Norwich bulletin., 1916-09-19
THE WAR PRIMER By National Geographic Society

Turnu SeVeran, the first town in
 Runlania to receive a haptis moi iron after hostilitie5 were declared between that country and Austria Hungaria, is
 described by the National Geographic Society in a bulletin issued recently from Washington:
 Tt is an eleven mile voyage down the Danube from the international boundary line at VercioroVa to a point opposite Turnu Severin upon which
 Austrian monitors opened fire two days after the declaration of war.
 This busy Rumanian town of 5000 inhabitants, pleasantly situated on high ground and partly hidden from the river by trees, has important ship yards and repair shops for the Dan ube Steamship Navigation company,
 and is a center for trade in petroleum, cereals and preserved meats. It is supposed to derive it's name from the ruins of an old tower in the vicinity which is said to have been built in commemoration of one of the victor | ies of the Roman emperor Serverus. Tt was at Turnu Severin that the | late King Charles l, who died only a 1 few weeks after the outbreak of the European war in 1914, first landed on
 Rumanian soil in May 1866 and was hailed by the populace as the success sor to their first prince, Colonel Cuza, who, as Alexandra John 1, had been forced to abdicate 8 short time previ- ously. Charles was the second son of Prince Charles Antony of Hohenzol- lern- -Simaringen and at the time his
 name was submitted to the people of Rumania Che was chosen by a vote of 685,969 to 224) was an officer in the l Prussian army. AS the king of Prus- s1a was pledged to support a native noble for the Runanian principality 1 Charles could not be espoused openly, but upon the advice of Bismark he re- | signed his commission in the Prussian army and, under an assumed name and with a forged passport, made his way down the Danube into the coun- try over which he was to rule most successfully, first as prince and later as king, for more than half a cen
 tury.
 "A short distance below Turnu Sev- | erin is the little village of Kladova
 which in Roman times was known as Egeta, the station from which Ira | jan's two roads of conquest diverged one up the banks of the Danube and | the other striking north into Dacia. It
 was the latter road which necessitated ! the construction of the famous Trojan 1 Bridge across the Danube at this
 point, the largest in the Roman En- pire. How well the great Damascus
 architect Apollodorus designed this structure is indicated by the fact that
 after more than 1900 years portions of some of it's 20 stone piles described by
 the historian Gibbon are still to be
 seen, and perhaps 1t would have done
 service for centuries had it not been
 destroyed to prevent tha invasion of
 the territory south of the river by the Goths. The remains of this famous work were not discovered until 1884,
 the honor of the find being credited to
 Michael Joseph Quin who made a sys- tematic search for the piers while ac- companying the Hungarian road
 builder Count Ezechenyi on one of his | journeys down the Danube. The
 stones which are now disclosed at low
 water are the ruins of piers 145 feet high, 58 feet broad and 163 feet part.
 them to check the march of the bar barian enemy the masonry damned l the waters"