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The Russians had retired behind the Rimnik River, a small stream which is about twenty-five miles north of the Buzeu and parallel to it. On January 1, 1917, the Germans announced that the Russians had been forced back against the bridgehead at Braila and that in the Dobrudja they had advanced beyond Matchin.

Less than three years later, however, on November twentieth, 1919, there assembled in Bucharest the first parliament of Greater Rumania, attended by deputies from all those Rumanian regions Bessarabia, Transylvania, the Banat, the Bucovina and the Dobrudja which had been restored to the Rumanian motherland.

On September 15 the Roumanians began a retreat in the Dobrudja, before advancing forces of Germans and Bulgarains led by General von Macksensen. The Russo-Roumanian center was driven back thirty miles, while the German and Bulgarian troops occupied several of the Roumanian Black Sea ports.

Then on the last day of the month came the announcement from Bucharest that Russian forces had arrived on Rumanian soil and were already crossing the Danube over into Dobrudja, their left wing on the Black Sea coast being protected by ships of the Russian fleet.

On February 14, 1916, the Rumanian Government announced that its mobilization had been completed by the calling up of a fresh class and that the General Staff was completing the defenses of the Carpathians and the fortifications along the banks of the Danube in the new Dobrudja territory, which had been taken from Bulgaria during the Balkan Wars.

And he was loved by everybody; and the women died just for the looks of him. The whole tribe became younger and happier because of Ghitza. We travelled very much those days. Dobrudja belonged yet to the Turks and was inhabited mostly by Tartars. The villages were far apart and very small, so we could not stay long in any place.

On the 5th, Braila, the most important city left to the Rumanians, fell into the hands of Mackensen, and at the same time the last of the Russians retired from the northern tip of Dobrudja. This was the heaviest blow that had fallen since the capture of Bucharest, and from a military point of view was even more serious.

It was not a particularly sporting performance on the part of the Rumanians, nor could the turning over to them of the Bulgarian part of the province of Dobrudja greatly increase Bulgaria's trust in the powers which permitted it in the treaty of Bucarest.

Similarly, there are whole towns in the Dobrudja which are composed of Bulgarians, there are large groups of Russian Slavs in Bessarabia, and considerable colonies of Jugoslavs in the eastern half of the Banat which, very much against their wishes, have been forced to submit to Rumanian rule.

Yet each one knew that Murdo, the chief of the tribe, who was well known to all, in fact to the whole Dobrudja, would not take such risks with his people without good reason. They had crossed to the middle of the frozen river in steady fashion, when Murdo shouted one word and the feet of every man and beast stopped short. The crossing of the river had been planned to the slightest detail.