LAND t'i WATER 
Frbniarv i, 1017 
noifiliboiiihoud ot (MobosU links ui> in tourli witii tlu 
left uf tiic main IXtli (.•ncniv army whi'h occupies all 
I lie ])lain. 
It is ckiu- tluit tlu-^iuuiJ ul (jiiKual von Rwiz mn^t. m 
tlu'ory, try to pivot on its right and march by its left 
just iis the group of C.orok to thi- north must pivot on its 
left and march by its right, for only so could oven a lofal 
d(ci>ion bo arri\ed at. f.erok's businc>s, as wo saw, 
was to cut off as manv guns and men as possible from tlu- 
main bodv by reaching Oncsti. and so to get iii between 
i\vo main" fra"ctions of our Allies. Ruiz's business is to 
. I feet the same thing conversely and to open the breach 
upon his side by pushing more and more down towards 
the south-east. " The \allevs lend tliomselves to this and 
ihe whole thing may be expressed in a diagram thus : 
L 
III 
7)ij>ec&icn. of 
VaZZeys 
To break White's line of forces at C, Black (in two ((roups) thrusts 
«Jiveri5ently with the riiJht of feroup I at A, pivoting on D and with the 
leit of group II at B pivoting on E. 
Where it is clearlj' the business of the commanders 
A and B to force a breach at C by pushing each at right 
angles to the other against his opponent's line at this 
jioint. But the theoretical working of such a plan, 
although the direction of the watercourses lend thcm- 
•hos to it, is marred by certain topographical accidents 
of the regirai. 
liie first and most important of these accidents is the 
ridge which runs from the Susita Valley to the Casinu 
Valley, which was remarked three weeks ago in these 
( f)lumns as forming one of the main standbys of the 
line upon which the Allies hoped to check the Austro- 
(ierman advance, and which I will call from a village on 
its slopes the (rampirle Kidge. This Ridge is fairly 
uniform ; nearly 2.000 feet above the plain and some 
1,500 above the water level of the valleys. It has for 
;ili this month held up Ruiz's left-hand column. The 
main attack upon it was contemporaneous with the 
main attack of Gcrok to the north upon January loth 
and 1 ith. the two movements being obviously con- 
< orted in cormnon. But this attack of Ruiz's upon the 
lidgc was defeated as was his colleague's simultaneous 
.ittack down the Cisinu Valley on the .same day. The 
ridge still holds and so long as it holds the enemy cannot 
hope to turn his op])onent in this region. 
Ruiz's central column has indeed got further down the 
>usita Valley by nearly a day's march, while his right 
liand column (he is acting, I think, with three) is now 
stretclicd out in cofdon, that is in detached small bodies 
to the point whcTc the Putna leaves the mountains on the 
slopes f)f the Odobesti foothills ; it is there that Ruiz links 
u|) with the Irft of the main enemy IXth army in the plain. 
It miust.lx: oonfc,"ssed that Ruiz, though he has so far failed. 
ii.iN fulfilled ail iMUHuiv iliiiK nil i.i-~k. lie lias marched 
with A considerable force in the depth of winter across 
summits of from j.uoii to j,5oo feet through denseh- 
wooded territory and badly ravined and cul-uj) ground, 
and that entirely by woodland paths or rough tracks, which 
he must have had to consolidate as he went along. On 
liis left that one of his columns which is nearest any 
iKise of regular supply is more than twenty miles from 
a good road. B\' this time, liovvevcr, his right has been 
amply supplied from the main Focsani railway and its 
Odobesti branch. 
So much for the two groups that have been acting in 
the mountains and have now been held up during the 
whole of this month. They have failed because their 
main combined effort, deli\-ere(l as we have seen on the 
lotli and nth of Ihe month, was defeated by the Russians 
and Roumanians: That of (ierok in the Casinu Vnlliy 
just beyond the .Monastery and that of Ruiz north of the 
Susita Valley upon the Campirle ridge. Their failure 
has been effected by what I have called " The Carpathian 
Defence," and has forbidden the turning of the Russo- 
Roumanian line, and has so decided its security. 
The positions in tlie i)lain we have no need to study in 
detail for we have been dealing with them during the last 
two weeks. What wc have chiefly to note is that the 
mass of the enemy's forces have been dei)loyed here over 
a space between the Braila marshes and the Odobesti 
range (where Ruiz's group ends) of rather more than sixty 
miles. All that space is under the one command of the 
<)th army. Its left in the region of iMicsani is nnd(>r tlio 
command of Dehnensingen. Its right appears to be of 
mixed character and to include two Turkish divisions. 
It has now foV three weeks stood in front of the obstacle 
])resented to it, and remains almost exactly where it 
was after the enemy's entry into Focsani late upon 
January 7th or early on the 8th. 
The enemy's efforts as a whole will be the better under- 
stood if wc note the dates upon which he has put forth 
a special weight of offensive action, beginning with the 
occupation of F^ocsani and the final establishment of the 
lines upon which our Allies still rest. 
It was, as we have seen, upon January loth and nth 
that the main effort was being made by the \\\o 
mountain groups to turn that line by their right. That 
is, it was upon those two days that tfie enemy's left was 
thrown into play with a special \-igour. The knowledge 
that this had failed was probably conveyed to Mackensen ' s 
licadquarters in the plain by the night of Thursday the 
nth and, at any rate, not later than the morning of 
I'Viday the 12th. There immediately follows upon the 
13th and 14th the attempt to force the centre in front of 
Focsani. That in its turn fails, and you get immediately 
afterwards, obviously by an order transmitted almost 
contemporaneously with the knowledge of this failure, 
the attack upon the extreme right in front of Galatz. 
This group in front of (ialatz does not form part of the 
IXth Army proper, but it is in touch with and supported 
by the troops on the extreme right of the IXth arm\'. 
The attack on (lalatz was planned contemporaneously 
with the movement in front of F'ocsani. But the last 
supreme effort which ended in the Russian recapture of 
Vadeni, came after the failure in front of Focsani. Hardly 
had the attempt upon the Galatz end of the line failed 
in its turn when the big fighting for the Fundeni lo5)p 
began which was the subject of this article last week 
and the week before. The Germans reached the right 
bank of the river four days after they had failed in front 
of Galatz. 
What is the meaning of this very rapid succession of 
thrusts, none of which have yet succeeded ? It means 
two things quite clearly. First, that the enemy has not 
in this held a remaining mass of manceuvre. There 
arc those who ha\-c thought he was ti.sing one because 
they noticed the chosen character of the troops who 
attacked at Fundeni (regiments for the most part from 
the 2nd Army Corps Pomeranian), and also because the 
separation ofthe points of attack looked like the use of 
an independent mass of manceuvre alternately at one 
point and another. But when one carefully compares 
the dates and marks the distances one sees that such a thing 
is impossible. The troops that attacked in front ot 
Focsani were those already present upon that sector ; 
the troops that failed at Galatz we know were the same 
as had been on the Danube under Korsch for weeks. 
