October 19, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
BUCHAREST 
behind tliem and a good road serving their positions, 
but reinforcement only reaches them by a long way round. 
To use the railway for reinforcement they must go back as 
far as Bucharest itself and there is not even a good lateral 
road, the spurs of the hills here coming far down along the 
foothills towards the plain. The Roumanian force at 
this point, where apparently the chief enemy effort is 
being made, stands at Rucaru, nearly a day's march south 
of the crest and not much more than another day's 
march from the open country. Their oppc. rents are 
backed by a good road reaching right up into the hills 
and by good railway communication, the lateral line 
being only some 20 miles away, a branch line coming up 
to Zernest close by, and the junction of the three support- 
ing main roads and railways at Kronstadt not 30 miles 
distant. All this is a heavy handicap against the Rou- 
manian forces defending this road. 
Such is the situation at the moment of writing. 
The Western Front 
The operations upon the Sommc continue to be marked 
out by the two characteristics they have shown through- 
out, but to an increasing degree during the last few weeks. 
The first and lesser of these characteristics is the falsity 
of the German communiques which, upon this sector, 
have ceased altogether to be reliable. Their principal 
note is the description of main attacks by the Allied 
forces, which are either repelled with the stereotyped 
" sanguinary losses " or " fail vmder our curtain fire." 
These attacks either do not take place at all or stand for 
minor operations, which have their measure of success 
and which do not resemble in any way the main operations 
which the enemy describes. When a main operation 
does take place (and we know by this time the almost 
mechanical rhythm of rotation in fresh units, special 
artillery preparation and attack) it invariably succeeds. 
The second characteristic, and much the most im- 
portant, is the fact that the two curves of loss as between 
the attack and the defence have long ago crossed and 
that the distance between them is getting greater. The 
inter-dependent- and increasing superiorities of munition- 
ment.airwork, volume of heavy gun fire and accuracy of 
heavy gun fire not only continue to exercise their pressure 
upon the enemy but regularly increase it. The French, 
for instance, have thought fit to publish the interesting 
detail that a particular division, in a secondary operation 
conducted by one division (say 10,000 bayonets) south of 
the Somme this week suffered exactly 300 casualties 
— 3 per cent., including the slightest cases of wounded. 
The enemy loss in that operation from unwounded pris- 
oners alone was 800. 
The tale of prisoners, the ceaseless current of them, 
now swollen, now lessening, and now rising again, con- 
tinues uninterrupted. ' 
To take for instance the despatches of this week alone 
referring to minor operations and beginning with 
those which arrived after we went to press last week : 
The British report upon Wednesday, October nth, 
a group of 47. The French under the same date, but 
including an action of two days, 1,702 ; that is 1749 for 
the Allied Armies. 
The next despatch mentions prisoners without giving 
an exact number. The next despatches, those of Oct. 
14th, give no prisoners upon the French side but another 
150 upon the British. 
The next, ttie despatches of the 15th, gave us between 
the two armies over a thousand prisoners. 
The next, those of October 'i6th add another 550, 
about equally divided between the two A Hips, to which 
apparently we must add another hundred in the later 
British despatch, making 650. The next, and last, the 
despatches printed on the morning of Tuesday, give a 
total of 410. I 
So here you have in a single week of " lull " some 
4,000 prisoners. (2,959 in exact figures and " over a 
thousand " in general figures.) It is significant of the rate. 
As we have had occasion to remark in manj^ articles 
previous to this, the constant stream of prisoners during 
the intervals between the main operation is no accurate 
test of the rate of loss; the real wastage and still more the 
breaking of the enemy's moral power of resistance, is 
being done behind the immediate front by the artillery. 
But the steady supply of prisoners has its value as an 
index to the enemy's condition, and the new policy of 
holding the first trenches with the smallest possible 
number of men only emphasises the meaning of the thing. 
For these daily losses are not, in such operations, the 
captures of numerous groups in deep underground shelters, 
which the enemy has had no time to construct upon his 
new improvised lines ; they are nearly all of them men 
coming from the rapidly dug trenches of the last fort- 
night — there is some exception to this on the south of the 
Somme, but it is the general rule. 
Shortening of the Front 
Some months ago, before the offensive upon the Somme 
began, even while the Cierman attack upon the Verdun 
sector was in full blast, all the military opinion of Europe, 
enemy as well as Allied, was discussing the possible enemy 
policy of shortening the line upon the Western front. 
Upon the Eastern front the enemy cannot shorten his 
