LAND & WATER 
October 19, igi6 
If the enemy. attacks from the southern portion, that is. 
if he strikes against the Prcdcal Pass, the Pasiil Bran, and 
the Red Tower I: 'ass {as he has been doing) he (i) attacks 
from j>ositions when- his railway is close behind him. 
(2) Attacks again st Roumanian cohnnns which have no 
literal communication behind them. For he is attacking 
\test of Ploesti, which is the end of continuous lateral 
connnunication upimHhe Roumanian side. It is there- 
fore in this southern section that he has the best chance 
of success and that is the reason that this southern sec- 
tion has been chosen. 
« As we have setn im a former article when we discussed 
the battles in front ocf Hartzeg. Hermanstadt and Kron- 
stadt. Falkenhayn has been able to use the railway to 
swing a mass of r.aan««uvre which he could muster at 
short notice again.-.t each of the isolated Roumanian 
columns in succession, and that has nearly the striking 
power of the forces iinder his command in this region. 
' Before mentioning th(i threat from the Danube, let 
us estimate the enemy forces at work here on the Car- 
pathians. 
What is the nature of those forces, and what arc the 
factors for and against their success ? 
First, as to numbers : 
It is improbable that the mere numerical strength of 
the enemy is superior upon this frontier, taken as a w-hole, 
to the forces which the Roumanians can bring against it. 
It was always maintained by the best opinion upon 
the Continent that the Austro-Germans would be able 
to act in this region with about ten divisions. With less 
they could hardlv stand ; more they could hardly obtain. 
The Germans have industriously put it about that they 
will act with twenty. . 'j^hat is, they and their Allies. 
But there is no sign as yet; of those twenty. As a matter 
of fact, our Allies have identihed exactly ten, of which 
only three are German, and we must remember that the 
enemy has had a full six weeks in which to gather his 
maximum available force. It is to be presumed, indeed, 
that these ten divisions axe at full strength, but we have 
no cause to believe the total to be more than ten divisions. 
Moreover, if people woodd only listen to reason, they 
would see that some such number is consonant with the 
general situation. The popular conception of a sort of 
indefinite reserve of man-power upon the part of "the 
enemy has not yet been quite got rid of in spite of the 
most industrious efforts of the few (and I include myself) 
who prefer accurate reasoning and statistics to sensational 
rhetoric. But it is dying. We know that the enemy can 
create no new divisions. \\e know that his apparent 
efforts in that line are merely the reshuffling of existing 
units. We know that Austria-Hungary is two classes 
ahead— that is, is two degrees further advanced in ex- 
haustion — than the French (who have suffered most of 
all the Allies from the strain of war), and that the (German 
Empire is at least one class ahead : For it has used up 
by this time most of its class 1917, and it has called up 
class 1918, which the French have not yet called up. 
The enemy cannot produce men out of nothing any more 
than we can. He is limited, as is the rest of the human 
race, by the laws of arithmetic and the nature of things. 
Nor will he at this stage in the campaign waste what 
remains of his absolutely necessary reserve of man-power 
in the attempt to form new units. He needs it im- 
peratively for drafts if he is to hold on through the winter 
without shortening his Western front — and of that later. 
He is not here operating, we may then presume, with 
forces superior to those opposed to him. It may be that 
later with the winter he can withdraw forces from the 
Alpine frontier ; it may be that the winter will also affect 
the Galician front so much that he will be able to with- 
draw something southward from thence. 
From the West he can quite certainly withdraw nothing. 
But the winter conditions are not yet upon lis, and 
T-'alkcnhayn has not been able to command as yet heavy 
reinforcement beyond the ten divisions with which this 
operation is being conducted. But those fairly equal 
numerical forces, as we must suppose them to be are, 
we have said, supplemented by the enormous advantage 
of good and (juite close lateral railway communication. 
For such communication is equivalent to a multii)lication 
of the forces in the field. 
In the matter of armament, unfortunately, the enemy 
does possess a serious advantage, for it is certain that not 
only here but tliroughout the Eastern front the Austro- 
Germans contmue to have a very great superiority in 
heavy pieces and their munitionment. We have here a 
phenomenon which has governed the whole of the cam- 
paign. The Central Empires, when the predominance of 
the heavy gun began to assert itself two years ago, had 
already a great advantage o\'er all their opponents and the 
power of increasing it. That advantage they have 
graduallj' lost as against the older highly developed 
civilisations of the West, and particularly as against the 
industrial civilisation of Great Britain. The West, 
particularly through the efforts of Great Britain, is pro- 
ducing heavy pieces at a greater rate, and an increasingly 
greater rate, than the Central Empires, and is producing 
them at a far greater rate than it wastes them. ' It is pro- 
ducing munitionment for them at a far greater rate than 
it is expending that munitionment. ' • 
But our .\llies upon the Eastern front are not industrial- 
ised after the Western fashion. They largely depend 
for their supply in this arm upon the efforts of the Western 
Allies. They are geographically separated from these 
by Bulgaria and the Dardanelles in the south. The 
avenue of supply through the north is very distant and 
involves a journey of many thousands of miles. There 
is, and will long remain upon the Eastern front a heavy 
disproportion between the gun power of the Central 
Empires and their opponents. A.nd it is upon this dis- 
proportion that the enemy chiefly relies in the present 
Carpathian campaign. 
His determination to decide the issue against Roumania 
depends upon motives,so obvious that they have every- 
where been grasped. 
There is, in the first place, the moral effect of undertak- 
ing a successful offensive though it be but local and 
partial. It is proof to the world that the enemy while 
still able to hold with difficulty the main fronts has yet 
energy remaining to attack in at least one sector. Next, 
there is the political value of showing that the addition 
of another smaller Power to his opponents is to the dis- 
advantage of that smaller Power. There is the security 
of the communication with Constantinople. There is the 
immense effect produced at home by victory against the 
last of those who have come in against him. Finally 
there is the economic motive. 
The closing of the Roumanian market gravely added 
to the economic difficulties of the Central Empires. 
Their supply of wheat was affected ; their supply of oil 
and, to some extent, their supply of meat, and if they 
could re-occupy a productive region which they lost 
by the Roumanian declaration of war they would, if they 
could maintain themselves until the season of 1917. 
materially relieve the effects of the blockade. 
Their principal immediate object is, we may be con- 
fident upon the analogy of all their previous attacks, 
the Roumanian capital ; and in making for that object 
they are not only makmg for the political effect which 
reaching it would have, but also for the destruction of 
the main strategic centre of their new enemy. Bucharest 
is the great point of concentration fop supply and the 
nodal point of communications in all this region. 
It was organised (see Map III.) (in the days when the ring 
fortress was still maintainable) as a perfect ring fortress, 
perhaps the most perfect in Europe, with a road and rail- 
way serving the whole circular chftin of forts and protect- 
ing the junction of all the four railway lines which branch 
out serving all that region and of all the six main roads 
which serve the same purpiose. 
The progress of the enemy plan upon the North has 
at the moment of writing, rciched the following line : 
Beginning with the Vulcan Pass to the west you have 
the I^oumanians in occupation of the crest, but the 
enemy close to all the frontier heights and in occupation of 
one of them. In the Red Tower Pass next eastward you 
have the Roumanians still standing in front of Chineni 
just south of the frontier and well up into the mountains 
with railway communication behind them, but unfortu- 
nately no lateral communications. In the pass immedia- 
ately south of Brasso (Kronstadt) followed by the road 
and the railway, the Predeal Pass, where they not only 
have a good railway behind them, but also are in touch 
with good lateral communications, the Roumanians still 
stand in occupation of the frontier ridge, and have even 
advanced slightly. But in the pass immediately to the 
west, the Pasul Bran, the situation is more serious. 
Our AUies there have a railhead about a day's inarch 
