What it all came to was that the Great Powers, who had left Rumania to her fate when she was attacked by the Magyars, intervened the moment the assailed nation, helping itself, got the better of its enemy, and then they resolved to balk it of the fruits of victory and of the safeguards it would fain have created for the future.  It was to rely upon the Supreme Council once more, to take the broken reed for a solid staff.  That the Powers had something to urge in support of their interposition will not be denied.  They rightly set forth that Rumania was not Hungary’s only creditor.  Her neighbors also possessed claims that must be satisfied as far as feasible, and equity prompted the pooling of all available assets.  This plea could not be refuted.  But the credit which the pleaders ought to have enjoyed in the eyes of the Rumanian nation was so completely sapped by their antecedents that no heed was paid to their reasoning, suasion, or promises.

Rumania, therefore, in requisitioning Hungarian property was formally in the wrong.  On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that she, like other nations, was exasperated by the high-handed action of the Great Powers, who proceeded as though her good-will and loyalty were of no consequence to the pacification of eastern Europe.

After due deliberation the Supreme Council agreed upon the wording of a conciliatory message, not to the Rumanians, but to the Magyars, to be despatched to Lieutenant-Colonel Romanelli.  The gist of it was the old refrain, “to carry out the terms of the armistice[164] and respect the frontiers traced by the Supreme Council[165] and we will protect you from the Rumanians, who have no authority from us.  We are sending forthwith an Inter-Allied military commission[166] to superintend the disarmament and see that the Rumanian troops withdraw.”

It cannot be denied that the Rumanian conditions were drastic.  But it should be remembered that the provocation amounted almost to justification.  And as for the crime of disobedience, it will not be gainsaid that a large part of the responsibility fell on the shoulders of the lawgivers in Paris, whose decrees, coming oracularly from Olympian heights without reference to local or other concrete circumstances, inflicted heavy losses in blood and substance on the ill-starred people of Rumania.  And to make matters worse, Rumania’s official representatives at the Conference had been not merely ignored, but reprimanded like naughty school-children by a harsh dominie and occasionally humiliated by men whose only excuse was nervous tenseness in consequence of overwork combined with morbid impatience at being contradicted in matters which they did not understand.  Other states had contemplated open rebellion against the big ferrule of the “bosses,” and more than once the resolution was taken to go on strike unless certain concessions were accorded them.  Alone the Rumanians executed their resolve.