The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1916. THE BALKANS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 68, 17 October 1916, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1916. THE BALKANS.

If we were not already alive to the fact Dr. Dillon,- the noted authority on the Near East, now makes it plain that the war centre has, for the time at least, shifted to the Balkans, and Hindenburg is straining every nerve to reach Bucharest. Though the situation is serious, it is by no means hopeless for the Roumanians, for latest advices report the situation at Dobrudja to be in our favour, while the pressure on the northern front continues. The situation at this point is rather obscure. The Roumanians and the Russians have allowed very little officially to come out about the heavy fighting on the Dobrudja, and we have been led to believe that they still occupy a line from Rasova, on the Danube, to Tusla, on the coast. This line protects the railway from Constanza to Bucharest, and thus Russia can send, munitions by sea to the capital. The German reports have, in the past, proved so utterly false that no notice, can be taken of them. Dr. Hamilton Fyfe, in the later cable messages,] states that military opinion believes! that if the Roumanians can hold the crests of the Carpathians the situation need not be considered serious. [ This, it is to be sincerely hoped, they, may do. It is conceded that the Allies are now working in such perfect harmony that an enemy success in Transylvania means an enemy re-] verse in Galicia, while the steady pressure on the .Salonika front is depleting Bulgaria of her last remaining fores, and the Italian attacks must he causing grave anxiety to the Austrian armies in the Trentino, and hindering them from sending forces against Roumania. Turks and Bulgars view the situation so anxiously that they are insisting on the Germans allowing them to go back to

defend vital home interests, ant

therefore Roumania has no light task I ahead of her. Rut the Governments of the Allied nations know full well j what it wouid mean if Roumania h cro crushed by the hordes of frightfulness, and they will not let such a thing happen if it is humanly possible to prevent it. It is still believed that the Roumanian invasion or Transylvania was a very important I strategic movement designed to cause just that concentration of th" i enemy that lias taken place, and that the Roumanians knew better than to believe that a quick and easy conquest of Hungary was before them. Tf this is a correct view we may talc? it thai ! Ihe Roumanian situation is better ' even I ban it til first appears. J