Every nationalist movement has as its corollary the effort to oust foreigners from concessions and economic privileges secured in the days of absolutism and weakness. The Rumanians did not wait to begin the fight to rid their country of economic servitude to the great powers. Germany had lost all her treaty privileges of ante-bellum days, and the new treaties provided for the cancellation of concessions and contracts of German and Austro-Hungarian subjects. Of course it was the intention of the victors to substitute themselves for the enemies and rivals they had ousted, and secret agreements to that effect were concluded. But New Rumania is determined to put a stop to the old practice of foreign enterprises protected by diplomatic treaties.
In 1923 the struggle is still going on against the old-fashioned aims of foreign capital, with governmental backing, to bind smaller nations hand and foot. Premier Vaïda did not last long, because of the inevitable disruptive influences at work in coalitions. But the old oligarchy was equally unable to remain in power. When the Constituent Assembly was elected in 1920 there was so much intimidation and corruption that the minority parties began to cry out against its right to frame and adopt a constitution. The Constituent Assembly finally voted the new constitution, under the skilful majority leadership of the veteran Bratiano, who had once more become premier. The final vote was 225 for and 122 against; but the Opposition, denying the legality of the Assembly, declared the constitution unacceptable unless revised. Disorders broke out in Bucharest and the provinces. Premier Bratiano at once declared martial law, and the King signed the new constitution. On April 4, 1923, occurred the first serious rioting in Bucharest in which the troops fired upon the people. The minority parties, who gained much strength from the new parts of Rumania, complained that the constitution deprives minorities of political rights and centralizes the powers of the Government in an oppressive manner.[15]
Rumania is the prey of internal political instability, in which agrarian reform, adjustment to the different conditions heretofore existing in the new provinces, the constant menace from Russia, the revival of Hungary, and the new crisis in the question of the Straits have all played their part. The problems and tendencies of Greater Rumania, so clearly posed and defined at the moment of her birth, have become obscured for the moment in the effort of the country to find internal political stability and to guard against dangers menacing it from the east and the west. The Russian danger has been a beneficial thing in one way: it has acted as a deterrent in the internal political strife.
But insecurity has played havoc with Rumanian finances. Her money has depreciated more than that of defeated Bulgaria. And yet Rumania hesitates to contract a large foreign loan, fearing that conditions will be imposed of the kind she successfully resisted at Paris in 1919. So her wealth and mineral oil and cereals are not saving her from following the path of other European states large and small, a path that is leading to bankruptcy.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TABLES TURNED ON HUNGARY
The Treaty of Trianon, signed on June 4, 1920, destroyed a kingdom that had existed for a thousand years by allotting two thirds of the territory and population of the historic realm to Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Jugoslavia, and Austria. Before the collapse of the Central Empires Hungary had a population of about twenty-two millions, nearly half of whom were Hungarian. After the treaty the population was reduced to seven and a half millions, in the proportion: Hungarian, 88.4 per cent; German, 7; Slovakian, 2.2; and about 110,000 Croatians, Rumanians, and Serbians. In order to accomplish the liberation of subject nationalities, Hungarians were put under foreign yoke, all (with the exception of part of those given to Rumania) in contiguous territories, as follows:
| Subject to Czechoslovakia | 1,084,000 |
| Subject to Rumania | 1,705,000 |
| Subject to Jugoslavia | 458,000 |
| Subject to Austria | 80,000 |
The Paris Conference, on the recommendation of military experts, changed the boundary between Austria and Hungary, south of the Danube, in order to protect Pressburg (Bratislava), given to Czechoslovakia for a port. There was the added motive of creating a breach between the former allies. The large number of Hungarians put under Czechoslovakia was due to two considerations: to afford the new state a long Danube frontier; and to make possible an Entente airplane and military base close to the capital of Hungary. An ethnographic frontier with Rumania was rejected because of the promises to Rumania during the war to induce her to intervene on the side of the Entente Powers. The Czechoslovak frontier was carried across the Carpathians to include Ruthenia, and nearly half a million Hungarians were transferred to Jugoslav nationality, so that Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Jugoslavia might have common frontiers and railway communications in friendly territory.
The Entente Powers had fought to liberate subject races, not simply to give border populations a change of masters. But the new countries needed strategic frontiers and economic resources. Therefore their liberation necessitated the slavery of one third of the former master race to the former subject races. Defeated Hungary saw the principle of self-determination invoked in behalf of other peoples for the purpose of despoiling her, but ignored when for economic or strategic reasons the liberated peoples needed territories inhabited by Hungarians. It was a case of turning the tables. Might once more made right. The Hungarians were given a dose of their own medicine. The outcry against the Treaty of Trianon, whose terms were announced just after Hungary had passed through the Bela Kun Communist reign of terror and the occupation and pillage of Budapest by the Rumanians, was universal. But the vanquished Magyars were as powerless to protest effectively against the Treaty of Trianon as the Germans had been a year earlier to reject the Treaty of Versailles.