November 30, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
numerous artillery of its opponent. You could crush a 
small front with a superiority in heav}' guns, but not a 
wider one. 
Now Mackensen has not only crossed the Danube. He 
has also deployed on the fiu'ther bank, and havin,!.; 
deployed has advanced, \-irtually without opposition 
and with as great a rapidity as is possible to infantry. 
Therefore it is obvious that he has gone forward into 
a space left empty before him: he is clearly not 
expose^ to that normal resistance which every observer 
of the situation took for granted ; which the mere nature 
of the landing place with its narrow defile, or strip of 
ground between the marshes, imposed. But powerful 
resistance here would be a certainty, but for one abnormal 
feature — the lack of munitions. 
Everything points to it. Everything points to a stock 
of shell sufficient for the first operations, but gradually 
depleted and, for some reason or other, not restored. 
Under those circumstances it is idle to discuss the value 
ot movements, to draw comparison between the present 
Roumanian situation and past wars, or even to speculate 
upon the immediate future of the campaign north of the 
Danube. The only thing one can predicate — and one 
can predicate it with complete confidence — is that the 
future wholly depends upon whether the shortage is 
temporary or no. 
So long as it lasts not even the most elementary rules 
of strategy apply. An army without the power to use 
its weapons is no army. It has no policy open to it save 
to retire and still to retire, saving its material and its 
men in the hope of rearmament sooner or later. If the 
lack of munitionment is quite accidental, due to some 
hitch in communications and immediately repaired, 
normal conditions will be restored ; but if it lasts (say) 
a month or longer, nothing can restore them. 
1 have seen one eminent and able soldier comparing the 
thrust made by the enemy on to the Roumanian Plains 
to the famous move which Napoleon ordered of Davoust 
in the campaign of 1813 : a move which led to the ruin 
of that, commander. But the armies which first refused 
action before Davoust and then turned to destroy him 
were armies with powder and shot and with all the arms 
of their time upon a par with their opponents. Had 
they been unprovided, had Napoleon been armed and 
his enemy disarmed, there would have been no need 
for any trick of strategy, successful or unsuccessful, 
and he could not conceivably have lost the war. 
Another eminent writer "upon mihtary affairs (the 
best I think in this country) has pointed out with justice 
that the two enemy divisions coming through the Vulcan 
Pass being dependent entirely upon road traffic were 
in a most perilous position. Sixty miles of undefended 
communications lay open to an enemy's attack. Until 
the Austro-Germans reached the Craiova Railway they 
could not pick up good communications again. This 
writer therefore, described the move as venturesome and 
as likely to end in disaster. He was right by all normal 
rules of strategy. 
To march thus with weak communications behind you 
for three days right in front of an enemy menacing those 
communications would be worse than imperilling your- 
self. It would be madness ij you thought that enemy 
could still strike. But what if' your enemy has lost his 
striking power ? You ad^•ance at will and in what 
direction you choose. 
We had an excellent example of what interruption m 
supply may mean in these Eastern countries during the 
month of December, 1914. 
The Austrians had invaded Serbia. They pressed for- 
ward southof the Danube and the Serbians had no choice 
but to retreat. Why ? Not because .they were worse 
soldiers. They were, upon the whole, better soldiers 
than their opponents. Not because they lacked num- 
bers. Their numbers were sufficient and perhaps superior 
to their opponent. They had to fall back and back 
until they reached the mountain crest and water parting 
(two or three days march south of the Danube) because 
they had exhausted their stock of shells— especially for 
their field artillery. 
Had the interruption of supply lasted another couple 
of weeks the situation could not have been restored. 
Luckily there came through just in the nick of time a 
large stock of munitionment which had been sent by way 
of the Mediterranean from the ^^'est. It consisted almost 
entirely of shells for the field artillery. The moment it 
arrived the situation was re\-ersed. The Serbian army 
halted in its retreat, rallied and (as the arrival of this 
muitionment was a surprise to the Austrians) caught 
the enemy unsuspectingly. The Austrians were des- 
troyed in great numbers and left in prisoners alone (if I 
remember right) some 20,000. In a very few days they 
had been driven back in a retreat so precipitate as to re- 
semble a rout, across the Danube. 
It has always been thus on the Eastern front since 
the beginning of the war. The communications are so 
much more difficult than in the West and so much rarer ; 
the population so much less industrialised ; and the dis- 
tances over which supply must come are so great (in the 
Serbian case ju^t quoted the shells could not even be 
entrained until after 1,400 miles of sea voyage) that there 
is a continual peril of shortage. 
The enemy knows this and he acts upon it. It is at 
the root of all that " Eastern policy" which we have heard 
so much of since Hindenburg was made nominal head of 
the Austro-German forces and Ludendorff took over the 
real command. Munitionment and munitionment alone, no 
fancied depth of strategy {that has always been simple 
on the enemy's side), no special tactical trick, has made 
the difference. What has made the difference has been 
shells ; and shells alone will decide the issue. 
We must not be deceived by comparisons with the 
Battle of the Marne.' Before the battle of the Marne 
there was a strategical retreat of inferior forces — numeric- 
ally inferior — before an advance of forces numerically 
superior. There was ample field munitionment upon 
the French side and it was merely a question of jirdg- 
nient when the retreat should halt, rally and deliver its 
counter-stroke. 
But in the case of Roumanitj to-day it is utterly different. 
You do not find an inferior force retreating before a 
su])erior — so far as numbers are concerned. What 
you ha\e is a force retreating because it lacks munition- 
ment before a force possessing full munitionment. 
In the ca?e of the Marne a numerically weaker force 
retreated because when a numerically weaker force so 
retreats it gradually exhausts the advancing superior 
force in front of it and can very well lead it into a trap. 
Such a trap was designed and closed upon the invader. 
It was a struggle of brains against numbers. But when 
retreat is due to lack of munitionment you have quite a 
different state of affairs. You retreat because you have 
no other course open to you, and you retreat until munition- 
ment reaches you, if it can reach you in time. If it can- 
not reach j'ou in time — if you have no definite points to 
which to retreat where you will find munitionment you 
remain permanently inferior. 
It is impossible under such circumstances to discuss a 
strategical movement. Without a knowledge of the 
point where munitionment may be reached or of the dates 
within which it can be obtained, j^ou are dealing ^vith a 
problem whose elements are entirely unknown. 
The Defence of Bucharest 
So much said, this may be added. That for the pur- 
pose of a rally, if munitionment is obtainable in time and 
a rally is possible, the line on the river Arges is all that 
remains between the position of the Roumanian western 
army to-day and the capital. This fine is weak. It 
passes at its nearest too close to Bucharest to give elbow 
room, especially in the defence of so large a town. From 
the river itself to the heart of the town is a range of only 
about 18,000 yards, and the permanent fortifications, 
arranged in the old type of a ring fortress around 
Bucharest, would, if the Arges line were taken up, be 
under the direct fire of the siege train that will be brought 
up. The defence of any area that has political impor- 
tance in the present war is a field defence, and must 
remain a field defence, and the line of the Arges near 
Bucharest is perilously close for that defence. It is true 
that the line of the Arges is followed by a railway which 
is admirably suitable for munitioning stich a line of 
defence, but it is really very little use debating points of 
this kind unless or until we know what the state of 
munitionment is. For a breakdtown in munitionment 
eliminates all deductions even fnom the simplest rules, 
let alone from historical parallels. ... 
There is indeed one other el'£ment in the situaticm. 
