Germany at once made common cause with Austria-Hungary. The German Minister[30] in Bucharest left the Rumanian capital, under escort, disgruntled if not surprised. Events had moved too quickly for this diplomat. The inevitable had happened. He had all along foreseen it; his annoyance was due to the fact that it had come too soon. He left behind him tell-tale proofs of the baseness to which his country could descend in order to win a war; if his departure had not been so hurried, the means for poisoning a city’s water would either have been taken with him or put to fearful use. As the train in which he travelled was crossing the River Sereth,[31] he said to the officer of the escort, “Here is the future frontier between Austria-Hungary and Russia.” He may have been merely speculating, as any cynic might, or, on the other hand, he may have had an inkling of Russia’s secret plans. This river marked the shortest line between the Russian left in the Carpathians and the coast of the Black Sea. North of it lay Moldavia, a pastoral land and poor; south of it lay Wallachia, teeming with corn and oil. Rumania was a pygmy State and had entered on a war of giants; to both her greater neighbours it would not have been displeasing if she were broken on the wheel. In Petrograd, it was rumoured that certain members of the Government were inclined for a separate peace, and it was common knowledge that the Central Empires stood in desperate need of Wallachia’s resources. To an intelligent German diplomat, these were the elements of a deal. The details of the campaign in Rumania will form the subject of a detailed history and, in so far as the conduct of the Rumanian peasants was concerned, will furnish a record of heroism and endurance unsurpassed in any theatre of war. From the very outset the Rumanian General Staff was confronted with the impossible task of undertaking simultaneously an offensive in a mountainous country and holding two lengthy frontiers converging in a narrow salient. In most essential respects the Allies broke their promises, as set forth in the Convention they had signed. Ten days after the first invasion of Transylvania, General Sarrail announced that the preparations for his offensive were “pursuing their normal course,” an offensive which should have started some twenty days before. The Russians remained inactive in the Carpathians and, so far from anticipating the forward movement of the Rumanian Army, failed to co-operate when it had been made. The supplies of ammunition, so confidently promised, arrived in driblets; the average quantity received was 80 tons per day.