Under such conditions, if the waverings of the Government were to be explained, the task would be a hard one. In our opinion, they may be ascribed to different causes, the more important factor being the opinion of the King himself; but this alone would not suffice.
The King (Carol) is first of all bound to Emperor Francis Joseph by an old friendship. King Carol has never admitted that the diminution of his kingdom after Plevna was a right thing, and the toasts in Constanza (during the Czar's visit to Rumania early in the Summer of 1914) have demonstrated, for those who could read between the lines, in both the politeness of the Czar and the reserved tone of King Carol, that this sentiment had not yet disappeared.
In the face of this disposition, so firmly expressed, the Ministers and the party leaders of Rumania felt rather uncomfortable. It must be borne in mind that a parliamentary régime, properly speaking, does not exist; the Ministries do not fall by vote of the chambers of Parliament. When the King estimates that a Ministry has been too long in power, when he hears distinctly the murmur of the Opposition, then he calls a new President of the Council, who has Parliament prorogued and a new one formed—this is the exact procedure—according to his liking. By reason of this process, and also by reason of a special attraction which the Court exercises over a small, refined, and elegant society, the counsels of the King are inspired by the advices of his counselors.
But there are also other reasons that plead for this uncertain attitude, and by which it is attempted to justify a policy of indifference.
The successes of last year—of which the Rumanians have not understood the causes, because they never tried to understand them—have troubled them in a certain way.
Their statesmen persist perhaps a little too much in playing Machiavelli, and in exalting abstention to a system. Their fondest desire at the present moment is not, we are persuaded, to march on Austria, but, on the contrary, not to march at all, and not to intervene in the war up to the day of the final liquidation.
What is this policy worth? The chances are that it may not always be good, particularly in the present state of things. Rumania is still a small country by reason of its area. In addition to this, her neighbors, on which she was wont to exercise a moderating influence, are bound to change in density of population. And it is very likely that Rumania, on the next day after the war, might find herself suddenly surrounded by homogeneous peoples, who in the meantime would become distinctly more important than she is, and that these people might have against her certain slight grievances which they would make her feel. Moreover, even if Austria by chance is victorious, and even if the Government at Bucharest helped her, is it not clear that her (Rumania's) Hungarian neighbor, becoming stronger, would make her (Rumania) suffer the same as she made the Servians suffer when they were feeble?
Rumania may well protest her friendship, but this will not prevent her, if only by her presence, from being a danger to the tranquillity of the Hungarian subjects in Transylvania. And then who is going to defend her?
Here is what the good sense of the people says, and it is this common sense which will triumph in the end over all vacillation, and will, in spite of everything, assert its way of seeing things.