August 31, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
almost beyond, his powers. It is ttieir extension which 
has led to the present certitude of his defeat. 
Well, the intervention of Roumania adds to these 
gravely extended lines something like another 350 miles. 
If the reader will look back at the sketch Map II., he 
will appreciate what this extension means in mere length. 
The Roimianian frontier between Roumania and Hun- 
gary is from the Bukovina to the Danube, nearly as 
long. in general plan, and, in all its sinuosities, actually 
onger than the old front in this region from the 
Bukovina to the Pinsk Marshes. 
It more than doubles (in mere mileage) the task im- 
posed upon the defensive in this field. 
We must be careful, however, not to exaggerate this 
advantage and to see it in its true light. 
We have not here an open frontier. It is not an 
addition of between 300 and 400 miles of country such 
as is the Western field of operations, nor even of country 
as open as the (ialician field. It is a country of moun- 
tains—in themselves a considerable obstacle though not 
very high save at the southern end of the line — and also, 
what is more important than the gradients, of vast 
forests and of very poor communications. 
You can only get guns along roads and you could only 
feed a large advancing army with the petrol trafiic of 
roads, and the use of a railway behind it as a communica- 
tion. 
Now there are in all this great stretch of wooded moun- 
tain line only eight roads capable of taking wheeled traffic 
from Roumania into Transylvania and Hungary at the 
present time. Two more, making ten in all, had, I under- 
stand, been surveyed before 1014, but there is no infor- 
mation of the work having been continued. 
These eight roads pass at the points marked i to 8 upon 
Map IV. No. I is the pass from the Roumanian rail- 
head at Piatra to Toplica. This is little more than 30 
miles from the Borgo Pass and would, used by a Rou- 
manian army, be of the greatest service on the Russian 
iiank. No. 2 is the Gyimes Pass, about 1,200 feet about 
the sea and of an easy gradient. .A railway accompanies 
this road the whole way, and with the road, forms the 
second link of main commvmication between the Rou- 
manian and Hungarian side of the mountain. It is 
remarkable that there is no railway commimication across 
ihe Carpathians between this pass and the Jablonitza, 
more than 130 miles away. 
To find a second good combined avenue of communica- 
tions (road and rail) one has to sweep right round the 
great bend of the frontier to point 5, which is the Tomos or 
Predeal Pass, 80 or 90 miles away. It is between 1,400 and 
1,500 feet above the sea, uniting by road and railway the 
mountain encircled plain of Brasso /or Kronstadt), and the 
Roumanian Plain beyond the moimtains to the south. 
In all that sweep there is but one good road at (3) and one 
indifferent one at (4). 
This Predeal or Tomos Pass is fianked by a road pass 
in its immediate neighbourhood, (6), the Torzburg Pass. 
In this neighbourhood of Bnasso, the mountains, which 
ha\e hitherto been low and fiattish and of easy gradients, 
reach peaks of over 5,000 feet, and also begin to be of a 
steepness which makes them a formidable obstacle. The 
further east you go the higher they get, until in the region 
marked with the letters A-A you have a sort of Alpine 
crest with summits of 8,000 fefet. 
This portion of the range forms a very serious im- 
pediment to all military operations, remotely comparable 
to the impediment existing on the Italian front, but it is 
spanned at one point by a very curious natural formation 
which has afforded for centuries a highway between the 
Plains of the Lower Danube and the small mountain 
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