Europe Since 1918

by Herbert Adams Gibbons

There is this difference, however, between the Congress of Berlin and the Conference of Paris. In 1919 the small nations protested more effectively against their exclusion from debates and their non-participation in decisions affecting their interests. They had taken advantage of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and Russia to occupy “unredeemed” territories. Rumania led the others in defying the Big Four. Refusing to abide by the decrees of a conference in which she had no voice, Rumania went ahead and formed her enlarged state as she wanted it. Only in a portion of the Banat of Temesvár and at the mouth of the Maros River are the Rumanians not under military control of Greater Rumania.

Most plausible have been the inspired articles from Paris condemning the intractability of Rumania. Rumania violated the terms of the armistice between the Allies and Hungary. Her forces occupying Budapest acted like highwaymen. The presence of a French army alone kept the Rumanians from overrunning a wholly Serbian portion of the Banat of Temesvár. Saved from the Austro-German yoke by Great Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, the Rumanians have shown their ingratitude, by refusing to abide by the wise just, and impartial decisions of the Supreme Council. They lay claim to purely Hungarian territory. They give evidence of bad faith and intolerance by not wanting to accept provisions in the Treaty of St.-Germain for the protection of racial and religious minorities. These are the charges. But before we pass judgment ought we not to hear the other side of the case and to examine the internal and external policy of Greater Rumania? What are the problems of Rumania as the Rumanians see them?

At the Peace Conference Premier Bratianu claimed as the component parts of Greater Rumania (1) the kingdom of Rumania as it was in 1914, (2) the province of Bessarabia, formerly belonging to Russia, (3) the Austrian province of Bukowina, and (4) the portion of Hungary known as Transylvania, the Maramouresh and Crishana regions, and the Banat of Temesvár. The greater part of the new frontiers claimed is clearly marked by great waterways, the Dniester, the Danube, and the Theiss. The Rumanians admit that these frontiers give them 250,000 Serbians in the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, a partly Hungarian population in the lower valley of the Maros, and many Bulgarians and Turks in the Dobrudja region taken from Bulgaria in 1913. But they argue that 100,000 Rumanians in Bulgarian territory and 300,000 Rumanians in Serbian territory on the right bank of the Danube offset Bulgarians and Serbians incorporated into Rumania. They point out, also, that more than 100,000 Rumanians will remain to Russia between the Dniester and the Bug. As for the Hungarians, if the frontier is drawn on strictly ethnographical lines, an impossible economic situation would be created, because of the loss of the means of exit by natural waterways and of the control of canals and railways.

Taken as a whole, the Rumanian claims were as legitimate as those put forth by any other country at the Paris Conference. The National Council of Bessarabia declared its reunion with Rumania on April 9, 1918; a General Congress of Bukowina (including the Poles and Germans) adopted a similar resolution on November 28, 1918; and on December 1, 1918, a General Assembly of elected representatives at Alba-Julia declared the union of Transylvania and the Banat of Temesvár “and the Rumanian territories of Hungary” with the kingdom of Rumania. This act of union was ratified on January 8, 1919, by a General Assembly of the “Saxons of Transylvania.” By two royal decrees King Ferdinand accepted the administrative control of these territories and admitted to the Rumanian cabinet ministers without portfolio to represent them. The Peace Conference was confronted with a fait accompli.

The Big Four and the Supreme Council that followed them did not contest Rumania’s right to Transylvania and to the larger portions of Bukowina and the Banat of Temesvár. These had been promised by the secret treaty of 1916. Since the principle of the conference was strictly vae victis, the question of a revision of the Bulgarian boundary of 1913 did not come up. But the powers were afraid to say anything about Bessarabia. That its inclusion in Rumania was in accordance with the principles for which they had fought did not bother them. For a whole year our peacemakers played a disgusting game of duplicity with Rumania in the Bessarabian question, the proofs of which were in the hands of Premier Bratianu as early as April. It is distasteful to have to say so, but since we have not minced words with Rumania why should she mince words with us?

The President of the United States and the Premiers of France, Great Britain, and Italy did not discourage Rumania’s aspirations because they wanted to use the Rumanians to fight the Bolsheviki. And while they were “stringing” Premier Bratianu they secretly promised Admiral Kolchak and General Denikin that the future of Bessarabia should be decided by the Russians themselves. This was on a par with the promise made by the French representatives at Kiev to Ukrainia in 1918. On November 1, 1919, Rumania finally lost the last vestige of confidence in the good faith of her big allies; and she formally notified the Supreme Council of the annexation of Bessarabia. God helps those who help themselves. Since Cavour, statesmen of all small countries have learned in their dealings with the great powers that so long as one looks upon them as Dives crumbs and crumbs alone fall from the table. The union of Bessarabia with Rumania was approved by the Supreme Council in March, 1920, after the collapse of the Russian counter-revolutionary movements.

The Entente Powers acted as a moderating influence in dealing with the territorial claims of Rumania against Hungary and Serbia. As regards Hungary, the Rumanians admitted themselves that a fair frontier was exceedingly difficult to establish. The Hungarian islands in the eastern part of Transylvania gave them a larger Magyar population than they wanted; and, unlike the Poles, the Rumanians realized the danger of annexing alien border districts. Between Rumanians and Hungarians the bitterness is not so great as between Poles and Germans or between Poles and Russians. The boundary finally agreed upon by the Entente commission gave Rumania a far more advantageous frontier than she had either ethnographic or economic right to. But Hungary is so self-supporting a country agriculturally that the loss of provinces does not cause the hardships and force the lower standard of living that Germany and Austria are suffering.

The frontier dispute with Serbia has been adjusted, but to the satisfaction of neither state. The Banat of Temesvár is a little country lying north of the Danube from a point above Belgrade east to the Iron Gates. The Theiss River, running due south into the Danube, separates it from the former Bacs-Bodro province of Hungary. In the angle between the Theiss and the Danube, the Serbian-speaking population overflows both rivers and penetrates for many miles into the Banat. Farther east, the Rumanian population has overflowed south of the Danube for fifty miles in the Timok Valley and in the extreme northwestern corner of Bulgaria. When the Serbians advanced their claim to a portion of the Banat, disregarding the natural river boundaries, the Rumanians countered with the statement that there would still be more Rumanians in Serbia, in territory contiguous to Rumania, than Serbians in Rumania, if the entire Banat should be awarded to Rumania.

The Theiss and the Danube are natural frontiers. Either the Danube is a boundary or it is not. If it is not, the ethnographical argument cuts both ways. But the Supreme Council, in order to appease the Jugoslavs, took their side against Rumania and divided the Banat. The river from which the Banat takes its name, the canals, and the railway reach the Danube and Theiss through territory awarded to Serbia. In the hinterland are the richest coal and iron regions of the old Kingdom of Hungary. The short-sighted, self-centered diplomacy of the Big Four did not behave with real friendship for Serbia nor with regard for permanent peace in the Balkans. The principle applied was the exact opposite of the one used in deciding frontier questions between Italy and Serbia. One cannot escape from the conclusion that the underlying motive was what had always guided the great powers in their Balkan diplomacy, to limit one another’s influence and to prevent the Balkan States from arriving at a direct compromise, thus keeping troubled waters in which to fish.

The most serious quarrel between Rumania and the Entente Powers was over the method of drawing up the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon, and over certain of their stipulations regarding protection of minorities and economic privileges. Writers who took their cue from the statesmen of the great powers, including those of our own country, gave the public a persistently unfair and denatured explanation of Rumania’s attitude on these questions. There was a bitter background of experience behind the Rumanians when they refused to accept the renewal of the Berlin clauses concerning the protection of minorities. At Berlin they had offered to grant full citizenship to Jews if Russia would assume a similar obligation. It was dangerous to give citizenship to immigrants and children of immigrants automatically so long as Russia continued to oppress the Jews. In a few years Rumania would have been swamped. In 1917, when the old régime disappeared in Russia, citizenship was voted to native Jews of Rumania. They were enfranchised; a renewal of the Berlin stipulations and the making of a new contract with the powers were unnecessary. The minorities in the new territories were protected by the provisions in the Acts of Union, which had been presented to the Peace Conference. Why should Rumania put her head into the noose by signing an annex with the big powers which would enable them to find a pretext at any time to blackmail Rumania for economic concessions by stirring up trouble?