LAND & WATER 
February i, 1917 
The Carpathian Defence 
By Hiliare Belloc 
WE arc -at this moment pa^sing tlirougli that 
pause in the. great war which immediately 
precedes final action and its most critical 
phase. Dm-ing so tense (and short) a silence 
it is of little profit to speculate upon the date and manper 
of its conclusion. We shall do better to use the slight 
leisure for an examination and summary of the strategical 
work accomplished under Russian direction in the East, 
and in mastering the character— now that this character 
can be seen as a whole — of the defence in Roumania.- 
The enemy's Romnanian advance has now" been 
checked for 25 days. It is presumed by most observers 
that it is exhausted, and that as many as possible of his ' 
divisions and of his heavy batteries independent of these, 
are in process of withdrawal. However that may be 
land it is probable) the whole storv of the campaign is 
dominated bv the so-called " Putna-Screth Line." which 
is in full the' line of the middle Carpathians (or Vtaiicii -^ 
hills), the Putna and the Sereth. and Mhich rougliUy 
corresponds to the frontiers of Moldavia. • .'. 
It is now clear that this I'utna-.Sereth line marks one of 
Die cliief episodes of this great war and that the history 
of the great war will include among its chapters " The 
actions of the Putna- Sereth line." as it will include those 
upon the Xarew, upon the Bzura, the Aisne, and the 
other river obstacles where the successiA-e exhaustion 
of the enemy has been accomplished. For whether 
it is the intention of the Austro-German command still 
tjo atteiiipt a. forcing of the present line and \\hciher,, 
if this ' be . their intention, they should find it possible / 
or- no. it. is , this oKstacle, used as the Russians have 
used it, which stands out as the principal military 
episode in the Roumanian campaign. The time is grow- 
ing short. The Roumanian adventure cannot occupy 
t he stage very' mucl^ longer. In the nature of things 
the Roumanian corner will eventually be cjuite pver^ 
shadowed. 
It is generally conjectured, as I have just said, that 
the enemy have already begun to withdraw certain 
divisions from Roumania. It may well be so. He had 
in fidl use at one moment over thirty between the 
Black Sea and the Buko\ina. The existing line would 
not demand at the most (if it were held upon the de- 
fensive) more than twenty divisions. Whether, how- 
ever, he has actually withdrawn these divisions or -no 
we cannot tell until they are icTentified in some fashion 
or other elsewhere, and of this we liave, as yet. no evi- 
dence. But he probably has begun moving them. 
It is advisable; then, to cany with us, in order that 
we may imderstand the future actions, not only in this 
field but elsewhere, a summary of the efforts which the 
enemy has been now making for over a month in some 
places, ovei" three weeks in others, to restore a war o I 
movement in the Roumanian held and to see in what 
fashion he has becn'exhausted and checked by our Allies 
in this effort. 
The reader is already acquainted with the Putna- 
.Sereth line through the plain and the recent efforts to 
force that hue. hrst before Focsani, then before (ialatz, 
and lastly before Fundeni. 1 propose this week ti> 
survey, very » briefly, the determining movements which 
blocked him on his left in the Carpathians and so pre- 
vented the Sereth-Putna line from being turned. 
The first thing we have to grasp is the sharpness of 
this division in the hue between its mountainous 
Carpathian portion and its sector through the plains. 
,The line, through the plain is faced by the enemy IXth 
Army, the bodies holding the Carpathian valleys are 
checking the two mountain armies of Gerok and Ruiz. 
Next Me must see how the enemy disposed his forces 
in the attempt to turn that line where such an out- 
Hanking would have been ■ decisive, in the Carpathian 
sector, and how he failed. 
The Carpatliian sector is discontinuous. It does not 
consist in a long line' of trenches manned from one end 
to the other, nor even of troops completely linked up. 
It is concerned with the issues from certain valleys, 
the mouths of which stand far apart andthe blocking of 
which occupies somewhat less disjointed groups of men on 
the Russo-Roumanian side. 
There are three bodies here concerned. One on the 
far north, which need not long detain us. The other 
two on the Oituz and the Susita, which were the main 
bodies. Upon the extreme north next to the Bukovina 
frontier you have a pass with a good road from liungary 
over into Roumania, but no railway beyond Piatra. 
The summit of this pass is well within Hungarian terri- 
tory. The defence of it is being maintained at this 
moment close to the frontier. Compaiatively small 
forces are here engaged because no great strategical 
result could follow an advance through this region. It 
is a fuU'forty miles away from the next moimtain road. 
There is nothing but a mass of tangled wooded hills anil 
steep ravines between. The real business begins with 
that group of Carpathian "V^alleys. the northernmost of 
which is watered by the Trotus and the southernmost b\' 
the Casinu. It is here that you find the first serious 
group of t"lie invaders. I have included it in one bracket on 
Map II., and numbered its separate sections A, B, C, 
and D. 
If the reader will look at Map H. he will see that ail 
these valleys converge at the point of Onesti and, that 
the arrival of an enemy force at Onesti would, as has been 
pointed out several times in past articles, compel the 
abandonment of everything above it in the mountains. 
It would turn the main Putna-Sereth line which our Allies 
hold. It would immediately threaten one of their 
main avenues of supply, the Sereth ^'alley Railwax', 
and it might even cut the .Mlied body in Central Roumania 
from the main Russian forces to the north. The attempt 
to reach Onesti has been going on for exactly a month. 
It is under the command of General Vt)n Gerok, and is 
dependent on the co-operation of four separate fragments, 
(•acli acting in its own valley ; A in that of the Trotus, 
B in tliat of the I'z, C in that of the Oituz pass, and 1> 
in that of the Casinu torrent. The method is that 
which geographical circumstance has imposed. 0\m- 
enemy column, supplied by the railway and a tolerablf 
though not very good road, had come down the Trotus 
\alley to about the point marked on the sketch map, a 
