a strangle hold on the finances of the country and they must not be permitted, the Rumanians insist, to get a similar grip on the nation’s politics.  It is only very recently, indeed, that Rumanian Jews have been granted passports, which meant that only those rich enough to obtain papers by bribery could enter or leave the country.  The Rumanians with whom I discussed the question said quite frankly that the legislation granting suffrage to the Jews would probably be observed very much as the Constitutional Amendment granting suffrage to the negroes is observed in our own South.

The truth of the matter is that Rumania is in the hands of a clique of selfish and utterly unscrupulous politicians who have grown rich from their systematic exploitation of the national resources.  Every bank and nearly every commercial enterprise of importance is in their hands.  One of the present ministers entered the cabinet a poor man; to-day he is reputed to be worth twenty millions.  Anything can be purchased in Rumania—­passports, exemption from military service, cabinet portfolios, commercial concessions—­if you have the money to pay for it.  The fingers of Rumanian officials are as sticky as those of the Turks.  An officer of the American Relief Administration told me that barely sixty per cent, of the supplies sent from the United States for the relief of the Rumanian peasantry ever reached those for whom they were intended; the other forty per cent, was kept by various officials.  To find a parallel for the political corruption which exists throughout Rumania it is necessary to go back to New York under the Tweed administration or to Mexico under the Diaz regime.

From a wealthy Hungarian landowner, with whom I traveled from Bucharest to the frontier of Jugoslavia, I obtained a graphic idea of what can be accomplished by money in Rumania.  This young Hungarian, who had been educated in England and spoke with a Cambridge accent, possessed large estates in northeastern Hungary.  After four years’ service as an officer of cavalry he was demobilized upon the signing of the Armistice.  When the revolution led by Bela Kun broke out in Budapest he escaped from that city on foot, only to be arrested by the Rumanians as he was crossing the Rumanian frontier.  Fortunately for him, he had ample funds in his possession, obtained from the sale of the cattle on his estate, so that he was able to purchase his freedom after spending only three days in jail.  But his release did not materially improve his situation, for he had no passport and, as Hungary was then under Bolshevist rule, he was unable to obtain one.  And he realized that without a passport it would be impossible for him to join his wife and children, who were awaiting him in Switzerland.  As luck would have it, however, he was slightly acquainted with the prefect of a small town in Transylvania—­for obvious reasons I shall not mention its name—­which he finally reached after great difficulty, traveling by night