January 25, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
astonished at the apparent incapacity of contemporaries 
to judge the event. That is because we knew what the 
end was to be and they did not. The victory achieved - 
is, for us, a matter of history ; for them it was hidden in 
a doubtful future. Reading of that soil is highly illumi- 
nating in the present stages of the great European war. 
Victory when it comes does something morally which 
may be compared to an explosion in the physical world. 
Nothing is the same again ; and whether it be the petty 
matter of desiring oneself to have judged rightly or the 
larger matter of diplomatic action, everyone to-day should 
try (and no one more than the neutrals) to stand in the 
shoes of a futiu'e — perhaps not a very distant future — 
in which we shall not be considerring terms or objects so 
much as the last movements of completely successful 
armies. 
The Fundeni Bridge-Head 
IT is clear that the enemy is not marking time in 
Roumania. He is really held up for the moment 
by the Putna-Sereth line. What makes this 
clfeai" is the fact that he is making such vigorous 
efforts to force that line at the point of Inmdeni. 
He may have been compelled in the last few weeks to 
relax the \iolence of his efforts from a difiiciilty in finding 
\euxuj 
11' I 'I 
1 3 * s t r e 
6-Mi/es 
drafts. His losses from sickness alone must have been 
\ery hea\-y in such weather antl under such a strain. 
He may have been compelled to relax some\vhat on 
account of the calls made by other sectors of the front, or 
even because some plan for an otfensi\e elsewhere has 
been laid down and the preparations for it already begun, 
But he is not standing on this his shortest Roumanian line. 
If he were he would be wasting men, and those his ^■ery 
best troops, at the one point on the Allied defensive line 
where he has a chance of success. The line of tlie Putna- 
Sereth is still, as it has been for now seventeen days, that 
sector of the P2astern front upon which the main interest 
turns, and the point of Fundeni upon that line has become 
in the last few days the capital point. 
We shall do well, therefore, to study in more detail 
the nature of the Putna-Sereth line as a whole and the 
character of the Fundeni Bridge-head. 
'i"he Putna is a small river issuing from the Carpatluans 
and falling into the Sereth after a course which is, as the 
crow flies from source to mouth, about c,o miles long. 
The upper portions of it, where it is but a torrent in the 
steep,- densely wooded mountains, have no defensi\e 
\alue and may be neglected. The present Russo- 
Roumanian defensi\e line crosses these upper ravmes 
almost perpendicularly. The Putna continues to be a 
mountain torrent of this sort witii a wide gra\clly l)cd 
and (at this season) no more than a trickk'. of water mider 
broken ice in the midst of it, overlooked upon either side 
of its gorge by steep wooded hills, inrtil it passes under 
the last of these, the summits of the Magm-a 
Obodesti (nearly 3,000 feet above its bed) aard so comes 
out through the rapidly falling foothills on to the Mol- 
davian plain. 
It is from this point that the Putna-Sereth line proper 
begins, and it may be conveniently divided into five 
distinct sections. 
(i) There is the section north of Focsani, say, from the 
mountains to the Paripani ferry. This I have marked on 
the accompanying Map I as Sector A. It is this sector 
which covers that important side railway line and road of 
which we spoke in these columns a week ago, and which 
imitc the two great main railway lines of Moldavia, being 
thus vital (until thev are -supplemented by new work to 
the north) for the" supply of the Allied froat. The 
position of this railway and the way in which the hrst 
sector of the Putna line covers it is apparent upon the 
following Sketch Map II., which I reproduce from the 
week before last. I have marked the two main com- 
nuinication lines (i) and (2) on Map II.. and the vital 
coimecting line (3). 
This tirst "A" Sector of the Putna line is about 
15 miles long if we carry it right into the beginning of the 
mountains, or 13 miles if we only count the full plain. 
During the whole of this sector the Putna is quite a little 
stream, often 'not a hmidred feet across, but rendered 
appreciable as a military obstacle by the marshy lands 
which flank it upon either side. This marshy land I have 
indicated upon Sketch Map I. It is, at the very narrowest 
]jlace, a full 500 yards in breadth. Its average is over a 
thousand yards, and there are places where it reaches 
nearly 2,000. 
The only permrmnt works bridging this marshy belt are 
the railway bridge and entrenchnients and the road bridge 
and causewav, which take their names from the little 
A illage of Faurei, lying between them just to the south 
of the Putna. The bridges have, of course, been de- 
stroyed. But the causeways presumably remain more 
(ir less intact, and it is in the neighbom-hood of the 
Faurei bridges that anv effort to force this important 
sector of the Putna line "must be made, if the effort be to 
disengage the Austro-Gcrmau troops now cooped uj) iu 
