30 August 1916; Wednesday

Up at 6.30. Fatigue cleaning walls and scrubbing floors. Stormy wet day. Wrote to Ranald MacDonald. Heard that Roumania12 has joined Allies.


  1. Roumania joined the Allies (not least because Bulgaria was with the Central Powers) with singularly bad timing. Falkenhayn was removed from the Western Front due to his perceived failures (and replaced by Hindenburg, who was President of Germany in 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor), but when transferred to Transylvania (still part of Austria-Hungary at this time) proved much too good for the Roumanians, who were routed in Wallachia (the southern portion of the country, where Bucharest is situated, between the Carpathians and the Danube) and were driven back to their original capital Iași (pronounced Yash; formerly spelt Jassy) at the Northern end of Moldova. 

  2. In 1916, Romania was still usually spelled “Roumania” or “Rumania” in English, from the French “Roumanie”.  The modern English spelling, “Romania”, was adopted some time after WWII.