The answer given by the “Rumanian government in Bucharest” to the peremptory order of the Secret Council was a reasoned refusal to comply.  Rumania, taught by terrible experience, declined to be led once more into deadly peril against her own better judgment.  Her statesmen, more intimately acquainted with the Hungarians than were Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Wilson, and M. Clemenceau, required guaranties which could be supplied only by armed forces—­Rumanian or Allied.  Unless and until Hungary received a government chosen by the free will of the people and capable of offering guaranties of good conduct, the troops must remain where they were.  For the line which they occupied at the moment could be defended with four divisions, whereas the new one could not be held by less than seven or eight.  The Council was therefore about to commit another fateful mistake, the consequences of which it was certain to shift to the shoulders of the pliant people.  It was then that Rumania’s leaders kicked against the pricks.

To return to the dispute between Bucharest and Paris:  the Rumanian government would have been willing to conform to the desire of the Supreme Council and withdraw its troops if the Supreme Council would only make good its assurance and guarantee Rumania effectually from future attacks by the Hungarians.  The proviso was reasonable, and as a measure of self-defense imperative.  The safeguard asked for was a contingent of Allied force.  But the two supreme councilors in Paris dealt only in counters.  All they had to offer to M. Bratiano were verbal exhortations before the combat and lip-sympathy after defeat, and these the Premier rejected.  But here, as in the case of the Poles, the representatives of the “Allied and Associated” Powers insisted.  They were profuse of promises, exhortations, and entreaties before passing to threats—­of guaranties they said nothing—­but the Rumanian Premier, turning a deaf ear to cajolery and intimidation, remained inflexible.  For he was convinced that their advice was often vitiated by gross ignorance and not always inspired by disinterestedness, while the orders they issued were hardly more than the velleities of well-meaning gropers in the dark who lacked the means of executing them.

The eminent plenipotentiaries, thus set at naught by a little state, ruminated on the embarrassing situation.  In all such cases their practice had been to resign themselves to circumstances if they proved unable to bend circumstances to their schemes.  It was thus that President Wilson had behaved when British statesmen declined even to hear him on the subject of the freedom of the seas, when M. Clemenceau refused to accept a peace that denied the Saar Valley and a pledge of military assistance to France, and when Japan insisted on the retrocession of Shantung.  Toward Italy an attitude of firmness had been assumed, because owing to her economic dependence on Britain and the United States she could not indulge in the luxury of nonconformity.  Hence the plenipotentiaries, and in particular Mr. Wilson, asserted their will inexorably and were painfully surprised that one of the lesser states had the audacity to defy it.