rebniar\- T, lOlT' 
Land &• water 
1 5k 
month ago. A second had come down to the Uz valley 
just up to the frontier point also marked on the map. A 
third following the road over the Oituz Pass had got 
just beyond the frontier, and the fourth coming down 
the Casinu was the nearest to its object when the check 
was imposed. 
The reader will perceive that this effort in the middle 
Carpathians of the Oituz and Trotus Passes is an exact 
repetition of the stragtegy imposed by Berlin throughout 
the whole of the Roumanian campaign : Once again 
ronverging cohmms have the mission of enveloping, if 
they can, an enerr.y force. Trusting to a superiority 
in lire power to com^ el a gradual retirement upon each of 
the radii which_ diverge from Oncsti, they hope to reach 
that point by their right (that is by column D), cut off 
everything in the valleys above and achieve a local 
decision. The advantage of such a plan, of course, 
if it comes off, is that you capture great numbers of 
your opponent and mucli rtf his material. If you arc 
perfdctly successful you may annihilate his whole army. 
The disadvantage is that it requires the most exact 
co-ordination, and that is \-ery clifiicult to maintain 
in a tangled mountain country with only two tolerable 
roads upon a total front of forty miles. It is a clock- 
work plan and so far the clockwork has been stopped. 
The nearest the enemy has hitherto come to success was 
about January loth, when the marching right column 
of Gerok had got down the ^asinu to well past the 
Monastery which takes" its' nafne fmm that ri\-er and 
seemed in a fair way to reach Onesti before the 15th. 
But the opportunities for reinforcing are not bad on oiir 
Ally's side, a main railway and a good road lay. just 
behind him. They reinforced, and on the next daj', 
Thursday the nth, not only checked this advance of 
(lerok's 4th, or right-hand column T>, but threw it back 
for more than a mile. The two opponents liave sinc'e 
lain, I think, opposite each other, . entrenched upon 
jiositions which each occupied at the end of that day. 
The next group of the enemy in the Carpathians li^s 
,to the south of this Onesti attempt, is separate froni it 
and even divergent. It is concerned with the debouching 
from the Upper Valley of the Susita and of tlie Pntria 
itself. Here the ground has sharpty separated the two 
groups of the enemy. They are not only acting inde- 
pendently, but ai-tually face in different directions and 
each undertaking its individual task as though it were.-a 
small sejiarate campaign of its own. 
ihe ri\-ers that How down into the Trotus Valley 
run, on the whole, north-cast. The Susita, tbc-Putna 
and their tributaries run south or south-east. Group 
I., therefore (acting under Gerok), had for its four 
converging columns an average direction just north 
'of east. (Jroup II. has for its three columns an average 
direction well south of east. This .group II. -is -under 
(rcheral Von Ruiz. Its left is in the hills to the north of. 
its: centre occupies, the narrow and diffiicult, but dry 
Upper Susita Valley. Its right is stretched out in a 
cordon somewhere, south •- of thc_'Putrja, " afi'd' in the 
