from Rumania, when King Carol had proposed to his State Council that full military support should be given to Germany and Austria. Other counsels, as we know, prevailed; but the suggestion did not augur well for the idea of keeping the war away from the Balkans, or at least it showed that other influences would inevitably be brought to bear upon the States to induce them to intervene in the war.

As all the Balkan States, from the nature of the struggle and of the principles for which it was being fought, were affected by the outbreak of war, it was the duty of the Entente Powers to make them party to it. The Second Balkan War had left them divided into two camps; and the mutually hostile feeling in the Peninsula would naturally find expression in hostile acts, unless a special effort were made to bring the countries together. As Serbia was already fighting on the side of the Entente, the Central Powers could not hope to revive the Balkan bloc for their benefit. Their line of action, therefore, would be to exploit to their own advantage Bulgarian hostility to Serbia, and to rely on bringing in Rumania and Greece on their side by other arguments ad hoc. The best way to counteract this policy-the only way which offered any chance of success-lay in bringing the Balkans once more together in a federation for their mutual benefit. They would thus have been safeguarded against German intrigue; and, if they were to take part in the war, it would be as a powerful unit of over a million men, capable of exercising probably decisive influence over the course of the military operations. In a number of public statements the British Government has declared that Balkan union was the end it kept in view. Unfortunately, however, the methods adopted to achieve that end could be relied upon to render its attainment impossible.

There is no clear indication as to the exact time when the British Government abandoned its first idea of keeping the war out of the Near East. The idea can hardly have survived the declaration of war against Turkey on Nov. 5; it ought not to have survived the arrival of the 'Goeben' and the Breslau' at Constantinople on Aug. 16. Some allowance must be made for the preoccupations of the Allied Governments during the retreat

from Mons; but the turn of the tide in France had come on Sept. 5, when the Battle of the Marne began, and two days previously the arrival of six hundred Germans at Constantinople indicated what was brewing in Turkey. Even after the Porte had thrown in its lot with Germany there was plenty of time to reconstitute the Balkan bloc, either for military action or for purposes of neutrality, according to the predilections of the individual States. Before the summer of 1915 Rumania, Bulgaria and Greece, each in turn, offered to join the Entente Powers on terms which would have been readily accepted later and would have been accepted at the time, if the Allies had grasped the significance of the Balkans. We have Mr Asquith's own statement (House of Commons, Nov. 2, 1915) that 'ever since the beginning of the war, and especially since Turkey entered into it, we (the Allied Governments) have not ceased or slackened in our efforts to promote united action among the Balkan States and Rumania.' What a tragedy that, with such a clear conception of what was required of them, the Allied Governments should have set about their task in the one way calculated to defeat their ends! It will be generally admitted that nothing is more likely to antagonise a number of people mutually suspicious of one another than to know of secret negotiations being carried on with each one behind the backs of the others. Yet at one time or another, in the midst of those ceaseless efforts to promote united action among the Balkan States, the Allied Governments-over and above the understanding that Serbia would receive substantial concessions at the end of the war, affecting the whole position in the Balkans were responsible for offers to Rumania, that might be prejudicial to Serbia ; offers to Bulgaria, at the expense of Serbia and Greece; offers to Greece, again affecting the equilibrium of the Near East; an agreement with Italy which could only create dismay in Serbia and anxiety in Greece; and an arrangement regarding the future of Constantinople and the Dardanelles, the mere rumour of which was enough to make every Balkan State doubt the wisdom of throwing in its lot with the Entente Powers.

When the inner history of the war comes to be written, perhaps the most astounding feature in the Allies' conduct of it will be found to be their omission,

persisted in for fifteen months, to secure unity of direction whether for their diplomacy or for their strategy. As they were not the aggressors, there was nothing to prevent them from laying their diplomatic cards upon the table. They were fighting the cause of small nations; and the Balkans are the headquarters of that cause. A round-table conference of the Balkan States under the ægis of the Triple Entente, at which the details of an adjustment on the principle of nationality had to be settled within a given time, would have evolved an agreement in two parts, one of accepted changes, the other of changes proposed but contested. The duty of the Entente Powers would have been to pass judgment on the latter and to enforce their arbitration, while gilding the pill as far as possible with the offer of such compensation as it might be in their power to give at the end of a victorious war. Whether such a course would only have been possible with a Bismarck among the Allies others can judge; certainly the British Government had had experience before the war of the hopelessness of achieving united action among a number of States without such a conference, and experience of the success attending round-table discussions. No doubt difficulties would have had to be overcome, and, if only peace-time persuasion was to be allowed, some of the difficulties might have proved insuperable. But war calls for different methods from those that are suitable in peace; and the Allies' cause surely justified decisive action.

Instead of insisting upon a round-table conference, the Entente Powers elected to deal individually with the Balkan States. Even so, if the negotiations could have been carried out on sound lines, Balkan union might have been achieved. The negotiations failed for two reasons-because they ignored local conditions, in which term have to be included the national aims and the enemy's machinations; and because they were never supported either by a show of decision or by military strength. At the same time the omission to take other States into their confidence prejudiced the Allies' efforts in each State.

Germany herself at one time was so convinced that the position in the Balkans was wholly in favour of the

Allies that her earlier efforts were directed to securing the maintenance of neutrality by Rumania, Bulgaria and Greece. It was only when the Allies spoiled their own case that German intrigues were 'speeded up' with a view to having neutrality superseded by active cooperation on the side of the Central Powers. Thus, for the first three months of the war, both the belligerent groups were bidding for the neutrality of Rumania. One of the earliest mistakes made by Allied diplomacy was to offer Rumania for her neutrality practically all that could be conceded to her in return for her military co-operation. It would be an injustice to the late King Carol to regard him as merely the Hohenzollern in his attitude towards the European war. At the Crown Council held at Sinaia on Aug. 3, 1914, he proposed intervention on the side of the Central Powers, because he held that this would be the last struggle between the German Powers and Slavdom in which victory would side with the former. His foremost concern, I believe, was for his adopted country. He wished to see Rumania recover Bessarabia as the reward for her support of a victorious Austria, and then in the course of the next two decades, having made her peace with Russia, to be in at the death of Austria-Hungary, receiving the remainder of the Rumanian heritage in the annexation of Transylvania.

King Carol was unable to carry the Council with him. The country at the outbreak of the war was frankly in favour of intervention on the side of the Triple Entente; but the interventionists were somewhat taken aback to find that Russia had promised Rumania all she wanted in Transylvania in return for mere neutrality. In spite of this fact the Rumanian Government was still prepared to do the right thing, and it set about to find further support for a declaration of war. When the overtures to Greece failed owing to the latter's distrust of Bulgaria, the Rumanians turned to Italy. They counted on being party to any negotiations between Italy and the Entente, with a view to entering the war simultaneously with Italy. But, for reasons not revealed, the Allies deliberately kept the Rumanians in the dark regarding the progress of the negotiations, so that the Italian declaration of war, coming when it did, took Bucarest by surprise.

Meanwhile the negotiations with Russia had been dragging on with complete indifference to all considerations of urgency. The Rumanian Government, which not unnaturally placed a higher value on its military cooperation than Russia had on its mere neutrality, felt that it could only abandon that neutrality on the strength of a definite agreement with Russia, duly ratified by her Allies. It made no attempt to urge the question of Bessarabia; in regard to the Bukovina it asked that the River Pruth should continue to be the boundary between Rumania and Russia, and claimed the Banat in order to have a satisfactory geographical frontier on the west. Russia demurred to the Pruth line, as it meant that Czernowitz would become Rumanian, and proposed instead the Sereth; Great Britain objected to the whole of the Banat being Rumanian on the ground that the Serbians required the part of it opposite Belgrade for the protection of their capital. By the time the Allies' objections were overcome the military position dominated the negotiations. Rumania hesitated to commit herself to a formal agreement for fear lest premature disclosure of the fact might launch the Austro-German forces against her, while the Russians would not be at hand to help. At this time, moreover, the question of munitions was uppermost in all countries; and the Rumanian Government found that it was by no means adequately equipped for a long campaign, with the prospect of being cut off from further supplies, if Bulgaria were to join the Central Powers.

In the case of Rumania, then, it would appear that, at the time when she was ready to intervene, the diplomacy of the Allies made it impossible for her to take the step. The opportunity once lost, a variety of circumstances arose to confirm the Rumanian Government in its resolve to bide its time. It has not necessarily abandoned the idea of joining the Entente Powers; but it will put off the day of intervention as long as possible for the reason that a short campaign is preferable to a long one. Here, however, it may be pointed out that responsible people in Rumania, who are not pronounced interventionists, have maintained that the country might not be able to remain neutral, if the Central Powers should succeed in obtaining command of the Danube and the land route to Vol. 225.-No. 446.

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