"A rich Roumanian's daughter, I suppose?"
"Heavens, no! A poor girl."
And he added with superb lack of logic:
"Who wouldn't marry a Roumanian—be she rich—OR poor!"
WHO WOULDN'T MARRY A ROUMANIAN?
The secret of the Balkans is contained in that simple rhetoric question.
For, clear away from the days when the Slavs made their first appearance in Southern Europe and, crossing the Danube, came to settle on the great, green, rolling plain between the river and the jagged frowning Balkan Mountains, the proceeded southwards and formed colonies among the Thraco-Illyrians, the Roumanians, and the Greeks, to the days of Michael the Brave who drove the Turks to the spiked gates of Adrianople and freed half the peninsula for a span of years; from the days when gallant King Mirtsched went down to glorious defeat amongst the Osmanli yataghans to the final day when the Russian Slav liberated the Roumanian Latin from the Turkish yoke, the Roumanian has held high the torch of civilization and culture.
Latin civilization!
Latin culture!
Latin ideals!