"Since November, 1916, the Rumanian oil industry has been destroyed. In
the last ten days before the Germans penetrated into the rich Prahova
Valley the British mission under Lieut. Col. Norton Griffiths destroyed
everything--wells, tanks, refineries were burned, smashed to pieces,
or blown up, so that even now, after a year and a half, the Germans
have not been able to reconstruct them. According to statements made by
German prisoners in November last, none of obstructed wells had been
put in order again. The German engineers have worked hard, boring new
wells, but have not succeeded in getting more than 10 to 15 per cent.
of the normal production. However, although the refineries and wells
have been destroyed, the oil fields exist, and I think that not even
50 per cent. of them have yet been worked in Rumania. The Germans know
this, and the clause in the peace treaty that they should have the
control and monopoly of the oil fields for ninety-nine years will make
them the real owners and entirely independent of the American market.
These two assets--the corn and the oil--on which the whole wealth of
the Rumanian Kingdom was based, are thus under direct German control."
"Furthermore, Rumania has suffered much during the war. Towns and
villages have been destroyed, and nearly the entire stock of railway
carriages, vans, and locomotives has been lost. The productive capacity
of the country has been enormously diminished. About 60 per cent. of
the horned cattle and more than 70 per cent. of the horses have gone.
Famine and disease have made ravages among the rural population, nobody
having paid any attention to them. I have seen villages of 300 to
500 inhabitants reduced to 40. All the rest died from spotted typhus
or other scourges. This shows how reduced are the means of national
recovery after peace is signed. The financial situation is probably
worse than the economic. At the outbreak of the war the budget amounted
to 500,000,000 lei, ($100,000,000,) while the national debt was about
1,500,000,000 lei, ($300,000,000.) A few weeks before I left Jassy
the Minister of Finance told me that the debt had increased to about
$1,250,000,000. In the period from August, 1916, to February, 1918,
the revenue had been very greatly reduced. As the military situation
was always critical and the Government had decided twice, before
the Russian disaster, to move to Russia, everybody who had a little
money kept it at home and did not invest it in Government securities.
Therefore only a small amount had been raised in Rumania by loans;
the greatest part of the money had to be obtained from abroad, mainly from
England, but also from France and the United States, at a rate of 4 to
5 per cent. Thus the interest which Rumania had to pay on her national
debt represented about $62,500,000, or more than three-quarters of her
budget in the pre-war days."