“You ought to know better than that, Major Powell,” he angrily exclaimed.  “Rumania is not in the Balkans and never has been.  We object to being called a Balkan people.”

I apologized for my slip, of course, and amicable relations were resumed, but I mention the incident as an illustration of how deeply the Rumanians resent the inclusion of their country in that group of turbulent kingdoms which compose what some one has aptly called the Cockpit of Europe.  The Rumanians are as sensitive in this respect as are the haughty and aristocratic Creoles, inordinately proud of their French or Spanish ancestry, when some ignorant Northerner remarks that he had always supposed that Creoles were part negro.  Not only is Rumania not one of the Balkan states, geographically speaking, but the Rumanians’ idea of their country’s importance has been enormously increased as a result of its recent territorial acquisitions, which have made it the sixth largest country in Europe, with an area very nearly equal to that of Italy and with a population three-fourths that of Spain.  You were not aware, perhaps, that the width of Greater Rumania, from east to west, is as great as the width of France from the English Channel to the Mediterranean.  One has to break into a run to keep pace with the march of geography these days.

Owing to the demoralization prevailing in Thrace and Bulgaria, railway communications between Constantinople and the Rumanian frontier were so disorganized that we decided to travel by steamer to Constantza, taking the railway thence to Bucharest.  Before the war the Royal Rumanian mail steamer Carol I was as trim and luxuriously fitted a vessel as one could have found in Levantine waters.  For more than a year, however, she was in the hands of the Bolsheviks, so that when we boarded her her sides were red with rust, her cabins had been stripped of everything which could be carried away, and the straw-filled mattresses, each covered with a dubious-looking blanket, were as full of unwelcome occupants as the Black Sea was of floating mines.

[Illustration:  THE RED BADGE OF MERCY IN THE BALKANS

American Red Cross women supplying food to a ship-load of starving
Russian refugees at Constantza, Rumania]

Constantza, the chief port of Rumania, is superbly situated on a headland overlooking the Black Sea.  It has an excellent harbor, bordered on one side by a number of large grain elevators and on the other by a row of enormous petroleum tanks—­the latter the property of an American corporation; a mile or so of asphalted streets, several surprisingly fine public buildings, and, on the beautifully terraced and landscaped waterfront, an imposing but rather ornate casino and many luxurious summer villas, most of which were badly damaged when the city was bombarded by the Bulgars.  Constantza is a favorite seaside resort for Bucharest society and during the season its plage is thronged with summer visitors dressed in the height of the Paris fashion.  From atop his marble pedestal in the city’s principal square a statue of the Roman poet Ovid, who lived here in exile for many years, looks quizzically down upon the light-hearted throng.