England and Germany

CHAPTER XIV
READJUSTMENTS

Deprived of the help for which they had looked to Japan, the publicists and politicians of the allied countries now centred their hopes on the neutrals and on Kitchener’s great army, which was to appear on the scene in spring, put an end to the warfare of the trenches, and free Belgium from the Teuton yoke. The impending belligerency of certain of the neutrals would, it was reasonably believed, turn the scales in favour of Britain, France and Russia. Indeed, Bulgaria alone, owing to her commanding geographical position, might have achieved the feat more than once during the campaign. With the death of King Carol of Roumania⁸⁵ the probability of this consummation seemed to verge on certitude. It aroused high hopes among the Allies.

The propitious moment seemed to have come for the union of all Roumanians under the sceptre of the new king. Over three million members of that race under Hungarian sway had long been waging a losing contest for their nationality, language and religion. And they entertained no hope of better prospects in the future. For in view of her military inferiority Roumania, with her little army of half a million men, could not indulge in energetic protests against the treatment meted out to her kindred by Hungary. She had no choice but to resign herself to the inevitable. Diplomatically, too, she was bound to Austria by a secret convention, concluded by the Hohenzollern prince who had presided over her destinies for a generation. Economically she was, as we saw, tied hand and foot to Germany. Moreover, it was a matter of common knowledge that King Carol would never tolerate any radical change in the political orientation of the kingdom. To the writer of these lines he said so in plain words shortly before he died, and he also charged him with a message of the same tenor to the Austro-Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs. But, loyal and conscientious, as was his wont, King Carol added that if circumstances should ever necessitate a radical change in Roumania’s attitude, a younger ruler might usher it in, for whom he would not hesitate to make room.

This eventuality arose in September⁸⁶ when the Russians defeated the Austrians, occupied Lemberg, threatened Cracow, took up strong positions on the Carpathians, and bade fair to overrun Hungary. Fate, it seemed, had at last overtaken the Habsburg Monarchy, which, contrary to general expectation, had not succumbed to internal strife on the outbreak of the war. And it now lay with Roumania and her neighbours to play the part of Fate’s executors. As a matter of fact, Roumania suddenly found a sonorous voice in which to utter her grievances against the Teutons. Senators, deputies, ex-ministers executed a chassez croisez movement through France, Italy and Britain, delivering diatribes against Austria-Hungary, arousing sympathy for Roumania, and proclaiming their country’s resolve to strike a blow for justice, liberty and civilization. The names of Senator Istrati, M. Diamandy, and Dr. Constantinescu were associated with feasts of patriotic sentiment and flow of soul. Military delegates in Paris made extensive purchases of various necessaries for the commissariat and sanitary departments of the War Ministry, and the date on which the gallant Roumanian nation would unsheathe its sword in the cause of humanity was unofficially announced.

At that moment the country was governed, as it still is, by a Premier who might appropriately be termed its Dictator, so little influence on his policy and methods is wielded by his colleagues in the Cabinet. John Bratiano is the sole trustee of the nation at the most critical period of its history. The son of an eminent and deservedly respected statesman, this politician entered public life encircled by the halo of his father’s prestige. Gifted with considerable powers, he owes more to birth than to hard work and self-discipline. Entering early upon his valuable political heritage he found all paths smoothed, all doors open to him. The leadership of the most influential parliamentary party fell to him at an age when other politicians are painfully struggling with the preliminary difficulties in the way of success, and John Bratiano became the ruler of Roumania without an effort. Descended from an illustrious stock, he is penetrated with an overmastering sense of his own personal responsibility, from which the principal relief to be obtained lies in the indefinite prolongation of his liberty of choice. Finality in matters of momentous decision appears painful to him, and the standard of success which would fairly be applied to the policy of the ordinary statesman seems too lax for the man whose shoulders are pressed down with the weight of the kingdom as it is and the kingdom yet to come. Hence his anxiety to drive a brilliant bargain with the Allies and to leave no hold for hostile criticism at home. Like most patriots placed in responsible positions, he is bent on furthering what he considers the interests of his country in his own way, and honestly convinced that the right way is his own, he has hitherto declined to share responsibility with the Opposition – which disapproves his Fabian policy – even though it numbers among its members a real statesman of the calibre and repute of Take Jonescu.

At first M. Bratiano swam with the stream. He assured foreign diplomatists, eminent Italians and others, that Roumania had decided to throw in her lot with the Allies. And his declarations were re-echoed by his colleagues. These statements were duly transmitted to the various Cabinets interested, and the entry of Roumania into the struggle was reckoned with by all the Allied Powers. On the strength of these good intentions one of the Allies was asked to advance a certain sum of money for military preparations, and the request was complied with. Italy was approached and treated as a trusty confidant, and a tacit arrangement was come to with her by which each of the two Latin States was expected to communicate with the other as soon as it should decide to take the field. In fine, it was understood that Roumania would join in at the same time as Italy.

Cognizant of those intentions and preparations the Allies rejoiced exceedingly. The prospect that opened out before them appeared cheerful. Kitchener’s great army was to take the offensive in spring, Roumania’s co-operation was due some months or weeks previously, and the forcing of the Dardanelles might be counted upon as a corollary, to say nothing of the adherence of Greece and Bulgaria to the allied cause. But Germany and Austria lost nothing of their self-confidence. Clumsy though their professional diplomacy might be, their economico-diplomatic campaign had left little to be desired. Its fruits were ripe. They had firmly knitted the material interests of the little Latin State with their own, and could rely on the backing of nearly every supporter of Bratiano’s Cabinet in the country. But leaving nothing to chance, they now put forth the most ingenious, persistent and costly efforts to maintain the ground they had won. Influential newspapers were bought or subsidized, new ones were founded, public servants were corrupted, calumnies were launched against the Allies and their supporters, and a nucleus of military men ranged themselves among the opponents of intervention.

M. Bratiano suddenly turned wary and circumspect. His talk was now of the necessity of time for preparations, of the divergence of views between his Cabinet and that of the Tsar, and of the inadequacy of the motives held out to his country for belligerency. Thereupon negotiations began between Russia and Roumania, which dragged on endlessly. What the Roumanian Premier said to the Russian Minister was practically this: “The choice between belligerency and neutrality must be determined by the balance of territorial advantages offered by each. And the terms must be adequate and guaranteed.” The conditions which, according to him, answered to this description consisted of the cession of all Transylvania, part of the Banat of Temesvar, the Roumanian districts of Bukovina, and of the province of Crishana and Marmaros.

About Transylvania there was no dissentient voice: it was admitted that it ought by right to form part of the Roumanian kingdom. The dispute between Bucharest and Petrograd hinged on a zone of the Banat and a strip of Bukovina. The Tsar’s Government admitted that Bukovina might be annexed by Roumania as far as the river Seret, but not farther north; whereas the Roumanian Premier insisted on obtaining the promise of a zone the northern boundary of which would be formed by the river Pruth, and would therefore include the important city of Czernowitz, which is the capital of the province. The divergence of opinion arising out of this demand for the district of Pancsova in the Banat of Temesvar raised a formidable obstacle to an understanding, for the claim runs counter to the principle of nationality somewhat pedantically laid down by the Allied Powers. Parenthetically, it is worth remembering that hard-and-fast principles which lead insensibly to dogmatism cannot be too sedulously avoided by a Government. Politics must assuredly have its ideals, but compromise is the method by which alone it can approach them. The Allies have already been constrained by tyrannous circumstance to entertain important exceptions to their principle of nationality which was invoked against Italy’s claim to Dalmatia, and in their own best interests they might have compromised on the subject of Bulgaria’s claims to Macedonia, and of Roumania’s pretensions to annex certain of the disputed territories inhabited by Serbs and Ruthenians.

In truth, Roumania’s attitude, of which at various times conflicting accounts have been given, appears to be what one might reasonably expect, considering the sympathies of the nation, the interests of the State, and the requirements of the conjuncture. Looking at it from the view-point of the outsider, it would perhaps have been to her interest to join the Allies when the Russians, driving the Magyars and the Austrians before them, could have played the part of right wing to her armies. It was generally believed later on that she would unsheathe the sword at the same time as Italy. Informal announcements to that effect are known to have been made to certain official representatives of that country. And her failure to stand by these spontaneous declarations was the cause of profound disappointment to the Entente and of a considerable loss of credit to herself. These facts and conclusions appeal with irresistible force to the uninitiated, and in especial to those among them who are citizens of the belligerent States.

But there is another aspect of the matter which, whatever effect its disclosure may have on the general verdict, is at any rate well worth considering. According to this version, which is based on what actually passed between Bucharest and the capitals of the Entente Powers, the central idea of Roumania’s strivings was to achieve national unity together with defensible military frontiers as far as appeared feasible, and to obtain in advance implicit assurances that the Entente Powers, if victorious, would allow her claims without demur or delay. The territories occupied by the Roumanians of Transylvania, the Bukovina, and the Banat were to be united under the sceptre of the King, including the strip which is contiguous to Belgrade. To this the Slavs demurred because Belgrade could then no longer remain the Serbian capital. But of these demands M. Bratiano would make no abatement, nor in the promise of the Entente to fulfil them would he admit of any ambiguity. Roumania’s experience in 1877, under M. Bratiano’s father, when, after having helped Russia to defeat the Turks, she was deprived of Bessarabia and obliged to content herself with the Dobrudja, was the main motive for this striving after definite conditions, while her readiness to look upon that loss of Bessarabia as final moved her to demand every rood of Austro-Hungarian territory which was inhabited by her kinsmen or had belonged to them in bygone days. These motives were inconsistent with the mooting of the Bessarabian question, and the statement so often made in the Press that Roumania demanded, and still demands, that lost province from Russia are absolutely groundless. The subject was never once broached.

It has been argued that although these claims to recompense may have been reasonable enough in themselves, to have made them conditions of Roumania’s participation in the war on the side of the Allies smacked more of the pettifogger than of the statesman. In a tremendous struggle like the present for lofty ideals this bargaining for territorial advantages showed, it was urged, the country and the Government in a sinister light. To this criticism the friends of M. Bratiano reply that most of the belligerents set the example, with far less reason than Roumania could plead. Italy, for instance, had made her military co-operation conditional on the promise of a large part of Dalmatia, as well as the terra irredenta, and Russia insisted upon having her claim to Constantinople allowed. Why, it is asked, should Roumania be blamed for acting similarly and on more solid grounds?

During the first phase of the conversations which were carried on between Roumania and the Entente there would appear to have been no serious hitch. They culminated in a loan of £5,000,000 advanced in January 1915. In the following month they ceased and were not resumed until April, when M. Bratiano was informed that it would facilitate matters if he would discuss terms with the Tsar’s Government. By means of an exchange of notes an arrangement had been come to by which Roumania was to have “the country inhabited by the Roumanians of Austria-Hungary” in return for her neutrality and on the express condition that she should occupy them par les armes before the close of the war. I announced this agreement in the summer of 1915 and, commenting on the controversy to which it gave rise, pointed out that it amounted only to a promise made by Russia and an option given to Roumania, which the latter state was at liberty to take up or forgo as it might think fit. It bound her to nothing. Consequently, to accuse her of having broken faith with Italy or the Entente is to betray a complete lack of acquaintance with the facts.

It was only when Roumania’s military participation was solicited that difficulties began to make themselves felt. And they proved insurmountable. So long as the Russian armies were victorious Roumania’s demands were rejected. When the Tsar’s troops, for lack of ammunition, were obliged to retreat, concessions were made very gradually, slight concessions at first, which became larger as the withdrawal proceeded, until finally – the Russian troops being driven out – everything was conceded, when it was too late. For with the departure of the Russian armies Roumania was so exposed to attack from various sides, and so isolated from her protectors, that her military experts deemed intervention to be dangerous for herself and useless to the Allies.

In Italy, it has been said with truth, the conviction prevailed that Roumania would descend into the arena as soon as the Salandra Cabinet had declared war against Austria, and a good deal of disappointment was caused by M. Bratiano’s failure to come up to this expectation. But the expectation was gratuitous and the disappointment imaginary. In an article written at the time I pointed out that one of the mistakes made by the Entente Powers consisted in the circuitous and clumsy way in which they negotiated with Roumania. The spokesman and guardian of Italy during the decisive conversations with the Entente was the Foreign Minister, Baron Sonnino, the silent member of the Cabinet. Now, this turned out to be a very unfortunate kind of guardianship, which his ward subsequently repudiated with reason. For one effect of his taciturnity – the Roumanians ascribed it to his policy – was to keep Roumania in the dark about matters of vital moment to her of which she ought to have had cognizance. Another was to treat with the Entente Governments as though Roumania had sold her will and private judgment to the Salandra Cabinet. This, however, is a curious story of war diplomacy which had best be left to the historian to recount. One day it will throw a new light upon matters of great interest which are misunderstood at present. Roumania’s co-operation then, as now, would have been of much greater help to the Allies than certain other results which were secured by sacrificing it. And sacrificed it was quite wantonly. We are wont to sneer at Germany’s diplomacy as ridiculously clumsy, and to plume ourselves on our own as tactful and dignified. Well, if one were charged with the defence of this thesis, the last source to which one would turn for evidence in support of it is our diplomatic negotiations with M. Bratiano’s Cabinet.

In the light of this exposé the severe judgments that have been passed on the policy of the Roumanian Cabinet may have to be revised.

The crux of the situation was the attitude of Bulgaria. Bulgaria, a petty country with a population inferior to that of London, impregnated with Teutonism and ruled by an Austro-Hungarian officer who loathes the Slavs, had throughout this sanguinary clash of peoples rendered invaluable services to the Teutons and indirectly inflicted incalculable losses on the civilized nations of the globe. This tremendous power for evil springs from her unique strategic position in Eastern Europe. At any moment during the conflict her active assistance would have won Constantinople and Turkey for the Allies, and if proffered during one of several particularly favourable conjunctures might have speedily ended the war. But so tight was Germany’s grip on her that she not only withheld her own aid, but actually threatened to fall foul of any of the Balkan States that should tender theirs. It is, therefore, no exaggeration to affirm that the duration of this war and some of the most doleful events chronicled during the first year of its prosecution, are due to the insidious behaviour of Ferdinand of Coburg and his Bulgarian coadjutors. One may add that this behaviour constitutes a brilliant and lasting testimony to the foresight and resourcefulness of German diplomacy. It is one of the products of German organization as distinguished from French and British individualism.

While Bulgaria was thus holding the menace of her army over Roumania’s head, and M. Bratiano stood irresolute between belligerency and neutrality, the German and Austrian armies were effectively co-operating with German and Austrian diplomatists. They compelled the Russians to withdraw from Eastern Prussia,⁸⁷ and from a part of Galicia⁸⁸] later on from Lodz, from the Masurian Lakes and Bukovina.⁸⁹ Gradually Roumania saw herself bereft of what would have been her right wing and cover, and her military men, the most influential of whom had been against intervention from the first, now declared the moment inauspicious on strategical grounds. Thereupon the oratorical representatives of the Roumanian people consoled themselves with the formula that Roumanian blood would be shed only for Roumanian interests, and that when a fresh turn of Fortune’s wheel should bring the Russian troops back to Bukovina and Galicia, the gallant Roumanians would strike a blow for their country and civilization.

It would be unfruitful to enter into a detailed examination of the efforts of the Allies to detach the neutrals, and in especial the Balkan States, from the Military Empires with which their interests had been elaborately bound up. But in passing, one may fairly question the wisdom of their general plan, which established facts – still fragmentary in character – enable us to reconstruct. The resuscitation of the Balkan League and the mobilization of its forces against Turkey was an enterprise from which the greatest statesmen of the nineteenth century, were they living, would have recoiled. For it presupposes an ascetic frame of mind among the little States, which in truth hate each other more intensely than they ever hated the Turks. The first condition of success, were success conceivable, would have been the abrogation of the Treaty of Bucharest and the redistribution of the territories, which its authors had divided with so little regard for abstract justice and the stability of peace. And to this procedure, which Bulgaria ostentatiously demanded, Serbia entered a firm demurrer in which she was joined by Greece. For Serbs and Bulgars have always been hypnotized by Macedonia. Their gaze is fixed on that land as by some magic fascination, which interest and reason are powerless to break. They think of the future development, nay of the very existence of their respective nations, as indissolubly intertwined with it. To lose Macedonia, therefore, is to forfeit the life-secret of nation. Hence Bulgaria obstinately refused to abate one jot of her demands, while Serbia was firmly resolved to reject them. It mattered nothing that the fate of all Europe and of these two States was dependent on compromise. The little nations took no account of the interests at stake. Each, like Sir Boyle Roche, was ready to sacrifice the whole for a part, and felt proud of its wisdom and will-power.

Under these circumstances the scheme of a resuscitated Balkan League should have been accounted a political chimera, whereas politics is the art of the possible. What might perhaps have been envisaged with utility was the selection of the less mischievous and more helpful of the unwelcome alternatives with which the allied diplomacy was confronted. If, for instance, it could have been conclusively shown that Bulgaria’s help was indispensable, adequate and purchasable, the plain course would have been to pay handsomely for that. However high the price, it would have been more than compensated by the positive and negative gains. If, on the other hand, Bulgaria were recalcitrant and inexorable, the Tsardom which protected her might to some good purpose have become equally so, and displayed firmness and severity. It has been said that Russia cannot find it in her heart either to coerce Serbia or to punish Bulgaria. If this be a correct presentation of her temper – and in the past it corresponded to the reality – then the Allies are up against an insurmountable obstacle which must be looked upon as one of the instruments of Fate.

Our Press is never tired of repeating that the neutrals have a right to think only of their own interest and to frame their policy in strict accordance with that, whether it draws them towards the Allies or the Teuton camp. To this principle exception may be taken. If it be true that the European community, its civilization and all that that connotes are in grave danger, then every member of that community is liable to be called on for help, and is bound to tender it. In such a crisis it is a case of every one being against us who is not actively with us. Otherwise the contention that this is no ordinary war but a criminal revolt against civilization, is a mere piece of claptrap and is properly treated as such by the neutrals. But there is another important side of the matter which has not yet been seriously considered. If the neutrals are warranted in ignoring the common interest and restricting themselves to the furtherance of their own, it is surely meet that the Allies, too, should enjoy the full benefits of this principle and frame their entire policy – economic, financial, political and military – with a view to promoting their common weal, and with no more tender regard for that of the non-belligerent States than is conducive to the success of their cause and in strict accordance with international law. The application of this doctrine would find its natural expression in the creation of an economic league of the Allied States with privileges restricted to its members. It may not be irrelevant to state that during one phase of the war combined action of the kind alluded to would have given the Allies the active help of one or two neutral countries. Nay, if the exportation of British coal alone had been restricted to the belligerents, the hesitation of those countries between neutrality and belligerency would have been overcome in a month.

Italy and Bulgaria, being the two nations whose attitude would in the judgment of German statesmen have the furthest reaching consequences on the war, were also the object of their unwearied attentions. And every motive which could appeal to the interest or sway the sentiment of those peoples was set before them in the light most conducive to the aims of the tempter. Those painstaking efforts were duly rewarded. Bulgaria, before abandoning her neutrality, had contributed more effectively even than Turkey to retard the Allies’ progress and to facilitate that of their adversaries.

For Italy’s restiveness Germany was prepared, but it was reasonably hoped that with a mixture of firmness, forbearance and generosity that nation would be prevailed upon to maintain a neutrality which the various agents at work in the peninsula could render permanently benevolent. And from the fateful August 3, 1914, down to the following May, the course of events attested the accuracy of this forecast. At first all Italy was opposed to belligerency. Deliberate reason, irrational prejudice, religious sentiment, political calculation, economic interests and military considerations all tended to confirm the population in its resolve to keep out of the sanguinary struggle. The Vatican, its organs and agents, brought all their resources to bear upon devout Catholics, whose name is legion and whose immediate aim was the maintenance of peace with the Central empires. The commercial and industrial community was tied to Germany by threads as fine, numerous and binding as those that rendered Gulliver helpless in the hands of the Lilliputians. The common people, heavily taxed and poorly paid, yearned for peace and an opportunity to better their material lot. The Parliament was at the beck and call of a dictator who was moved by party interests to co-operate with the Teutons, while the Senate, which favoured neutrality on independent grounds, had made it a rule to second every resolution of the Chamber. In a word, although Italy might wax querulous and importunate, her complaints and her demands would, it was assumed, play a part only in the scheme of diplomatic tactics, but would never harden into pretexts for war.

For it was a matter of common knowledge that departure from the attitude of neutrality, whatever its ultimate effects – and these would certainly be fateful – must first lead to a long train of privations, hardships and economic shocks, which would subject the limited staying powers of the nation – accustomed to peace, and only now beginning to thrive – to a searching, painful and dangerous test. From a Government impressed by this perspective, and conscious of its responsibility, careful deliberation, rather than high-pitched views, were reasonably expected.

And the attitude of the Cabinet since August 1914 had been marked by the utmost caution and self-containment. Contemplated from a distance by certain of the Allies whose attention was absorbed by the political aspect of the matter, this method of cool calculation seemed to smack of hollow make-believe. Why, it was asked, should Italy hold back or weigh the certain losses against the probable gains, seeing that she would have as allies the two most puissant States of Europe, and the enormous advantage of sea power on her side?