Need help with Tomcat 4.0.4 on RedHat Linux

I am running a test server on a Linux box. Right now it is using a default configuration. My servlets are located in /jakarta-tomcat-4.0.4/webapps/examples/WEB-INF/classes.
In my servlets, I receive a relative path to different html files.
For instance I receive a relative path of "./English/US/welcome.html", where do I need to create the "./English/US/" directory structure?

'.' is fairly tricky.

How would you be using this path? (you speak of 'receiving' the path in your servlet). Does someone submit it to your servlet in a web form?

Is your intention to include the HTML files as part of the servlet's output? If so, then "/English/US" will be here:

/jakarta-tomcat-4.0.4/webapps/examples/

"." will only confuse the issue.

'.' is fairly tricky.

That is a given.

How would you be using this path? (you speak of 'receiving' the path in your servlet). Does someone submit it to your servlet in a web form?

I talk to a backend application, based on certain information that I pass to the backend it will provide me with a path to an HTML file, or JSP file

Is your intention to include the HTML files as part of the servlet's output? If so, then "/English/US" will be here:
/jakarta-tomcat-4.0.4/webapps/examples/
"." will only confuse the issue.

If it returns an HTML file, my servlet does a sendRedirect(url). If it returns a JSP, then I do a setAttribute and take the url and use the RequestDispatcher's getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher(url) to forward the requested file with embedded parameters.
If I receive without the "." can I just hang my directory structure off of
/jakarta-tomcat-4.0.4/webapps/examples/ ?
Randall