Page:The New Europe - Volume 4.djvu/187

Rh Hungary? And can anyone doubt that the disintegration of the Dual Monarchy is inevitable in view of the demand of its own peoples? .

, 27 August, is the anniversary of Roumania’s declaration of war against the Central Powers. The events which gradually led the Danube Kingdom to throw in her lot with the Grand Alliance are still too near us to be related in authoritative fulness; and, for the moment, we are not concerned with movements of diplomacy but with the new relation to the British Commonwealth which Roumania’s act created. We welcomed our new ally a year ago with gladness and enthusiasm. In very different circumstances we repeat all that was said then with an emphasis born of our comradeship in arms and in adversity. The high hopes entertained by Roumania and her new Allies in 1916 were speedily broken. Once again the interior lines of the enemy asserted their influence and enabled Germany to throw vast forces across the Hungarian frontier which overwhelmed the gallant armies of King Ferdinand. The victory was not of German making only, for other causes were at work both in Russia and in Roumania which made the German task incomparably easier than it ought to have been. The culprits are not all brought to book yet; but when they are it will be found that the Roumanian people were beset in front and rear and that in the circumstances the part they played was heroic indeed.

Roumania is a western Power in an eastern setting. Her people bear in their names and in their speech the mark of Roman civilisation, and they look to the Latin nations of France and Italy as the sympathetic upholders of a tradition which is their own. It is only natural, therefore, that the bond of sympathy should be strong between Bucarest and Rome and Paris and that the Western-Latin influence should be predominant in the language and culture of Roumania. But high policy often wrests nature from her true course; and, in the case of Roumania, policy followed the dynastic bias of the reigning house which—until the accession of King Ferdinand, a national monarch in the best sense of