The perils of premature intervention, both for the Allies and the Rumanian people, were only too obvious. While Rumania’s sole link with the Western Powers was a precarious line of communications through Russia, her neutrality was preferable to her alliance; the former was no doubt unsatisfactory, but the latter exposed a reservoir of food supplies and petrol to invasion from the south and west. Even if properly equipped and efficiently maintained, the Rumanian Army would have had no easy task; in the absence of these conditions it was madness to go to war.
In Paris, the irritation was profound. The French Government had assumed control of the negotiations with the neutral Balkan States, and was mastered by an impatience born of intolerance and fear. This frame of mind had been induced by a total misconception of the real facts of the case. There was no danger that the Rumanian people, however tempted, would join the Central Powers. Bratiano surveyed the European situation through the same telescope as the Allies. He saw their final triumph clearly, but knew it was not so close as they imagined. His vision, perhaps, had magnified the distance by looking through the larger end, but, unlike them, he knew the complexity of the problem to be dealt with in the East; they viewed it merely as an adjunct to the slaughter in the West.
The Quai d’Orsay was quite incapable of appreciating the Rumanian point of view; its self-appointed task was “to bring Rumania in.” Persuasion, on moral and sentimental grounds, had been unavailing. Some details of the Italian Treaty had leaked out, and had revealed a marked absence of the principles of self-sacrifice and abnegation, in the cause of liberty, on the part of a greater Latin State. It was clear that Rumania, like Italy, would have to get her price; much would depend, however, on the way that price was paid.
Rumania claimed Transylvania, together with Bukovina and the Banat,[26] as her share of the spoil, in the event of Allied victory; she was eager to fight for these Austro-Hungarian provinces, if given a fighting chance. Unfortunately for the Allies, no amount of eloquence could improve the communications through the Russian Empire, and a second attempt to force the Dardanelles was excluded from their plans. Arguments based on the presence of Allied troops at Salonika, with which it was suggested the Rumanian Army might co-operate, were without effect, and the statement in this connection that the shortest way to Budapest was via Sofia was regarded as more picturesque than true. The Rumanian Government had no desire to make war on the south bank of the Danube, where nothing was to be gained, and the Rumanian General Staff knew, from experience, the difficulties of a Danube crossing if seriously opposed. An operation of this nature would have absorbed a large proportion of the Rumanian forces, leaving an insufficient number to hold the frontier in the Carpathians, which was longer than the Allied front in France, while the distance from its nearest point to Bucharest was less than 100 miles.
The foregoing were some of the obstacles to Rumanian intervention. To overcome them by fair means demanded considerable efforts from the Allies as part of a concerted plan. No such plan existed; France could offer nothing except promises of ammunition, Great Britain could provide ships and money, Russia alone could give support and, if the need arose, apply pressure to this neutral State.
The case of Greece was simpler. There, reluctance could be dealt with and “unnatural” behaviour punished. The Piræus could be reached by sea, whereas Rumania was land-locked to the Allies. The Russian Empire was the neighbour and the only highway, and Germany was near.
“All is fair in love and war.” The Allies had passed through the stage of courtship with Rumania; their blandishments and arguments had yielded no results. Cajolery of agents behind the back of Bratiano had also been tried and failed. Now they declared war on her neutrality, and, through the force of circumstances, let Russia take the lead.
The British Government had, as usual, no policy in the Balkans, and was amenable to French advice. A series of diplomatic rebuffs at Athens had confirmed our Foreign Office in its traditional attitude of disinterestedness, and the general feeling was that Rumania, in common honesty, should intervene, because she had accepted loans. Some people think that British gold can purchase anything, including a little country’s soul. The War Office Staff was absorbed by the operations in France and Flanders, to the exclusion of all other theatres in a world-wide war. To the strategists of Whitehall the military participation of Rumania was just another “side-show,” which they accepted with some reserves and treated as the lighter side of the war; they were prepared to endorse any plan which did not involve the use of British soldiers, and left their own selves free to duplicate the work of Army Staffs and other exponents of “Grand Tactics” already on the Western front. Ignorance and indifference made these officers the echoes of Frenchmen who posed as experts; the protests of Englishmen who pointed out that the Rumanian Army was, figuratively, “in the air,” were brushed aside as technical objections, which would have carried weight in the “main theatre,” but were pretexts, in a “side-show,” for inaction and delay. These military “Panglosses” had chosen to forget their own shortsightedness and mismanagement at Gallipoli, the fate of Servia contained no lesson for them, they urged Rumania to do what they themselves would not have done, and stilled the voice of conscience with the hope that all would be for the best in the best of all possible alliances, if not at once at any rate in the end. What that end would be or when it would occur, the official mind could not foresee. It foresaw nothing except a chance of self-advancement, and that it promptly seized.
In Petrograd there had never been great enthusiasm in regard to Rumanian intervention. Russian military opinion, as expressed by the Grand Duke Nicholas in 1915, had been opposed to an extension of the Eastern front by the Rumanian Army, whose unpreparedness was well known to the Russian Staff. This reasoning had at the time been eminently sound, and the fact that in the intervening period Bulgaria had joined forces with the Central Powers only increased its cogency. Another factor supervened: the men who ruled Russia at this period had not forgotten Plevna.[27] Great Powers dislike being under obligations to little neighbouring States, and are apt to be bad debtors when it comes to paying debts. Though not over-burdened with scruples, the Russian Government realized that, on this occasion, a contract entered into with Rumania might have to be fulfilled. The Pan-Slavist elements in Petrograd objected to any aggrandizement of the southern neighbour, and thought Rumania’s price too high; in their eyes, postponement of final victory was preferable to having, for the second time, so exacting a partner in success. Hitherto, Russia had worked to keep Rumania out, while France and Great Britain tried to bring her in.