Hence, supposing the Germans were victorious, the Roumanians, who have been much alarmed by the idea of seeing the Russians installed at Constantinople, would be confronted by the danger of being soon entirely cut off from both the Black Sea and from the Mediterranean. The Bulgarians would take possession of the Roumanian Dobrudja, the Germans would remain at Constantinople and the Dardanelles, where they are already, and besides they would be dominant at Odessa and the mouths of the Danube, according to the plan drawn up, as far back as 1844, by the future Marshal Moltke (see p. 4). The authority of that name may satisfy the Roumanians that the scheme is no mere fantasy.
Moreover, it is plain enough that were Roumania once encircled, she could no longer dream of creating, as she so ardently desires to do, a national industry, since she would be no more than an economic territory reduced to impotence, a mere dumping-ground for goods made in Pangermany.
To sum up, we see that this is really a question of life or death for Roumania. A Prussian victory, in fact, would imperil her national independence in the most direct and indubitable manner. It appears that the general opinion in Roumania is alive to the danger and to the necessity of Roumanian intervention in the conflict. It remains to be seen whether German influences at Bukarest will be adroit enough and powerful enough to delude the Roumanian authorities into shilly-shallying till the decisive hour shall have come and gone.
CHAPTER VIII.
GERMAN MANŒUVRES TO PLAY THE ALLIES THE TRICK OF THE “DRAWN GAME,” THAT IS, TO SECURE THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE “HAMBURG TO THE PERSIAN GULF” SCHEME AS THE MINIMUM RESULT OF THE WAR.
I. The exceptional importance of the economic union of the Central Empires, and the danger for the Allies of establishing a connexion between that union and their own economic measures after the war.
II. Reasons for the Turco-German dodge of making a separate peace between the Ottoman empire and the Allies.
III. Why a separate and premature peace with Bulgaria would play the Pangerman game.
At the moment when this book is published, the Germans have certainly not renounced the hope of keeping and establishing a definite claim to the territories which they actually occupy on the West and on the East; but with their usual foresight they nevertheless contemplate the possibility of their having to consent to evacuate on the West, let us say, 90,478 square kilometres, and on the East 260,000 square kilometres, in order to preserve almost entire the principal part of the Pangerman acquisitions, that is to say, the gains made, directly or indirectly, to the South and South-east, namely, Austria-Hungary (676,616 square kilometres), the Balkans (215,585 square kilometres), Turkey (about 1,792,000 square kilometres). Total, 2,684,201 square kilometres.