The Daily News. FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1917. THE ROUMANIAN SITUATION.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 January 1917, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 1917. THE ROUMANIAN SITUATION.

The RouAahian position is not improving. 'Maekensen is pushing liack the Russo-Roumanians, whilst the enemy is also breaking through the Carpathian passes into Moldavia, and forcing his ■nay down the valleys leading to the Sereth. The cable tells us that this v,-i!l form an admirable spot for t RussoRoumanian stand against all the German advance from the Moldavian highlands. But, as if to prepare us for worse news, we are told that if the Sereth line proves untenable, the Allies wili probably retire beyond the Bessarabian frontier. After the Sereth; the :Pruth River offers a strong defensive position. Both it and the Sereth are wide, swift-running river?, and lie across the line of the enemy's advance. The Sereth 'has a manifest advantage, however, in that behind it is a lateral railway from Galatz through Barlad and Jassy, linked up with the Russian system through Kishincff. A retreat to the Sereth, and the consequent abandonment of the mountain frontier, means an actual shortening of the front by perhaps fifty miles (writes the military critic of a Southern contemporary). Taking into consideration th» greater ease of guarding the mountain passes, however, the gain by such v a withdrawal is relatively small. Moreover, the main trunk railway through Moldavia and the Bukowina; to Czernowitz unfortunately runs west of the Sereth, on the enemy's bank of the j river. Consequently the abandonment I of the frontier would mean the loss of an important lateral railway. It might also mean the loss of the Bukowina, Once the enemy is firmly established in Moldavia, lie would inevitably concentrate his forces for an attack on the Russian line between the Sereth and the mountains, and the liability to rupture would be virtually the same whsreever the connecting link happened to be. The position needs a word of explanation. The Sereth runs through the Bukowina and Moldavia at a. distance of from eighty to fifty kilometres from the present Russian front in '.he mountains. That gap has to be bridged at some point if the Russians are to retain their hold on the Bukowina, and the shortest line between the Sereth and the mountains is that through Focsani, which, by the way, used to be a moderately strong fortified post. The alternative connecting lines are the valleys of the Trotus and the Bistritsa, neither of which is as short 01 as convenient as the southern line. The new Russo-Roumanian front should follow the Lower Danube as far as ftalatz and the Sereth as far as the confluence of the Putna which stream, with its afl'luent, the Milcov, formed the old frontier between Moldavia and Wa!lachia. The Focsani-Galatz line used, to be 'heavily fortified—against Russia, primarily—and, though the fortifications may not be particularly strong according to modern ideas, they ough'-. form a substantial basis for a defensive trout. At any rate, the line was selected with an eye to its strategic and tactical advantages, and the fact,is not without its interest and importance at the present time. It would be liable to a flank attack from the mountains, no doubt, and the heavy fighting reported in the Oitoz and Putna valleys is a fairly plain indication that the enemy is anxious'to turn it before the Russians establish themselves. The enemy is evidently attacking in great fo'ce. Either that, or the Roumanians have gone to pieces as a result of the terrific hammering to whieh they have bjen subjected for so many long weeks, or the Russo-Roumanians are not equal to the enemy in artillery. It is satisfactory to know that General Brusiloff is at the Roumanian headquarters, presumably to take over, the personal direction of operations against the enemy's victorious forces. He is the one man that can restore the fortunes of the. Russo-Roumanians, or, at any rate, hold the enemy until the Roumanians have rested and been reconstituted. It is a pity Brusiloff had not the direction of the Roumanian fo»ces as a part of the Russian liiJe from the beginning. Then things may' have shaped differ-

ently. He certainly would never have permitted the Roumanians to dash into t-lio Transylvania before first settling with the Bulgarians and the German forces under Maekensen in the Dobrudja. Some great blunder;, have been perpetrated by the Allies in the early part ol this campaign, as well as in the Salonika offensive. We allowed Greece to play fast and loose, and ham-string the whole of our forces there, with the result that we could not in any way velieve the pressure from reeling Roumania. There is clamor for the evacuation of Salonika, and thus make it another Gallipoli, but it is to lie hoped the outlook is not so bad as to render such a course necessary or advisable.