LAND & WATER 
January i8, 1917 
The Line of the Putna 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THE enemy's operations in Roumania ha\e reached 
a verj' interesting phase. In order to appreciate 
the character of those operations at the present 
moment we shall do well to mark the rate of 
enemy advance before discussing the principal feature of 
the present week, which is the struggle for the line of 
the Putna and the railway behind it. 
The enemy entered Bucharest on the 6th of December. 
He may be said upon the date to have accomplished his 
advance over the Wallachian plain. He had followed a 
rapidly retreating Roumanian army (turned through the 
Vulcan pass) that had not offered battle. Their losses 
had not hitherto been serious, but the pursuit had been 
rapid and it was the design of the enemy by con\erging 
a number of separate columns upon Bucharest to catch 
the Roumanian main body in a trap. The converging 
movement was excellently co-ordinated, it was a Uttle 
Sadowa, all drawn to scale, but it failed, because in this 
war^ after the first few weeks, Prussia has always been 
too slow. The trap shut upon empty space, and there 
was no decision c\'en in the local field and against the 
particular enemy in question. There was a partial 
breakdown on the northern side which cost the Rou- 
manians a considerable number of prisoners and a few 
guns, but the main army retired intact, and, what was 
very remarkable, the heavy guns of the fortress of 
Bucharest and its stores were saved. The Roumanian 
army fell back to refit and reorganise behind a screen of 
Russian forces which had come to the rescue, and which 
had already begun to enter into play ^^when Bucharest 
was entered. 
The Russian forces thus newly arri\ed made a com- 
plete line between the mountains and the Danube by the 
I2th of December. That is the date, Tuesday, the I2th 
of December, from which the present operations date. 
We can only judge their character and probable outcome 
by remembering that the Roumanian campaign is made 
up of two sharply divided chapters : the first the 
Roumanian retreat through all Wallachia, including the 
abandonment of the capital. The second the deliberate 
Russian defensive with its strict plan and slow methodical 
retirement, which thus originated five weeks ago, not 
more than a long day's walk from the Putna, and is 
btill in progress. 
From that moment onwards everything has been a 
■BUCHAREST 
series of rearguard actions, without anything approaching 
a dangerous sahent or any peril of" considerable loss. 
Hardly any guns have been taken, and the wounded 
picked up upon each enemy advance have formed but 
an insignificant fraction of the 200,000 to 250,000 men 
engaged. .All serious enemy criticism recognises this 
feature in the Roumanian campaign after the 12th of 
December, notably that of Major Moraht, whose M'ork 
continues to be the least political, the least rhetorical, 
and the best worth following on the enemy's side. 
From Buciiarest to Schumann's " Lines of the Sereth," 
of which Focsani is the principal point, is a matter of 
about 80 miles. When the Russians seriously came into 
play to e.xhaust the enemy's advance more than half that 
distance had been covered by the invader. 
E\^erything that has followed has been an increasing 
attrition of the offensive and an increasing friction and 
consequent retardation in the movement. Rimnicu, 
20 miles from Focsani, and some 60 from Bucharest, 
along the main road and railway which unite those two 
points, was reached just over a week after the new 
phase began. It was there that the first considerable 
rearguard action was fought. It did not open until the 
22nd December. The corps engaged on the critical 
point, that is astraddle of the high road, was one of the 
best in the German service : the Alpine corps which had 
for many months defended a sector in the West near 
Rheims. The action lasted five days, right over Christ- 
mas, and only terminated on the 27th, when the Russian 
rearguard fell back towards Focsani 20 miles away. 
Then came a minor rearguard action, four miles outside 
Focsani, and on the 8th January, the Monday, Focsani, 
was entered twelve days after the action at Rimnicu. 
The Russians fell back Ijchind the river Putna and have 
held its line from that moment for a full week, that is, 
up to last Monday, January 15th, news of which is the 
last received in London up to the moment of writing. 
Now let us see what interest the struggle presents 
at the present moment in connection with this Putna- 
Sereth line. 
First let us recapitulate the objects of either party. 
It is the object of the Allies to " hold " the enemy in 
this field. Holding does not mean keeping in one place, 
it means occupying and compelling to effort. It is the 
, object of the Allies to com])el Prussia and her dependents 
to keep in this field all the forces they have adventured 
there, to prevent their coming down south against 
^lacedonia, if possible, and above all to exhaust this 
offensive before the main Allied action elsewhere begins. 
The corresponding task of the enemy is not (strategically) 
to occupy towns and fields — whatever political value 
this may have in impressing neutral and civilian opinion 
— his main strategical object is to break the Russian 
front here and so ptit great numbers of his enemy out 
of action, or, alternatively, to envelop if he can the whole, 
or at least some large portion, of the forces opposed to 
him and so put them out of action. 
We ha\e seen in past articles how he might hope to do 
this if he could force the Oituz Pass. He would then 
get right round the right of the main Russo- Roumanian 
line and compel it to a very rapid and probably disastrous 
retreat. Hitherto he has "failed to get thus right round 
tlie right by the Oituz. That pi^•ot has been kept almost 
immobile for a month or more. At the moment of writing 
the enemy is still trying to get round the Oituz by the 
Parlea side valley, having failed to force the main pass 
directly. But he has not yet had any success even in 
this flank movement. 
The enemy might, as an alternative, get round by his 
right, the Russian left. If he broke the Russian front 
on the Lower Sereth he would be able to envelop aftcr 
a fashion, less decisive, but certainly productive of very 
considerable losses : the only third course is to try and 
pierce the centre near Focsani and along the road and 
'■aih\ay which cross the Putna north of Focsani, and 
