WHY GERMANY ATTACKS ROUMANIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1650, 14 December 1916, Page 4

WHY GERMANY ATTACKS ROUMANIA.

DRIVEN BY NECESSITY, AND

NOT .BY CHOICE

(Written on October Kith, in the London Express, hy Edmund Dane).

Of nil the ways of looking at the war, the hole -and eorner way is easily the most misleading. Everybody knows it to he misleading, and yet nothing is more common.

There is, for example, the attack on Ronniania. li‘ yon think ot it as Roumania versus Germany, and wrench it away from the context, as it were, yon naturally begin to feel alarmed. The odds appear to he so tremendous. This is what people do who raise the shont that the Allies ought to hurry up and help the Roumanians. Is it necessary for any sane person to insist on a point so obvious, much less to make a fuss about it '! To wrench the thing away from its context is one source of mis,judgment. But there are two others. The first is a suspicion (hat the Roumanian army may after all be very little good. They were excellent troops, these Roumanian soldiers, at first. They carried everything before them. ’Their advance into Transylvania took place to tin* accompaniment of general cheers. True, it met with no opposition worth speaking about, and the official messages from Bucharest were, very modest about the matter —quite properly modest. But the proceeding was glorified into a. great German defeat. Conversely, when the Roumanians have in return retired, and rightly, that, proceeding is worked up into a Roumanian defeat, and it; is assumed that the Germans as soldiers must he. their superior.?, and certainly the best German generals must represent something belter than anything in the way of brains that the Roumanians can pit against them. IMPOSSIBLE THEORY.

The next misjudgment, and by far the worst, is the further assumption that the more limited Germany’s resources become the more she can do. This is an impression the enenty has been striving most assiduously to propagate. Think, however, for a moment what it implies. U implies that the more Germany’s resources are diminished the greater will be her feats and victories —in fact, (hat when the resources have been brought down to two men and a drummer hoy her chance of conquering Europe will be many times what it is or ever yet has been.

Take the assertion literally, and you arc landed in this rediifjio ad absurduui. You cannot avoid it. Now the troops of Koumania are excellent troops. The preliminary sparring that have so far occurred and they are nothing more, do not prove the contrary. Assuredly they have not proved yet that the Germans are the better soldiers. All they disclose is that each side has been -wtapoeuvring for the advantage. As to thg pyoof of the other assertion, we had better jyait until cause and effect have become very different from what they are. One motive for the attack on Koumania everybody understands. The Germans, taking them in flip mass, are emotional. It is most inir portant to keep up their enthusiasm.

If it i: not kept up, the alternative is depression, and, allumgh they do not believe our communiques, they have had all round a good deal to depress them. All this the German Government thoroughly understands. Besides, it is necessary to arouse a stale of feeling akin to that which prevailed during the struggle against Napoleon in 381344. The Germans also believe, (hat other peoples arc emotional and subject to the same impressions as they are. These are connomplaees, it is true, but they cannot bo, and ought not to he, ignored. SAVING HER FACE, Inside Germany, therefore, and, it is believed, outside, a stroke against Roumania would, politically, be a master-stroke. But the real motive, political as well as military, is to save the position for Germany in the Balkans. It is not an easy situation. Here is Maekensen held up in the Dobrudja, and there are the Allies active around Salonika. The Allies, too, have at last put their foot on the military plotters in Greece. Germany was to have sent large reinforcements into the Balkans. Germany does not possess them. It is absolutely necessary that Maekensen should be enabled to throw (ho Roumanians and Russians back across the Danube, and by seizing Czernavoda finally bar them out. Then perhaps he might be able to turn his attention to General Sarrail, and liar in the Allies at Salonika. Clearly the way to do this is to put the biggest pressure possible on the Roumanians in Transylvania. Why, it may be asked, in Transylvania, and not in the Dobrudja'? For quite a variety of reasons. First of all it is much easier to mass troops iu Transylvania. There are all the railways laid for the purpose. Next, it is much quicker. The communications with the Dobrudja are incomparably longer and mure difficult. Third, it is possible to supply a very large number of troops in Transylvania while the number of troops who can be supplied with food and water in the Dobrudja is limited. The one and only chance of a successful stroke in the Dobrudja was a surprise stroke, and Ilia I chance tins gone by. Fourth, if they can force the harrier of the Aransylvanian Alps the Germans appear to have convinced themselves that the Roumanians will fall into a panic about the safety of Bucharest.

EFFECT OX THE WAIL So far, then, from the onset against Roumania being a sign of improvement in Germany's position, and of revival of her resources — the proof, in fact, of an impossible proposition—it is (lie exact reverse, it is evidence of a heavy worsening of her position. All this effort against Roumania is so much effort withdrawn from her defence at largeli and that, too, at a time when every ounce of resource is needed for defence. What can be the effect of the war as a whole save to hasten Germany’s (Inal defeat?

That would not necessarily occur oven if the enemy were to reach and to hold the entire line of (lie Ihiuuhe, and although his doing so would be much more import ant, and forms his object, lie things he may best attain that object by playing upon the feelings of the Roumanians and (lie Allied publics to (he obscuration of (heir judgment. The real motive being nnuiistukeable, what we have to concern ourselves with is the practicebleness of this attempt, under present circumstances, arid its effect upon the war as a whole.

When an army falls hack on and is defending a chain of mountains, its main laxly does not, as may popularly be supposed, mini in in the passes. Those are held by its advance guards. The main body falls back behind the chain, ready to engage the enemy’s columns as they may emerge, and the main action takes place beyond the mountain range, where operations on any large smile alone are feasible. What the assailant usually does is to feint at one or more of the passes, and (hen to throw his main force over when the defenders are as far as possible out of the way of the. actually intended point of crossing, and to get over with as strong a force as lie can while the road remains comparatively clear, and before the defenders can close in on him.

Of course the risk of a reverse on the further side of a chain of mountains is always a grave risk, and before embarking on operations of this kind, the assailant ought to be fairly confident of his superiority when it comes to u pitched battle. It is possible, not to say likely, that the Germans have that confidence, though, as already pointed out, there is nothing on the facts so far to warrant it.

The praeticableness of the attempt is, consequently, at the present time itself aq open question.

NEARING THE ENl|

But what of the effect of this attempt on (1m wap : is a whole? „\ot the desire merely to ''strafe'’ Roumania has forced the enemy into it, but necessity. There is no choice between embarking on this effort and seeing the “Greater Germany” project go. Ho much is manifest. And because that is manifest, the Germans have gone into this adventure, and strained themselves to go info it, though the length of their fronts, their falling numbers, the growing pressure they are subjected to, their increasing wastage, and the fact that the weight of the war falls more and more on them, are all so many cogent reasons why, apart front necessity, flipy should have kept out of it. ‘