The circumstance that after their triumph over Italy the world’s trustees were thus publicly flouted by a little state of eastern Europe was gall and wormwood to them.  It was also a menace to the cause with which they were identified.  None the less, they accepted the inevitable for the moment, pitched their voices in a lower key, and decided to approve the Rumanian thesis that Neo-Bolshevism in Hungary must be no longer bolstered up,[151] but be squashed vicariously.  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.  The Czechoslovaks did not relish the project, but after some delay and fencing around agreed to furnish a contingent, whereas the Jugoslavs met the demand with a plain negative, which was afterward changed to acquiescence when the Council promised to keep the Italians from attacking them.  As things turned out, none but the Rumanians actually fought the Hungarian Reds.  Meanwhile the members of the American, British, and Italian missions in Hungary endeavored to reach a friendly agreement with the criminal gang in Budapest.

The plan of campaign decided on had Marshal Foch for its author.  It was, therefore, business-like.  He demanded a quarter of a million men,[152] to which it was decided that Rumania should contribute 120,000, Jugoslavia 50,000, and Czechoslovakia as many as she could conveniently afford.  But the day before the preparations were to have begun,[153] Bela Kuhn flung his troops[154] against the Rumanians with initial success, drove them across the Tisza with considerable loss, took up commanding positions, and struck dismay into the members of the Supreme Council.  The Semitic Dictator, with grim humor, explained to the crestfallen lawgivers, who were once more at fault, that a wanton breach of the peace was alien to his thoughts; that, on the contrary, his motive for action deserved high praise—­it was to compel the rebellious Rumanians to obey the behest of the Conference and withdraw to their frontiers.  The plenipotentiaries bore this gibe with dignity, and decided to have recourse once more to their favorite, and, indeed, only method—­the despatch of exhortative telegrams.  Of more efficacious means they were destitute.  This time their message, which lacked a definite address, was presumably intended for the anti-Bolshevist population of Hungary, whom it indirectly urged to overthrow the Kuhn Cabinet and receive the promised reward—­namely, the privilege of entering into formal relations with the Entente and signing the death-warrant of the Magyar state.  It is not easy to see how this solution alone could have enabled the Supreme Council to establish normal conditions and tranquillity in the land.  But the Duumvirate seemed utterly incapable of devising