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During the first phase of the conversations which were carried on between Roumania and the Entente there would appear to have been no serious hitch. They culminated in a loan of £5,000,000 advanced in January 1915. In the following month they ceased and were not resumed until April, when M. Bratiano was informed that it would facilitate matters if he would discuss terms with the Tsar's Government.
M. Clemenceau sent for M. Bratiano and vetoed the march in peremptory terms which did scant justice to the services rendered and the sacrifices made by the Rumanian state. Secret arrangements, it was whispered, had been come to between agents of the Powers and Kuhn.
Thus, when the treaty with Germany was presented to Count von Brockdorff-Rantzau, a mere journalist at the Conference possessed a complete copy, whereas the Rumanian delegation, headed by the Prime Minister Bratiano, had cognizance only of an incomplete summary.
The King, with whom the initiative thus rested, had reappointed M. Bratiano Chief of the Government, and M. Bratiano was naturally desirous of associating his own historic name with the aggrandizement of his country. But he also desired to secure the services of his political rival, M. Take Jonescu, whose reputation as a far-seeing statesman and as a successful negotiator is world-wide.
In an interview given to the Correspondenz Bureau of Vienna by Conrad von Hoetzendorff. Cf. Le Temps, July 19, 1919. The Prime Minister, Salandra, declared that to have made neutrality a matter of bargaining would have been to dishonor Italy. King Carol was holding a crown council at the time. Bratiano had spoken against the King's proposal to throw in the country's lot with Germany.
But of these demands M. Bratiano would make no abatement, nor in the promise of the Entente to fulfil them would he admit of any ambiguity.
They accordingly invited the representatives of the three little countries on which the honor of waging these humanitarian wars in the anarchist east of Europe was to be conferred, and sounded them as to their willingness to put their soldiers in the field, and how many as to the numbers available. M. Bratiano offered eight divisions.
Then again would appear the boyish Foreign Minister of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, Edward Benes, winning friends on all sides by his frank sincerity and ready smile; or, perfect contrast, the blackbearded Bratiano of Rumania, claiming the enforcement of the secret treaty that was to double the area of his state.
In the meanwhile the Rumanian government had sent its answer to the three notes of the Council. And its tenor was firm and unyielding. Undeterred by menaces, M. Bratiano maintained that he had done the right thing in sending troops to Budapest, imposing terms on Hungary and re-establishing order. As a matter of fact he had rendered a sterling service to all Europe, including France and Britain.
"I am truly glad to have this assurance," answered M. Bratiano, "for I doubt not that you are quite certain of what you advance, else you would not stake the fate of your eastern allies on its correctness.
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