principalities, Bessarabia, or Poland, to protect the right flank against Austria, at least 300,000. Thus, in order to protect the operations of an army of 160,000. there ought to be three supplementary armies containing together half a million of men."

This article is interesting in more than one respect. As it was published in the Sbornik Gosudarstvennykh Znanji before the commencement of the war, it proves that there were som» men in the Russian Army who did not imagine that the campaign would be a mere military promenade.—Times Correspondent.