"I don't think you quite understand," he once said to her, "the fearful responsibility that will rest upon the Balkan statesman who decides the policy of his country in this crisis. Whatever happens, England will remain England, France will remain France, Germany will remain Germany; but in Rumania, although our sympathies are with you, our geographical position makes us the natural allies of the Germans. Suppose we march with you and something goes wrong. Nothing can prevent us from being Germanized for the rest of our history. You mustn't pay too much attention to the talk you hear about the great power of Rumania and the influence we shall have upon the course of the war. Such talk springs from a half-expressed nervousness at the position in which we find ourselves. We are trying to bolster ourselves up with the sense of our own importance in the hope that we shall have the wisdom to direct our policy rightly. We are not a great power; we are a little power; and our only chance of becoming a great power would be that Austria should break up, that Russia should crumble away, and that the whole vile country of Bulgaria should be obliterated from the surface of the earth. It is certain that Bulgaria will march with Germany; nothing can stop that except the defeat of Germany this year. Possibly Italy may come in on your side this spring, but tied as we are to her by blood, we are separated from her by miles of alien populations, and Italy cannot help us. Greece is in the same plight as we are—not quite, perhaps, because she can depend for succor upon the sea: we can't. Ah, if you could only open the Dardanelles! If you only had a statesman to see that there lies the key to certain victory in this war. But statesmen no longer exist among you great powers. You've become too big for statesmen and can only produce politicians. The only statesmen in Europe nowadays are to be found in the Balkans, because since every man here is a politician it requires a statesman to rise above the ruck. Paradox though it may seem, statesmen create states; they are not created by them. We have all our history before us in the Balkans, if we can only survive being swallowed up in this cataclysm; but I doubt if we can. To you this country of mine is like a comic opera, but to me, one of the players, it is as tragic as 'Pagliacci.'
"You are right in a way to mock at our aristocracy, though much of that aristocracy is not truly Rumanian, but bastard Greek; yet we have such a wonderful peasantry, and an idealist like myself dreads the effect of this war. All our plans of emancipation, all our schemes for destroying the power of the great landowners," and in a whisper he added, "all our hopes of a republic are doomed to failure. I tell you, my dear, it's tragic opera, not comic opera."
"But if you are a republican, why do you wear the uniform of a crack cavalry regiment?" Sylvia asked.
"Oh, I've thought that out," Philidor replied. "I belong to a good family. If I proclaimed my opinions openly, I should merely be put on one side. Aristocratic rule is more powerful in Rumania than anywhere in Europe except Prussia. The aristocrats have literally all the capital of the country in their hands; our peasants are serfs. As an avowed republican I could do nothing to spread the opinions that I believe to be the salvation of my country and the preservation of her true independence; we are a young state—not a state at all, in fact, but a limited liability company with a director imported from the chief European firm of king-exporters—and we have still to realize our soul as by fire."
"The soul of a country," Sylvia murmured. "It's only the aggregate of the human souls that make it, but each soul could be the microcosm of the universe."
"True, true," Philidor agreed. "And the soul of Rumania is the soul of a girl who's just out, or of a boy in his first year at college. Hence all the prettiness and all the complacent naughtiness and all the imitation of older and more worldly people and all the tyranny and contempt for the rights of the poor, the want of consideration for servants really. Though I must be young like the rest and dress myself up and lead the life of my friends, I am always hoping to influence them gradually, very gradually. Perhaps if I were truly a great soul I should fling over all this pretense; but I know my own limitations, and all I pray is that when the man arises who is worthy to lead Rumania toward liberty and justice I shall have the wit to recognize him and the courage to follow his lead."
"But you said just now," Sylvia reminded him, "that all the European statesmen were to be found in the Balkans."
"I still say that, but our statesmen—we have only two—dare not in the presence of this war think of anything except the safety of the country. Republicanism would be of little use to a Rumania absorbed either into the Dual Monarchy or into the Czardom of Russia or ravaged by the hellish Bulgarians. I tell you that we see precipices before our steps whichever way we turn for the path; but because we are young we dress ourselves up and gamble and sing and dance and swagger and boast; we are young, my dear girl—very, very young, perhaps not old enough for our death to be anything but pathetic."
"You're in a very pessimistic mood to-night," Sylvia said.
"Who could be anything but gloomy when he looks round a room like this? A crowd of French, Rumanian, and Austrian cocottes dancing to 'Tipperary' in this infernal tinkling din—forgive my frankness, but you know I don't include you in the galère—while over there I see a cousin of my own, a member of one of our greatest families, haggling with a dirty German agent over the price of sending another six aeroplanes to Turkey disguised as agricultural implements; and over there I see a man, who I had always hoped was an honest editor, selling his pen to the fat little German baron that will substitute poison for ink and bank-notes for honest opinions; and over there are three brother officers with three girls on their knees singing the words of 'Tipperary' with as much intelligence as apes, while they brag to their companions of how in six weeks they will be marching to save France."