The Allies had, undoubtedly, lost prestige. Great Britain had forfeited the confidence which had been our most precious asset in the earlier stages of the war; the British Government was regarded by Rumanians as the tool of French and Russian diplomacy, and our warmest partisans found little comfort in benevolent intentions which were never translated into deeds. The French burked criticism, to some extent, by an immense display of energy. Hundreds of officers and men were incorporated in the Rumanian Army, who by their spirit and example did much to raise the morale of the troops. The Russians, to a greater degree than ever, inspired distrust and fear. The Germanophiles in Rumania had always been Russophobes; during this period they gained many new adherents, both in the army and the business class. Allied prestige, and more especially that of Great Britain, could have been restored by a decisive success in a direction which would have enabled Rumania to recommence hostilities, in the spring or summer, independently of Russia. That direction was obviously Constantinople, the key of the Near East; no other remedy for Rumania’s plight was either practicable or just. The loss of Wallachia had deprived Rumania of four-fifths of her food supplies, almost all her petrol and her principal railway centres. Moldavia had to support, in addition to the normal population, thousands of refugees from Wallachia and, to a great extent, the Russian forces. So defective were the road and railway communications, that the supply services functioned only with the greatest difficulty while the troops remained at rest. To attempt to even utilize this region as an advanced base for offensive operations was to invite defeat. Operations on a large scale for the recovery of Wallachia could only have been carried out by using the Danube as a supplementary line of communication; to do so, it was essential for the Allies to be undisputed masters of the Black Sea, and this involved a reinforcement of the Russian Fleet. While the Dardanelles remained in enemy hands, the Black Sea was as much German and Turkish as it was Russian; naval engagements were of rare occurrence and invariably indecisive. Speculation was busy at Rumanian Headquarters as to the invaders’ future course of action. If further conquests were envisaged, their position on the Danube conferred on them the power of turning the left flank of the Sereth line by the occupation of Galatz, against which place their communications by rail and river would have made possible the rapid concentration of numerically superior forces. Once in possession of Galatz, the invasion of Bessarabia could have been undertaken, since the establishment of an Allied front on the line of the River Pruth[34] would have been forestalled.