strength by the shortening of the line he has to hold and consequent concentration of his forces. The Russo-Roumanian retreat is consequent on a breakdown, and is a serious set-back to the Allied cause, though it does not, when regarded as a part of the whole campaign, afford any ground for pessimism.

Enemy Captures.

The main loss to Roumania is in men; probably, from the time that the retreat from the Vulkan Pass was begun, the Roumanian army has lost heavily. The losses of guns have also been considerable, but these can be replaced, while the men cannot. In the matter of supplies captured, the enemy reports have treated us to such phrases as "large quantities," and "the booty is immeasurable,” but no attempt has been made to state what quantities of grain and foodstuffs have actually fallen into enemy hands, probably because these quantities have fallen far below expectations. Much was made of the fact that a certain amount of grain which had been purchased by the British Government had been captured, but whether the quantity was one sack or a thousand tons is left to the reader of the reports to determine. It is certain that the Roumanians destroyed some of their stores, and removed still more; it is certain, too, that after expecting an alleviation of the food scarcity in Germany from the occupation of Roumania, the German papers are now wailing more loudly than ever over dearth of foodstuffs, which looks very much as if great hopes had been built on augmentation of supplies from Roumania, hopes which had failed to materialise. We may take it that the invading armies have been able to live on the country, and that a certain amount of grain has been captured by the enemy, but that the amount captured is not only insufficient for German needs, but grievously smaller than the enemy expected to find.

has been evacuated; the retreat farther north has been continued beyond Ploesti and has uncovered Buzeu, which gives the enemy full control of the line of rail from Constanza through Fetesti and Buzeu to the Roumanian northwestern frontier and to Hungary-all the southern railway systems of Roumania are now in enemy hands; the whole of Wallachia has fallen to to the enemy, practically, and that without any very heavy fighting. Meanwhile a theory has been advanced for this breakdown and persistent retreat, that theory being based on the fact that the evacuation of Bucharest had been considered as a possibility before the Roumanian declaration of war. It is to the effect that Roumania, in declaring war, merely anticipated by a few days an inevitable German declaration of war. Germany's intense need of foodstuffs, which Roumania declined to give, had caused the German general staff to set the machinery in motion for Falkenhayn's advance before August 29th, and it was considered better to anticipate the enemy attack, rather than wait for it at the frontier-and hence the initial invasion of Transylvania, while Falkenhayn's force was still on the way. This version is given merely as a theory, but it is strongly supported by the turn of

the enemy has to face. The enemy offensive in Roumania is a bigger business than the Salonika offensive on our part, for the Salonika force has brought to combat it not less than eight and almost certainly not more more than ten than ten enemy divisions, while for the Roumanian thrust the enemy has employed twenty-two divisions, Bulgarian, German, and one Turkish. Meanwhile the five months of fighting on the Somme, from the beginning of July to the end of November, involved on the enemy the use of not less than a hundred divisions, and almost certainly the number used is over a hundred. On that short sector of front the enemy has had to employ five times as many men as he has used in the advance through Roumania, and his losses, at a moderate computation, are not short of the whole number of troops used in the Roumanian campaign, while it is a certainty that he lost as many men in the series of attacks on the positions covering Verdun as he has used in the Roumanian campaign. Further, considering the casualties incurred by the Russo-Roumanian forces in relation to the whole of the eastern front, they do not as yet amount to a fourth of the casualties incurred in the course of the great Russian retreat of last year, and they do not by any means reduce the Allied strength on the eastern front as a whole to what it was before Roumania entered on the war, while, in spite of the enemy successes, the eastern front that Germany and Austria and Bulgaria must hold is still longer by about three hundred miles than it was before Roumania joined up with the Allies. In spite of her successes, Germany has not restored the balance in the east, and she is far less able now than she was six months ago even to maintain that balance, for neither the march through Wallachia nor any other extension of the territory she holds can solve the growing problem of inadequate man-power, while, evidently,

the Wallachian campaign has not solved the problem of food supplies.

Peace Efforts.

Evidence of what Germany hoped, and of how far her hopes tally with actual accomplishment, is available in the open move toward peace instigated by Berlin. It was hoped that some real advantage would come of the Roumanian campaign, and when all that could be accomplished in the way of benefit to the Central Powers had been achieved, the offer of peace was madeit was made when the Central Powers felt themselves best able to offer terms, because they had reached their maximum of bargaining power. Obviously, if they had gained sufficient supplies from Roumania to carry them over the winter, and if they saw sufficient reserves of men in hand to carry on the war to a successful conclusion, they would not have made such an offer for the blasphemous references to God and humanity contained in the offer, as it was stated by the German Chancellor, may be passed over as unworthy of notice, since they emanate from the source that systematically planned the Belgian outrages, the rape of Poland, the Serbian horrors, and seamurders that are yet fresh in men's minds. Germany's end in this offer was material advantage, and, knowing themselves beaten, the German leaders offered peace while as yet they possessed a semblance of power to continue the struggle. If they had anticipated decisive success in Roumania, or on any other front, they would have withheld this offer until such success had been gained, for it would have been so much more bargaining capacity. Since the offer was made with no such decisive advantage to back it, the obvious conclusion is that Germany -for only Germany counts in things like this fears the immediate future, thus justifying those estimates of her strength which placed the exhaustion of her reserves as bound to happen within the

B

next six months. For a decrease in the extent of territory held, and a consequent decrease in the power to make terms of peace, will come before the final exhaustion of enemy reserves, and not simultaneously with it. It is elementary military knowledge that a defensive front, which the enemy front as a whole has now become in spite of such a local blow as that at Roumania, must be shortened while a reserve of strength exists in addition to the force necessary to hold the front; otherwise, the very effort to shorten the front is equivalent to disaster.. This fact is as elementary from the military point of view as Germany's offer is transparently simple-and contemptible-from the diplomatic point of

view.

The Western Front.

Two events, at the time of writing, have occurred which emphasise the German need for peace one is the French success at Verdun on December 15th-16th, and the other is the British forward movement toward Baghdad. Of these two the former is by far the more important, for various reasons; in the first place, it is a victory at a point that Germany, as a matter of honour-if such a thing as a matter of honour has anything to do with Germany -counted a point of necessity for German victory; in the second place, it has been achieved at a point where the whole world can see and judge of the importance of the victory, the influence that it must exercise on German moral and on the whole campaign, and the relative power of the French offensive and the German defensive at this part of the line, more or less representative of the relative strengths of the opponents along the whole western front; in the third place, it is a definite reply, in the sight of the whole world, to the German assertions that, since the fighting forces are exhausted and nothing more can be done, it is time for peace;

it is an assertion of the strength of Fr ice, whom Germany considered most exhausted of the powers arrayed against her, and thus is indirectly an assertion of the strength of all the Allies, and of the fact that the world will not tolerate a German peace. For, save for the United States, one may express the "world" of to-day as two groups of belligerents; the weaker of these two groups is proposing peace; the stronger group-the world that counts-is steadily coming to a point at which it will be the only "world" capable of backing its will by the force that makes will effective. The neutrals have paltered too long, and are out of the reckoning.

Three days of artillery

Verdun-the preparation preceded the Revanche. latest attack at Verdun, which began at 10 a.m. on December 16th, as far as the infantry advance was concerned. A front of ten kilometres was set as the limit of width attacked, and in one day this front was carried to a depth of three kilometres. On the right bank of the Meuse, the historic positions that cost the Germans over a quarter of a million lives were taken back : the villages of Vacherauville, Louvemont, les Chambrettes, and the Hardaumont and Bezonvaux works, together with the whole of the famous Pepper" Hill, passed to French hands, and, by the end of the day of December 17th, there had been counted over 9,000 German prisoners, including 250 officers, while about a week of the output of Essen, over 80 guns of all calibres, had been either captured or destroyed. A later report shows that the total of prisoners is over 11,000, and of guns 115, with 151 mine-throwers and machine guns. The French communiqué, in recording the event, states: the success is complete, and the troops are giving evidence of very lively enthusiasm. Our losses are slight." Such enthusiasm is in every way justifi

66

ward those advanced positions that were lightly held when the massed German attacks began, in the effort to hew a road through through Verdun to Paris itself. This event follows not only on the German peace proposals, but also and more immediately on a speech by William Hohenzollern to the German troops in Alsace, in which he said that "in the full certainty of complete victory we have

that any movement of

following

on the opening of the rainy

season.

From last April until

the beginning of December no rain fell in

this area, so even small

bodies of troops would at once have been signalled to the enemy by dust clouds ; as soon as the rain had laid the dust, and the climatic conditions. permitted of a move, last season's work was resumed; no direct attack was made on the formidable positions of Es Sinn, which straddle the Tigris some six miles below Kut, or on the advanced position

this

move

of Sanna-i-Yat, fifteen miles from Kut. Passing south of the marsh that defines the southern end of the Sanna-i-Yat position, and sweeping round the southern end of the Es Sinn fortifications, the British troops came to the Shatt al Hai, a southern affluent of the Tigris itself, which enters the main stream in the loop of the river in which Kut itself is situated. The British advance mastered both banks of the Shatt al Hai, which is now held to within three miles of the loop of the Tigris in which Kut-el-Amara is situated. Given a clear way for transport along the track that this advance has followed, the positions of Sanna-i-Yat and Es Sinn are valueless to the enemy, as far as the covering of Kut is concerned, for they are open to attack from front and rear. If the river itself is reached, these positions must be at once evacuated, since the main way of communication for the provision. of supply to the positions will have gone -and thus sixteen miles more of the road to Baghdad will have been cleared. The move is probably preparatory to a general wakening of activity not only in this southern sector of the Asiatic campaign, but also in the north, where the Russian army of the Caucasus is waiting on the weather to increase the growing embarrassment of Turkey, and, by the isolation and conquest of the whole of Anatolia, to destroy one of the chief Turkish recruiting grounds.

at the present time, they carry forward the British Egyptian front toward the Baghdad railway. A subsequent report states that British airmen have destroyed Chikaldir Bridge, which is nearly twenty miles to the east of Adana, on the BaghdadConstantinople line. The complete destruction of this bridge would cut off enemy communication between western centres of supply and the Turkish armies in the Caucasus area, in Mesopotamia, and in Palestine and Arabia. Thus this raid, as well as the operations eastward from the Canal, must be considered in connection with the Mesopotamian campaign, and practically as an extension of the offensive against the Turkish armies of the Tigris.

The Italian Front.

Since the Italian offensive toward Trieste in the first days of November, up to the time of writing, there has been apparent quiescence on the whole of the Italian front, but this is apparent, not real. Rumours are not wanting of a coming enemy offensive on the Trentino front, rumours for which some foundation may be found in the fact that on this front lies the only chance the enemy has of breaking through the Allied ring that holds him; this is because, should the enemy succeed in driving back Allied forces on any other front, he merely drives them back along their communications, which run perpendicularly to the fronts; on the Italian front, however, the Trentino field of action lies parallel to the main lines of Italian communication, and thus an enemy offensive here, if pushed far enough to cut the lines of communication-as was attempted in the Austrian offensive of last summer-would not only have effect on the Trentino itself, but would also force withdrawal from the Isonzo field. The enemy chances of successful offensive here, however, are very slight. In these periods of apparent pause the Italian armies are busy on work of a nature that