LAND & WATER 
August 31, 1916 
Pinsk. l\^rshes 
««#■- 
II 
ZOO 
—"Miles 
a new scale the factor of weight in this field. But, more 
important than the numerical addition, even with its 
freshness, is the strategical effect of the Roumanian inter- 
\ention in tiie matter of position. 
We are ally or we ought to be by this time, familiar 
to weariness with the fundamental strategic issue of the 
war. The war has long been one great siege and its 
duration, like its is.sue, has depended upon the power 
of the Central Empires to hold the. lines within which 
they are contained by the Allies. 
These lines cannot be shortened by retirement save upon 
one sector : the Western sector. It is essential to remember 
this. That portion of the enemy's line which runs from 
the North Sea to the Alps (about a quarter or rather more 
of his total lines, and e.xcluding the Asiatic field), would be 
shortened by retirement. It happens to be precisely the 
sector upon which he is, for political reasons, most re- 
luctant, to retire ; and the proof of this is that he has 
massed upon this short portion more than j2o divisions 
out of some 240 to 250, and those of his best. Rather 
than give up any portion of the occupied alien soil, 
rather than let his population see the approach of hostile 
armies towards their frontiers, he will risk, as he is now 
risking, an extreme tenuity of defensive line upon either 
side of the two great concentrations of Verdun and the 
Somme. He is gambling, and he knows that he is 
gambling, but he evidently thinl<s the stakes worth while. 
He evidently dreads, above all things, what at last he 
may be compelled to, a retirement towards German soil. 
But, at any rate, he can somewhat shorten the line in 
the West. 
Elsewhere every retirement oj his lengthens the line. 
In the East he cannot fall back save at the price of 
invasion, and even so his line necessarily lengthens as it 
retires. The same is true of the Italian front (though 
that can be held more easily, being for the most part 
so mountainous in character). The same is true of the 
Balkan front. 
The lines the enemy now holds, then, are extended 
fashion ; for, as we know, it is still in movement and 
spasmodically and locally still in retreat. 
Now the intervention of Koumania is equivalent to the 
bringing uj) to swell the pressure against that sorely 
tried line, or rather upon its flank (or wherever it may be 
decided to use the Roumanian army) new forces eqttivalent 
to half its own, for so vve must reckon the perfectly fresh 
Roumanian divisions compared with the depleted and 
worn-down units of the remaining Austro-Hungarian 
armies in the field. 
.\nothfr way of looking at it is to compare the Rou- 
manian numbers with the Russian numbers in this field, 
to which thev will form an addition, and of which they 
are but a prolongation. The Russian forces were more 
numerous, of course, than the defence which they attacked 
last June. The Roumanian addition does not represent 
one-half, therefore, of the Russians acting in this field, 
but it represents probably something like one-third or 
very httle less. If we say that the Russian army from 
the Lower Stokhod in front of Kovel on the Ko\el- 
Sarnv railway down to the Borgo Pass have received an 
addition now" upon their left fiank of another 30 per cent., 
we shall not be far wrong. 
It is, therefore, as a merely numerical addition, a 
very considerable e\ent in the war. for it adds upon quite 
1* * 
Kovel 
1 .1 •'• *^ -I fe 
IE 
Sqy2o envisions 
S.OUATAN'/ANS 
