Russian Bolskeviks had obliged the Rumanians of Bessarabia to form a Moldavian Republic; the ancient Rumanian spirit had quickly awakened, thanks in part to a group of young writers who had never ceased to cultivate spiritual relations with free Rumania. An attempt to form a local army having failed, appeal Was made to the Rumanian troops, who had more- over an interest in defending the stores of food in Bessarabia. The union of the Principalities was celebrated in Feb. 1919 at Chishinau, capital of the province, as well as at Jassy; and on April 9 the Sfatul Taril (Council of the country), formed on the model of all the other revolutionary assemblies of the former empire of the Tsars, was to proclaim the union of Bessarabia with the kingdom of Rumania. J. J. Bratianu had already resigned (Jan. 1918) in face of the equal impossibility of either organizing resistance or signing a treaty of abdication. General Averescu, charged with the negotiations because of his military prestige, went for this purpose to Buftea near Bucharest, and found in the capital a party of violent opponents of the war led by the Germanophils Carp and Stere. Count Czernin, irrecon- cilable in his attitude towards the Rumanians, rejected Ger- many's advice, brought him by von Kuhlmann, to concentrate solely on placing Rumania in a state of economic servitude, and proceeded to carve up in fantastic fashion the mountainous frontier of the kingdom; cutting off, moreover, the Dobrudja, whose future was to be settled between the Germans and the Bulgarians, Rumania being only left access to the sea under terms to be subsequently fixed. The Danube would become an artery for Austrian and German commerce, Vienna taking foot- hold at Severin, and Berlin at Giurgevo by means of " purchases " of wharves and sites on long leases. The entire export of the chief products of the country was assured to the Central Powers. Their army of occupation would have to remain for years to enforce the fulfillment of provisions, unexampled in severity, imposed on the country as expiation for its " crime."
This treaty was signed by the new Marghiloman Ministry, installed in office just after the arrival of a secret mission from the Emperor Charles acquiescing in the maintenance of the Rumanian dynasty. The king had been subjected to the ex- treme humiliation of having to go to a Moldavian railway station to meet Count Czernin, who had come there expressly to afford himself the satisfaction of that revenge.
The Marghiloman Ministry, whose chief certainly possessed statesmanlike qualities, struggled against insurmountable diffi- culties through months of unexampled suffering for the exploited and humiliated country. In the occupied territory everyone was snatching greedily at the remnants of national prosperity now in process of dispersal; the unlimited issue of paper money imposed on the country by the Austro-Germans through the Banque Generate presaged financial ruin; while economic ruin was ensured by the exportation of sheep and cattle, by the cut- ting down of forests, and by the dismantling of factories. The population, meanwhile, was starving, reduced to famine rations, and the morals of its working-class were being perverted by revolutionary propaganda. A Parliament elected under the pressure of enemy armies a Parliament, moreover, composed of the worst elements of political life often succeeded in dis- gusting even those who had desired to have it.
This state of things lasted until the battle-front of the Central Powers had been penetrated both on the Rhine and in the Bal- kans. The king then called to power General Coanda, an old soldier who had already had experience in diplomacy, together with General Grigorescu, to whom was due the chief credit for the victory of Marashti, as Minister of War. This Cabinet, without reference to Parliament, decreed a law for the expro- priation of landowners, in accord with liberal ideas, and on the basis of the new constitutional text (the acts had been passed by the dissolved Marghiloman Parliament, the decisions of which had been declared null and void). But no sooner had the French troops commanded by General Berthelot arrived on the Danube, than the head of the Liberal party claimed, as initiator of a war due chiefly to pressure of public opinion, a change of Gov- ernment in his favour. In a few days he entered Bucharest at
the side of the king, to inaugurate an administration which only lasted one year.
Reunion of the Bukovina and of Transylvania. The new Lib- eral Government had the extraordinarily difficult task of re- uniting, in one political whole, provinces which had been under the domination of different alien states. Bessarabia was al- ready incorporated in the ancient kingdom, having completely abandoned the idea of autonomy, which had at first been sup- ported by her leaders, Inculetz, Pelivan, and Halipa. Before the King's departure from Jassy he had received a deputation which came to offer him the Bukovina with the delimitation of 1775. Menaced by a Bolshevist agitation begun at Czernowitz by demobilized soldiers, this province had in Nov. proclaimed its reunion with the mother-country, under the inspiration of the historian, Prof. Jean Nistor, and of Jean Flandon, formerly head of the National party and of the Rumanian Political Union (his rival, Aurele, chief of the Democrats, had compro- mised himself by projects for a great Austria, to include Rumania) . The German immigrants, the few Poles, and the Jews had given their assent; only the Ruthenians held aloof, planted out as they had been by Austria and sedulously represented by statistical artifices as being the principal nationality in the Bukovina.
In Transylvania during the war the Magyar administration had spared no pains to reduce the number and importance of the Rumanians, over 3,000,000 in numbers, and predominant especially in the rural districts. The prisons were filled with suspects; judicial murders were the order of the day; a measure was framed to expropriate in favour of alien immigrants the widows and children of soldiers killed in action. At Bucharest the Bessarabian C. Stere performed the deplorable r61e of editing a journal which advocated the candidature of the new Emperor- King Charles to the throne of Rumania (Prince Joachim of Prussia had also been suggested) . Directly Vienna and Budapest repudiated the Habsburgs and their followers, as being re- sponsible for the defeat, a great Rumanian assembly at Alba lulia declared (Dec. 1918) that Transylvania henceforth formed part of the kingdom of the united Rumanians, but that they promised absolute national liberty to their Saxon and Magyar fellow- citizens. The Saxons gave their adhesion immediately; but the Magyar bishops, Catholic, Calvinist, and Unitarian, did not take the oath of allegiance to King Ferdinand till 1921. A Council of Direction, presided over by Jules Maniu, took the reins, established order, and gave new national forms to Transyl- vanian life. The greater number of non-Rumanian officials were retained; communes kept their accustomed privileges; Magyar and Saxon schools worked unmolested side by side with Rumanian institutions both old and new.
Latest Events: The Agrarian Question. During the few months of Liberal Government the reunited country awaited in vain its definitive constitution. The reconstruction of the devastated districts had to be attended to, and difficult diplomatic nego- tiations had to be conducted that should result in the recogni- tion by the Allies of the new frontiers. Those fixed by the treaty of 1916 were drawn back in places to give the Hungarians a part of the hinterland of Oradea-Mare (Nagy-Varad, Gross- Wardein), and the Serbians a good half of the Banat they had pressed to be given also the town of Temesvar (Temisoara).
After the end of 1918 a Bolshevist Government had been in power at Budapest, Count Karolyi having resigned rather than acquiesce in the military convention which deprived Hungary of the provinces which she had conquered and held since the Middle Ages. This Government showed from the first its intention of serving the party of revenge, and of trying to restore the mediae- val kingdom. An armed attack on Rumanian territory by the greater part of the Red army led, in Aug. 1919, to a Rumanian counter-offensive, which despite the interdiction of the Allies arrived at Budapest in a few days; and there the Rumanians remained until the appointment of Admiral Horthy as regent. This was expected to promote the same policy of revenge by preparing the return of Charles of Habsburg.
The treaties of Versailles and of St. Germain recognized as Rumanian the territories which had belonged to the Dual Mon-
