Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/224

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DEMOCRATIC IDEALS AND REALITY

Rumanian, but a 'privileged' minority of Magyars and 'Saxons' have been the rulers. Here again it should be no quite impossible feat of statesmanship to arrange for an equitable exchange of homes, or a full acceptance of Rumanian Nationality, though it must be admitted that the hostility between Saxon and Ruman is not so acute as that between Prussian and Pole.

The rest of Rumania, the present kingdom, is the glacis, eastward and southward, of Transylvania, watered by the Transylvanian rivers. This fertile glacis is one of the chief sources in Europe of oil, wheat, and maize; the twelve million Rumanians will be a rich people. At Galatz, Braila, and Constanza they have ports on the Black Sea, and it will be a prime interest of all free peoples that there should be Rumanian ships on that sea, for it is naturally a closed water of the Heartland. The time will never come when the League of Nations will be able to regard the Baltic and Black Seas without concern, for the Heartland offers the basis of an all-powerful militarism. Civilisation consists in the control of nature and of ourselves, and the League of Nations, as the supreme organ of united humanity, must closely watch the Heartland and its possible organisers, for the same