Though we refused to be frightened because the Rumanians had
to retire, as we retired at Mona and the Germans retired at the Marne, and though at the moment there seems very good reason to believe that the Germans are being held along the moun- tain barrier of Rumania (except at one point where the enemy have taken a pass and penetrated some eleven miles over the frontier) we are of course far from insisting that Falkenhayn will not be able to continue his push for a little longer, and do a good deal more damage to the unfortunate districts that have to endure his savage inundation. What we do say is that, even if this does happen, though it now seems unlikely, it will in no sort cf way be a cause for despair. Rumania is playing a great and heroic part in the war, and even if the Germans press her to the utmost she will continue to play it. That part is quite easy to describe. She has obliged the Germans to make yet one more desperate and exhausting effort. • She is keeping in play large forces of the enemy's infantry and cavalry which can be ill spared from elsewhere. What is more, she is keeping engaged large quantities of artillery which it is hardly too much to say cannot be spared without starving in a very dangerous degree other theatres of action. POSTAGE ABROAD ID. Yet one would imagine from the way some people talk and write, people who ought to know better, and indeed in their sober moments do know better, that the Germans were making no sacrifices, running no risks, and suffering no exhaustion from the perilous, we had almost said the desperate, character of the strategy which Falkenhayn has adopted and is carrying out in the Rumanian section of the Carpathian Mountains. As a matter of fact, as every soldier and student of military affairs knows, the kind of hurricane push which Falkenhayn adopted exhauster the armies that have recourse to it with extraordinary rapidity. When such gamblers' throws are attempted, everything depends upon a lightning success.
