In 1907 a large number of Rumanian peasants had revolted. Order, so-called, had been restored by employing other peasants, clothed in uniforms, to shoot their fellow-sufferers down. The tragedy of violence and repression was of but short duration; once more the peasants resigned themselves to fate, once more their smouldering passions were pent up by a dam of military force.
Bratiano, as leader of the Liberal Party, became Prime Minister at the end of 1913; he realized more clearly than his predecessors that Rumania’s peasant population was one of the country’s greatest assets, and that, under the then existing conditions, this asset was not being fully utilized. His Government was pledged to a scheme of agrarian reform, and began its task with a characteristic act—money was needed, but increased taxation meant loss of popularity, and so the Army vote was drawn upon, and the equipment of the troops neglected. Like many others, Bratiano had refused to believe that the German people would so abase themselves before the Junkers as to permit the latter to provoke a European war; he had been mistaken, he had erred by rating common sense too high. When Germany’s criminal folly became an accomplished fact, it found the Rumanian Army unprepared, and shattered Bratiano’s plans. Rumania, though a neutral State, lived in the shadow of the cataclysm, perpetually a prey to excursions and alarms; reforms in such an atmosphere were impossible, the old abuses lingered, the middle classes reaped a golden harvest, and further claims were made on the patience of the poor.
Mad misdirection and abuse of human effort were disintegrating Central Europe, and had paralysed progressive legislation in every neighbouring State. During his frequent pilgrimages, a disappointed statesman had time for sombre meditations, he may have seen a symbol of them in a wide stretch of sleeping waters stagnating round a disused mill.
An avenue of elm trees leads westward from the mill, skirting the water’s edge; it runs in a straight line on level ground, and so, a pilgrim entering by the gate could see at the far end, although it was a kilometre distant, a walnut tree against a white background. When blazing sunlight beat down on the fields and swirls of dust choked travellers on the road, this avenue was always cool and green and, like a vast cathedral’s nave, soothed anxious, troubled spirits and rested dazzled eyes. At all seasons of the year, an innumerable host of rooks circled above the elms, and from a choir in the clouds bird-voices pealed in deep-toned rapturous crescendos, lulling the memories of petty strife and discord brought from the city in the plain.
Three years ago, a low two-storied building, in colour mainly white, with wide verandahs embowered in creepers, stood out against the sky beyond the walnut tree. The house faced south, on both sides and behind it were open spaces flanked by greenhouses and walled gardens, through which there ran an avenue of Italian poplars, linking the village with a private chapel; in front, the “sleeping waters” spread out in their full glory, a broad and placid surface fringed with willows, which leaned away from the supporting banks as though they sought their own reflection. Between the waters and the house a palace stood, empty but not a ruin, a monumental relic of a bygone reign and period; standing four square, crowned and protected by a roof of slate. Such buildings can be seen in Venice and Ragusa, with fluted columns poised on balustrades of rich and fanciful design, composing graceful loggias.
More than two centuries have passed since Bassarab Brancovan, a ruling prince, first brought Italian craftsmen to Wallachia. The tokens of these exiles’ art are numerous, but nowhere do they find such perfect and complete expression as in this palace, built for the prince himself, whose pale, brick walls, with fretted cornices and sculptured Gothic windows, are mirrored in a glassy surface and framed by willow trees.
Within the dwelling-house, the rooms looked larger than they were, an optical illusion being produced by shadows on floor and ceiling and corners obscured in gloom. The curtains hung upon the walls like draperies, and chairs and tables were disposed in groups, with an unerring instinct for achieving harmony between utility and taste. Flowers were never absent from these rooms, and made the house a floral temple, whose forecourt was alternately the greenhouse and the garden, the former produced in January what the latter gave in June.
Such was the shrine—the presiding Deity was a lady still young in years, but learned in history and the arts, beyond the compass of most men. With her there lived her daughter and an English governess, a peacock in the garden and a mouse-coloured Persian cat.
Here, men whose lives were darkened by suspicion found a rare atmosphere, where mystery was physical, and did not hide the truth; here, could be learned the story of a race from one whose memory was saturated with traditions, who faced the future calmly, knowing its perils, sustained by hope and faith; here could be heard the twin voices of sanity and reason, expounding not what Rumania was supposed to think, but what Rumania thought.
In Bucharest, a very different tone prevailed—sentimentality, not wholly free from interest, combined with unscrupulous propaganda to misrepresent the issues before the Rumanian people and the Government. Even official representatives of the Allied Powers joined in the conspiracy of deception. In the month of April, 1915, the French Military Attaché announced, with all the authority conferred by his position and access to secret sources of information, that the Germans could not continue the war for more than two months from the date on which he spoke, as their stocks of copper were exhausted; the argument based on this astounding statement was that Rumania should intervene at once, and lay hands on Transylvania before it would be too late. In private life a man who tried to gain advancement by such methods would be locked up for fraud.