GREATER RUMANIA
We have three groups of minor nations in Central and Eastern Europe:
those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers is at the expense of
the Central Empires; those whose emancipation or extension of frontiers
is at the expense of Russia; and the Balkan States, completing their
emancipation from Turkey and establishing new frontiers at the expense
of each other. Czechoslovakia belongs to the first category; Poland
and Lithuania to the first and second categories; Finland and the
Baltic States to the second category; the Ukraine also to the second
category, although her claim to Eastern Galicia, denied by the Supreme
Council, would put her in the first category as well; Jugoslavia to
the first and third categories; Greece and Bulgaria and Albania to the
third category. Rumania has the unique distinction of being in all
three groups. And the factors and conditions in the creation of Greater
Rumania are different from those that attend the resurrection or
enlargement of the other minor states. Our small Allies (and Austria,
Hungary, and Bulgaria) face the general problems of the groups to which
they belong. Rumania faces all the problems of all the groups.
Like Greece and Serbia, Rumania is confronted with a complete and
radical remolding of the old political organism and a transformation
of her social and economic life by the incorporation of “unredeemed”
elements too large and too different culturally to assimilate; her
agrarian and electoral problems are similar to those of Hungary; with
Poland, she must face Bolshevism or make concessions to the irredentism
of Russian subject races or find herself later forced to choose between
Russia and Germany; she has frontier aspirations in common with
Bulgaria and Italy against Serbia; she must resist the conspiracy of
Great Britain and France to substitute themselves for Germany as her
economic suzerain; and, as her only outlet is through the Dardanelles,
she cannot remain indifferent to the disposition of Constantinople.
In common with all the races of southeastern Europe, the Rumanians
had their independence and their political unity destroyed by the
Turks centuries before the awakening of what we call “national
consciousness.” When they tried to take advantage of the decay of the
Ottoman Empire to reconstitute a state in the modern sense of that
word, i. e., by bringing together into one political organism the
regions where the majority of the people spoke the same language and
felt the ties of blood and common interests, they faced implacable
enemies in the empires of Austria and Russia. The policy of the
Hapsburgs and Romanoffs was to extend their own frontiers at the
expense of the Ottoman Empire. The resurrection of the Christian races
subject to Turkey into political units was opposed by both empires,
because each believed that the other would control the new state. Great
Britain and France, and later Germany and Italy, adopted the same
policy for the same reason. Up to 1880, the Occidental powers feared
Russian control of the Balkans. They did not want the Slavs to have an
outlet on the Mediterranean. During the generation preceding the World
War, France--and later Great Britain--shifted their opposition from
Russia to Austria. Where they had worried about the Romanoffs, they now
feared the Hohenzollerns. Unified Germany was gaining control of the
Hapsburg Empire to further her _Drang nach Osten_.
But the motives actuating Balkan policy did not change. All the Balkan
States, and Rumania especially, were potential factors in upsetting
the European balance of power. Hence they must be kept as small and
powerless as possible, for fear of disturbing the peace of Europe.
Irredentism, whether the agitation for extending frontiers was directed
against Mohammedan Turkey or Christian Russia and Austria-Hungary was
frowned upon. To prevent the Balkan States from forming an alliance
to secure their national unity, the great powers arranged frontiers
at Paris in 1856 and at Berlin in 1878 in such a way as to kindle
the animosity of one Balkan race against the other. The Balkan races
were not consulted in the drawing up of frontiers. They were not
brought together and asked to settle their own differences by mutual
compromises, with the great powers abstaining from interference. The
same policy was followed at Paris in 1919. It bids fair to have the
same results.
There is this difference, however, between the Congress of Berlin
and the Conference of Paris. In 1919 the small nations protested
more effectively against their exclusion from debates and their
non-participation in decisions affecting their interests. They had
taken advantage of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and Russia to occupy
“unredeemed” territories. Rumania led the others in defying the Big
Four. Refusing to abide by the decrees of a conference in which she
had no voice, Rumania went ahead and formed her enlarged state as she
wanted it. Only in a portion of the Banat of Temesvár and at the mouth
of the Maros River are the Rumanians not under military control of
Greater Rumania.
Most plausible have been the inspired articles from Paris condemning
the intractability of Rumania. Rumania violated the terms of the
armistice between the Allies and Hungary. Her forces occupying Budapest
acted like highwaymen. The presence of a French army alone kept the
Rumanians from overrunning a wholly Serbian portion of the Banat
of Temesvár. Saved from the Austro-German yoke by Great Britain,
France, Italy, and the United States, the Rumanians have shown their
ingratitude, by refusing to abide by the wise just, and impartial
decisions of the Supreme Council. They lay claim to purely Hungarian
territory. They give evidence of bad faith and intolerance by not
wanting to accept provisions in the Treaty of St.-Germain for the
protection of racial and religious minorities. These are the charges.
But before we pass judgment ought we not to hear the other side of
the case and to examine the internal and external policy of Greater
Rumania? What are the problems of Rumania as the Rumanians see them?
At the Peace Conference Premier Bratianu claimed as the component
parts of Greater Rumania (1) the kingdom of Rumania as it was in 1914,
(2) the province of Bessarabia, formerly belonging to Russia, (3) the
Austrian province of Bukowina, and (4) the portion of Hungary known
as Transylvania, the Maramouresh and Crishana regions, and the Banat
of Temesvár. The greater part of the new frontiers claimed is clearly
marked by great waterways, the Dniester, the Danube, and the Theiss.
The Rumanians admit that these frontiers give them 250,000 Serbians
in the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, a partly Hungarian
population in the lower valley of the Maros, and many Bulgarians
and Turks in the Dobrudja region taken from Bulgaria in 1913. But
they argue that 100,000 Rumanians in Bulgarian territory and 300,000
Rumanians in Serbian territory on the right bank of the Danube offset
Bulgarians and Serbians incorporated into Rumania. They point out,
also, that more than 100,000 Rumanians will remain to Russia between
the Dniester and the Bug. As for the Hungarians, if the frontier
is drawn on strictly ethnographical lines, an impossible economic
situation would be created, because of the loss of the means of exit by
natural waterways and of the control of canals and railways.
Taken as a whole, the Rumanian claims were as legitimate as those
put forth by any other country at the Paris Conference. The National
Council of Bessarabia declared its reunion with Rumania on April 9,
1918; a General Congress of Bukowina (including the Poles and Germans)
adopted a similar resolution on November 28, 1918; and on December
1, 1918, a General Assembly of elected representatives at Alba-Julia
declared the union of Transylvania and the Banat of Temesvár “and the
Rumanian territories of Hungary” with the kingdom of Rumania. This act
of union was ratified on January 8, 1919, by a General Assembly of the
“Saxons of Transylvania.” By two royal decrees King Ferdinand accepted
the administrative control of these territories and admitted to the
Rumanian cabinet ministers without portfolio to represent them. The
Peace Conference was confronted with a _fait accompli_.
The Big Four and the Supreme Council that followed them did not contest
Rumania’s right to Transylvania and to the larger portions of Bukowina
and the Banat of Temesvár. These had been promised by the secret
treaty of 1916. Since the principle of the conference was strictly
_vae victis_, the question of a revision of the Bulgarian boundary of
1913 did not come up. But the powers were afraid to say anything about
Bessarabia. That its inclusion in Rumania was in accordance with the
principles for which they had fought did not bother them. For a whole
year our peacemakers played a disgusting game of duplicity with Rumania
in the Bessarabian question, the proofs of which were in the hands of
Premier Bratianu as early as April. It is distasteful to have to say
so, but since we have not minced words with Rumania why should she
mince words with us?
The President of the United States and the Premiers of France, Great
Britain, and Italy did not discourage Rumania’s aspirations because
they wanted to use the Rumanians to fight the Bolsheviki. And while
they were “stringing” Premier Bratianu they secretly promised Admiral
Kolchak and General Denikin that the future of Bessarabia should be
decided by the Russians themselves. This was on a par with the promise
made by the French representatives at Kiev to Ukrainia in 1918. On
November 1, 1919, Rumania finally lost the last vestige of confidence
in the good faith of her big allies; and she formally notified the
Supreme Council of the annexation of Bessarabia. God helps those
who help themselves. Since Cavour, statesmen of all small countries
have learned in their dealings with the great powers that so long
as one looks upon them as Dives crumbs and crumbs alone fall from
the table. The union of Bessarabia with Rumania was approved by the
Supreme Council in March, 1920, after the collapse of the Russian
counter-revolutionary movements.
The Entente Powers acted as a moderating influence in dealing with the
territorial claims of Rumania against Hungary and Serbia. As regards
Hungary, the Rumanians admitted themselves that a fair frontier was
exceedingly difficult to establish. The Hungarian islands in the
eastern part of Transylvania gave them a larger Magyar population
than they wanted; and, unlike the Poles, the Rumanians realized the
danger of annexing alien border districts. Between Rumanians and
Hungarians the bitterness is not so great as between Poles and Germans
or between Poles and Russians. The boundary finally agreed upon by the
Entente commission gave Rumania a far more advantageous frontier than
she had either ethnographic or economic right to. But Hungary is so
self-supporting a country agriculturally that the loss of provinces
does not cause the hardships and force the lower standard of living
that Germany and Austria are suffering.
The frontier dispute with Serbia has been adjusted, but to the
satisfaction of neither state. The Banat of Temesvár is a little
country lying north of the Danube from a point above Belgrade east
to the Iron Gates. The Theiss River, running due south into the
Danube, separates it from the former Bacs-Bodro province of Hungary.
In the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, the Serbian-speaking
population overflows both rivers and penetrates for many miles into
the Banat. Farther east, the Rumanian population has overflowed south
of the Danube for fifty miles in the Timok Valley and in the extreme
northwestern corner of Bulgaria. When the Serbians advanced their claim
to a portion of the Banat, disregarding the natural river boundaries,
the Rumanians countered with the statement that there would still be
more Rumanians in Serbia, in territory contiguous to Rumania, than
Serbians in Rumania, if the entire Banat should be awarded to Rumania.
The Theiss and the Danube are natural frontiers. Either the Danube is a
boundary or it is not. If it is not, the ethnographical argument cuts
both ways. But the Supreme Council, in order to appease the Jugoslavs,
took their side against Rumania and divided the Banat. The river from
which the Banat takes its name, the canals, and the railway reach
the Danube and Theiss through territory awarded to Serbia. In the
hinterland are the richest coal and iron regions of the old Kingdom of
Hungary. The short-sighted, self-centered diplomacy of the Big Four
did not behave with real friendship for Serbia nor with regard for
permanent peace in the Balkans. The principle applied was the exact
opposite of the one used in deciding frontier questions between Italy
and Serbia. One cannot escape from the conclusion that the underlying
motive was what had always guided the great powers in their Balkan
diplomacy, to limit one another’s influence and to prevent the Balkan
States from arriving at a direct compromise, thus keeping troubled
waters in which to fish.
The most serious quarrel between Rumania and the Entente Powers
was over the method of drawing up the Treaties of St.-Germain and
Trianon, and over certain of their stipulations regarding protection
of minorities and economic privileges. Writers who took their cue from
the statesmen of the great powers, including those of our own country,
gave the public a persistently unfair and denatured explanation of
Rumania’s attitude on these questions. There was a bitter background
of experience behind the Rumanians when they refused to accept the
renewal of the Berlin clauses concerning the protection of minorities.
At Berlin they had offered to grant full citizenship to Jews if
Russia would assume a similar obligation. It was dangerous to give
citizenship to immigrants and children of immigrants automatically so
long as Russia continued to oppress the Jews. In a few years Rumania
would have been swamped. In 1917, when the old régime disappeared in
Russia, citizenship was voted to native Jews of Rumania. They were
enfranchised; a renewal of the Berlin stipulations and the making of a
new contract with the powers were unnecessary. The minorities in the
new territories were protected by the provisions in the Acts of Union,
which had been presented to the Peace Conference. Why should Rumania
put her head into the noose by signing an annex with the big powers
which would enable them to find a pretext at any time to blackmail
Rumania for economic concessions by stirring up trouble?
To call the Anglo-French bluff and to prove that there was an ulterior
motive not connected with anxiety for the fate of minorities in the
objectionable clauses of the Treaty of St.-Germain and its annex,
Rumania offered to accept pledges in regard to both Jewish and
Christian minorities, if the contract was to be between Rumania and
the League of Nations and if all the members of the League of Nations,
including the great powers, were willing to make similar contracts.
This proposal was putting into concrete form, to test it, the war aim
of Great Britain, as phrased by Sir Edward Grey, that all nations
should be given identical opportunities, irrespective of size, to work
out their own salvation in their own way.
When the Supreme Council received from its agents the analysis of the
Pan-Rumanian General Election, they saw that the people of Greater
Rumania were determined not to agree to any infringement of national
sovereignty. Unwilling to have Rumania stay out of the League of
Nations, the Supreme Council gave in. The lines and the preamble
referring to the engagements imposed upon Rumania by the Treaty of
Berlin were struck out of the Treaty of Neuilly. Article LX of the
Treaty of St.-Germain was emasculated. The annex concerning minorities
was modified, and now became a free-will undertaking, in accordance
with the Acts of Union of the new provinces, and entailed an obligation
from the Rumanian Government only to her own peoples and not to the
principal Allied and Associated Powers. As for the Jews, the annex
recognized that the amendments of 1917 to the Rumanian constitution
covered their protection.
General Coanda signed the amended treaties in Paris on December 10,
1919. Thus ended in a notable victory the rebellion of Rumania begun,
in common with the other minor states, at the second plenary session
of the Peace Conference. Rumania avoided remaining a satellite. She
would henceforth have to dance to no great power’s piping. It was a
victory for all the smaller states in resisting the hope of the World
War victors to use the small Allies for their own political ends and
commercial profits.
Rumania, of course, like other countries, is far from blameless in
her dealings with minorities. Less than half of the several millions
taken from Hungary and given to Rumania by the Treaty of Trianon are
of Rumanian origin. The Magyar and Saxon minorities of Transylvania
live largely in the cities. Their culture is a thousand years old. Most
of the commerce and industry is in their hands, and their holdings in
land are out of proportion to their numbers. Most of the Rumanians, on
the other hand, are farmers and herdsmen. The Rumanian Government has
simply turned the tables and is doing what the Hungarian Government
used to do and what the Germans did in Alsace-Lorraine, striking at the
minorities through their educational institutions by trying to force
the exclusive use of the Rumanian language in the schools. This is
causing hardships and unrest of a serious character, and it remains to
be seen whether it will be successful. The difficulty is the same as in
all the Succession States of the Hapsburg Empire. The new masters are
culturally inferior and politically less experienced than the former
masters who are now at their mercy.
Before the World War the Kingdom of Rumania was the most populous
and the wealthiest of the minor states of eastern Europe. But it was
the most backward in democratic evolution. Political and economic
conditions were more like those in Russia than in any other European
country. Sixty per cent of the population over seven years could
neither read nor write--about the same percentage as in Poland.
Suffrage was exercised through an elaborate system of three electoral
colleges, which kept the power in the hands of the large landowners
and the small educated element. The common people had no voice in the
government. Conservatives and Liberals, with scarcely any distinction
in their policies, controlled Parliament in the interest of a very
small class. About half of the cultivable land was in the hands of less
than forty-five hundred proprietors. Forests and pasturage were even
more monopolized.
The crushing defeat of Rumania by the Central Powers and the Russian
revolution, calamities as they seemed to be at the time, were really
blessings in disguise. There was no hope for the Kingdom of Rumania,
much less of realizing the dream of Greater Rumania, unless radical
changes were made in the political and economic organization of the
Kingdom. The people of the Kingdom had to be given a big inducement
to stand by the dynasty and the Government. The Rumanians of Hungary
would never cast in their lot with the “mother-country” that had failed
to free them unless the land and suffrage questions were settled.
Bessarabia was called by Petrograd to share in the land redistribution
of New Russia. The Rumanian Parliament at Jassy voted the three reforms
essential to the rehabilitation of Rumania. To keep the support of
their own people and of the “unredeemed” Rumanians, constitutional
changes were made in establishing universal and equal suffrage and
breaking up estates of over five hundred hectares. To conciliate public
opinion outside of Rumania, citizenship was extended to native-born
Jews.
In the Acts of Union, Transylvania, the Banat of Temesvár, Bukowina,
and Bessarabia entered Greater Rumania on the basis of universal
suffrage, land distribution, and citizenship to Jews and racial
minorities. But they put the limit of estates at one hundred hectares,
and stipulated that they should keep their local autonomy.
The population of the new state is nearly doubled. From about 9,000,000
Rumania finds herself with more than 16,000,000. The addition of
Bessarabia has brought 2,000,000 new citizens whose preponderant
Rumanian element had never enjoyed political and economic conditions
very different from those that prevailed in the old Kingdom. But the
Rumanians of Hungary have had a radically different background. Taken
as a whole, they are far more advanced than the Rumanians of the
Kingdom. Having had to struggle for centuries against Magyarization,
they fought for a hold on the land and for control of industries. They
have been widely trained in the importance of exercising suffrage as a
means of combating the Magyars. Their language and primary education
and their church have been weapons essential to their separate
existence and the growth of national feeling. Hence it is that with
universal suffrage, which they alone know how to use, the Rumanians of
Hungary threatened to become the dominant element in Greater Rumania.
Their leaders do not belong to the aristocracy but come directly
from the soil. From the moment of their entry into the Parliament of
Bucharest, they dispossessed the old politicians, who were servants of
the landed aristocracy. They demanded the removal of the capital from
the Kingdom to Transylvania, suggesting Kronstadt (Brasso).
When the first Parliament of Greater Rumania assembled, the old
politicians of the Kingdom tried to get King Ferdinand to appoint
a premier and approve the formation of a cabinet without regard to
the parliamentary majority. Jonescu and Averescu signified their
willingness to “save Rumania.” Their plea was that the actual
constitutional union had not yet taken place, and that Rumania was
in a transitional stage, without definite frontiers and without
international recognition. Until the treaties with the defeated
coalition were ratified by the Allies, and until some general policy
was adopted by the victorious coalition in regard to Russia, the
Ottoman Empire, and common financial questions, they argued that the
new Parliament was not in a position to function constitutionally as
the law-making body of the new Rumanian political organism. In the
Acts of Union, did not the Rumanians of Hungary and Austria and Russia
expressly stipulate their local autonomy? The bases of the new Rumanian
state and the authority of its united Parliament had yet to be worked
out. The thesis was plausible and would have won the day for the time
being, had it not been for differences of opinion among the political
leaders of the old Kingdom. There was also the fear shared by all
that the Rumanians could not hold out against the Supreme Council in
the matter of the treaties unless the new Parliament was regarded as
constitutional and authoritative, not transitional.
Considerations of foreign policy prevailed. Premier Bratianu resigned.
He was succeeded by M. Vaïda, a Transylvanian Nationalist, who could
claim the support of the parliamentary majority. Premier Vaïda was a
deputy in the Hungarian Parliament at the beginning of the war. His
whole life had been spent in fighting against government by a small
clique. To emancipate his fellow-Transylvanians from exploitation at
the hands of the Magyar aristocracy, he made himself the advocate
of universal suffrage, equal and secret; ownership of land by those
who work it; exclusion of foreign capital and foreign management
in the industrial and mining enterprises and in transportation;
communal ownership of forests and mines; local autonomy; and universal
compulsory education. One readily sees how leaders of subject races,
in the fight against a dominant nation, must be radicals and appeal
to the common people against vested interests. Where there is a
racial question, the nationalism of the oppressed race is inevitably
radicalism. Alas for the hopes of the politicians who espoused
irredentism and believed that they would be simply extending their
field of action! Alas for the hopes of the statesmen of the great
powers, who saw in irredentism the means of destroying enemies and
creating new fields for commercial and industrial exploitation in
small states dependent upon them! The easily controlled Parliament
of the former Kingdom of Rumania was gone forever, now that millions
of new voters were added to the electorate--voters whose background
had been different for centuries, and who had united with the state
whose citizenship they had assumed by agreements containing definite
stipulations.
Every nationalist movement has as its corollary the effort to oust
foreigners from concessions and economic privileges secured in the days
of absolutism and weakness. The Rumanians did not wait to begin the
fight to rid their country of economic servitude to the great powers.
Germany had lost all her treaty privileges of ante-bellum days, and
the new treaties provided for the cancellation of concessions and
contracts of German and Austro-Hungarian subjects. Of course it was
the intention of the victors to substitute themselves for the enemies
and rivals they had ousted, and secret agreements to that effect were
concluded. But New Rumania is determined to put a stop to the old
practice of foreign enterprises protected by diplomatic treaties.
In 1923 the struggle is still going on against the old-fashioned
aims of foreign capital, with governmental backing, to bind smaller
nations hand and foot. Premier Vaïda did not last long, because of the
inevitable disruptive influences at work in coalitions. But the old
oligarchy was equally unable to remain in power. When the Constituent
Assembly was elected in 1920 there was so much intimidation and
corruption that the minority parties began to cry out against its right
to frame and adopt a constitution. The Constituent Assembly finally
voted the new constitution, under the skilful majority leadership of
the veteran Bratiano, who had once more become premier. The final vote
was 225 for and 122 against; but the Opposition, denying the legality
of the Assembly, declared the constitution unacceptable unless revised.
Disorders broke out in Bucharest and the provinces. Premier Bratiano
at once declared martial law, and the King signed the new constitution.
On April 4, 1923, occurred the first serious rioting in Bucharest in
which the troops fired upon the people. The minority parties, who
gained much strength from the new parts of Rumania, complained that the
constitution deprives minorities of political rights and centralizes
the powers of the Government in an oppressive manner.[15]
Rumania is the prey of internal political instability, in which
agrarian reform, adjustment to the different conditions heretofore
existing in the new provinces, the constant menace from Russia, the
revival of Hungary, and the new crisis in the question of the Straits
have all played their part. The problems and tendencies of Greater
Rumania, so clearly posed and defined at the moment of her birth, have
become obscured for the moment in the effort of the country to find
internal political stability and to guard against dangers menacing it
from the east and the west. The Russian danger has been a beneficial
thing in one way: it has acted as a deterrent in the internal political
strife.
But insecurity has played havoc with Rumanian finances. Her money
has depreciated more than that of defeated Bulgaria. And yet Rumania
hesitates to contract a large foreign loan, fearing that conditions
will be imposed of the kind she successfully resisted at Paris in 1919.
So her wealth and mineral oil and cereals are not saving her from
following the path of other European states large and small, a path
that is leading to bankruptcy.