CURRENT WAR TOPICS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 4, 7 April 1916, Page 5

CURRENT WAR TOPICS.

The Balkans has suddenly assumed a more interesting position on the horizon of the war, and the active intervention of Roumania steadily into view. We read to-day that tho Bulgarians are threatening an attack on the Roumanian seaboard, otherwise the province of Dobrudja, which extends from the Bulgarian boundary in the south to the Danube, which is the dividing line between Roumania and Bessarabia. If the report that six Bulgarian divisions are concentrating with a view to invading Dobrudja turns out to be correct—and every rightminded member of the British Empire and of the Allies will fervently pray that it is so—then we may expect the Balkans to soon be very small beer in the category of things that matter in the war. The moral effect upon the Neutrals of the world will do much to quieten the restlessness just now ruffling the surface of public opinion in, say, Holland, America, and of the Scandinavian peoples. Greece, too, will shiver in her shoes and seek the warmth of tho Allied wings the day Roumania talks through her guns. Roumania does not forget Macedonia, and Greece knows that if war has to come,- Roumania .will make the old dispute an excuse for humbling the Hellenes if it' is at all possible. All the "Post" readers may nofc know that three times within the last eleven years diplomatic relations between Roumania and Greece were broken off. These occasions were in 1905, 1906, and again in 1910. With the growing national feeling of the past twelve years for a closer union with those brother Roumanians . living in Transylvania, Bukowina, and Macedonia, embracing half the total Roumanian race, about 10,000,000, it must be expected that Roumania's preparations have kept pace, and when the spark is set to the powder there will be such an explosion as will rend the Balkans and make great gaps in the landscape, changing the configuration of the Map once again.

In face of the really gigantic undertaking by Russia in the war, the average reader is likely to minimise, or at least lose sight of, the great task associated with the operations in the individual theatres in which the Czar's forces are engaged. The grim struggle on the Eastern front in Russia is ever prominent, and in connection with this the cables to-day state that two large German squadrons of cruisers and torpedoers were seen in the Baltic gaing north, with the object, it is believed of forcing an entrance into the Gulf of Riga, which is free of ice from about April 7 to the end of November. Then we are all conversant with the splendid results of the campaign in Asia Minor, but of the immense dilliculties attached to the Caucasus operations, we hear only occasionally, ana then of the most meagre details. The latest report states that on the shore of the Black Sea in the Caucasus, supported by the fire of the cruiser Breslau, which has once more burst into the limelight, the Turks attacked the Russian right, but were repulsed with heavy loss. But the Russians also as sumed the offensive, and attacking the enemy's centre at the same time, carried part of their objective. In the Chorokh sector of the Asia Minor campaign, and in connection with the Erzerum forces, the Russians are still busy driving out the enemy from thenmountain fastnesses, where they have been powerfully organised. The river Chorokh, or Zhorokh, rises in the slopes of the Kazan Mountains north of Erzerum; it is about 215 miles long and drains about 11,000 square miles of country before entering the Black Sea near Batum. The principal tributary is known as Olti-chai, which is ninety miles long.