This movement was in sympathy with the Rumanian declaration of war on 27 August, and spoilt the Russian chances of a successful concentration against Bothmer. Russia was not sufficiently furnished with munitions or trained men to provide for two great efforts on that front, and her summer campaign had failed of complete success largely because of the services it rendered to her allies. No fewer than sixteen divisions were withdrawn, between June and September, by the Germans from the Western front and one from the Balkans to meet Brussilov's offensive, and they included some of the best of the Prussian Guards. Austria diverted seven divisions from Italy, and even the Turks sent two. The offensive had cost the Central Empires something like a million casualties, many of them Czecho-Slovak and Jugo-Slav prisoners, who deserted willingly enough and in time did valiant service in strange lands to the cause of the Entente and of their own national independence. But the value of Russia's last great effort in the war was not limited to the front on which it was made. It was an excellent, though almost solitary, example of the advantages of co-ordinated strategy between the Allies, and what progress was made on the Somme, in Italy, and in Macedonia in 1916 was partly due to Russian valour on other fronts. The British Empire, however, had eyes in the summer of that year for little except its own offensive in the West. It was mainly a British affair, for the German attack on Verdun had succeeded to the extent of making impossible both an independent French offensive and an equivalent French contribution to the joint campaign on the Somme. Like other realities of the war, this fact was hidden from the public, and hopes ran high. The failures of the autumn were recognized as due to their being premature and made on narrow fronts. We had learnt our lesson; there was a new general in command; in guns and munitions we had outstripped the Germans; our men were no longer raw recruits, and we had millions of them; and, unlike Germany, we had no alternative front to exact its toll like the Russian. The one doubt that was harboured rather than expressed related to leadership. Lord Kitchener had lost his life in the Hampshire, sunk by a mine off the west coast of the Orkneys, on 6 June. But Sir William Robertson, his chief of Staff, had acquired a great repute as an organizer, and the question was whether the officers in the field would exhibit qualities of intellect comparable with his administrative capacity or with the valour of their men.