Now, to expand the trade of one’s country is a legitimate ambition, and to hold that Jewish firms are the best qualified to develop the resources of Rumania is a tenable position.  But to mix up any commercial scheme with the ethical regeneration of Europe is, to put it mildly, impolitic.  However unimpeachable the motives of the promoter of such a project, it is certain to damage both causes which he has at heart.  But the report does not leave the matter here.  It goes on to state that a very definite proposal, smacking of an ultimatum, was finally presented, which set before the Rumanians two alternatives from which they were to choose—­either the concessions asked for, which would earn for them the financial assistance of the United States, or else no concessions and no help.

At a Conference, the object of which was the uplifting of the life of nations from the squalor of sordid ambitions backed by brutal force, to ideal aims and moral relationship, haggling and chaffering such as this seemed wholly out of place.  It reminded one of “those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting” in the temple of Jerusalem who were one day driven out with “a scourge of small cords.”  The Rumanians hoped that the hucksters in the latter-day temple of peace might be got rid of in a similar way; one of them suggested boldly asking President Wilson himself to say what he thought of the policy underlying the disconcerting proposal....

The other alleged element of the Supreme Council’s attitude needs no qualification.  The mystery that enwrapped the orders from the Conference which suddenly arrested the march of the Rumanian and Allied troops, when they were nearing Budapest for the purpose of overthrowing Bela Kuhn, never perplexed those who claimed to possess trustworthy information about the goings-on between certain enterprising officers belonging some to the Allied Army of Occupation and others to the Hungarian forces.  One of these transactions is alleged to have taken place between Kuhn himself, who is naturally a shrewd observer and hard bargain-driver, and a certain financial group which for obvious reasons remained nameless.  The object of the compact was the bestowal on the group of concessions in the Banat in return for an undertaking that the Bolshevist Dictator would be left in power and subsequently honored by an invitation to the Conference.  The plenipotentiaries’ command arresting the march against Kuhn and their conditional promise to summon him to the Conference, dovetail with this contract.  These undeniable coincidences are humiliating.  The nexus between them was discovered and announced before the stipulations were carried out.