October 5, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
advanced towards Hatzcg. Their object was to reach 
and cut the Maros railway and road, success in which 
attempt would have imperilled the whole defence scheme 
of the enemy. They found in the Merivor Deiile, 
which is a ' mountain gorge just before the hills 
open out towards the little plain on which Hatzeg stands, 
forces superior to their own in that particular field and 
were thrust back. They fell back so far that for the 
moment they seem to have lost the summit of the Vulcan 
Pass. Later they regained this ; but their effort to push 
further northward had come to a standstill. Meanwhile 
forty miles away to the East their fortunes in the Red 
Tower Pass were about to meet with a more serious 
reverse. 
My readers will remember that the Red Tower 
Pass is a passage through the High Carpathians or 
Transylvanian Alps, comparable, I think, to nothing else 
in Europe. The great mass of the mountains is cut 
right through by a river rising upon the north of the 
chain and forcing its way to the plains upon the south. 
There is thus no neck or col upon the road. It is flat 
and only descends slightly from the neighbourhood of 
Hermanstadt to the Roumanian Plains two days' march 
away. The river Alt which forms this gorge is deep and 
rapid, a formidable obstacle, separating the fractions of 
an army that might be fighting upon either side in the 
mountains. The road and railway run down the gorge, 
crushed in between its walls, and the river and the road 
follows throughout the western or rij^Jit bank. It is im- 
portant to remember this, for it explains the enemy's 
plan. No good road leads over the tangle of hills 
and woods anywhere here save this gorge road following 
the river. The Roumanians were therefore tied to a long 
line of vehicles and supply, strictly following this road 
and compressed within the gorge of the river. Of the 
railway I make no mention because, although of course 
the main Roumanian supply depended on it, the army 
and its wagons were tied to the road. We do 
not know in what force they proceeded northward, 
whether it were one division or two, perhaps the latter. It 
could hardly have been more when we consider the 
distribution of forces necessary to maintain themselves 
along the whole chain, along the Danube and at the same 
time in the Dobrudja. 
At any rate, the head of their column was established 
by the hill for which the German name is the Schellenberg, 
three miles out of Hermannstadt, and we find that place 
occupied ten days ago. Our AUies had already suffered the 
set back towards the Vulcan Pass of which I have spoken, 
40 miles away to the west when, upon Monday, September 
25th they found themselves attacked by a large enemy 
concentration including German contingents and the 
whole under the general direction of General von Falk- 
enhayn, who had but recently been replaced by Hinden- 
burg at the head of the German Higher Command. What 
appears to have happened in the course of the next two 
days, Tuesday and Wednesday, is this : 
The Roumanians maintaining their defensive and falling 
back before the superior forces concentrated against them, 
had reached or were approaching the point where the 
road from Hermannstadt first strikes the Alt river and 
where the Old Red Tower which commands the Pass 
and gives it its name stands. 
It is to be presumed that while they were thus main- 
taining a rearguard action deployed at the outlet of the 
Pass their main body was falling back through it. 
Meanwhile, they had allowed themselves to be turned. 
A column, which the Germans describe as Bavarian in 
formation, and of which the Austrians have given us no 
information, marched from the west over the mountains 
where there is a track, but no good road ; crossed the 
Stini Col, where there is also no more than a track and 
which is about 2,500 feet above the valley floor, and 
appear to have come down by the Vale Mogosului, a total 
march of some 25 or 30 miles. I have no direct evidence 
for this conjecture, but it is the only one which suggests 
itself from the lie of the country. At any rate, it is certain 
that this column, accompanied presumably by mountain 
artillery, appeared unexpectedly upon the rear of the 
Roumanians somewhere near the frontier point where 
the Red Tower gorge is peculiarly restricted ; a point 
called by the Austrians Contumaz and by the Roumanians 
the Lazaretu. Such an enveloping surprise movement 
had to come from the wesi if it was to succeed, for it had 
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to cut the road,. The river was evidently regarded by the 
Germans as impassable to the Roumanians, and with the 
road cut in the gorge behind them, the whole body, 
they thought, would be doomed. This enveloping 
move, though it took the Roumanians by surprise, 
did not succeed in its object. It failed. We must clearly 
appreciate that or ,we shall miss the nature of the action. 
The value of the move depended upon the impossibility 
of the Roumanians retiring by their flank across the 
difficult obstacle of the Alt. The idea was, as I have said, 
that with the road cut behind them they would 'be in a 
hopeless trap and the whole force would be enveloped and, 
in the military sense, destroyed. As a matter of fact, the 
Roumanians did succeed in withdrawing by their flank, 
though not, of course, without heavy losses in materiel. 
The loss in men was not remarkable. Even the Ger- 
mans, who have been exaggerating badly in all their 
recent despatches, do not claim more than 3,000 prisoners 
alive at one moment, in whom, of course, are included the 
wounded who would necessarily be left behind when the 
road had to be abandoned. But a great mass of wagons 
and other transport lined up along the road was destroyed 
or fell into the enemy's hands. Meanwhile, the Rou- 
manian forces were falling back, T presume, to the east 
across the difficult hill country, got round again to 
Chineni out of the trap much as the dotted line where the 
arrow runs in the accompanying Map II. And it is with 
the Roumanians at the latter point facing the enemy 
pressure from the north that the last news ends. Chineni 
is about five miles down the road from the frontier point 
and another ten miles from the point where an enemy 
invasion could debouch upon the Roumanian Plain. 
A curious point in the account and one that would 
lead one to believe the total Roumanian forces here to be 
not very large, is the pace and success of thfeir evasion. 
The main Roumanian force got over the Alt and made 
its way in a surprisingly short time over very difficult 
country without roads to Chineni. 
I must repeat that the conception of the Roumanians 
withdrawing by the eastern hills, and of the enemy en- 
circling by the two valleN's I have named to the west 
and across the Stini Col, is no more than a conjecture, 
which later news may correct, but the main lines of the 
action are perfectly clear. It was an attempt to envelop 
the whole of the remaining force acting in this restricted 
field, and that attempt failed. 
The accounts of the battle pubhshed in the German 
press are quite untrustworthy : demonstrably so. The 
Frankfort Gazette has the fullest account officially com- 
municated and controlled. One would think one was 
reading of Sedan ! It speaks of the Roumanians being 
