But the United States is not the only country which has lost the confidence of the Rumanians.  France is even more deeply distrusted and disliked than we are.  And this in spite of the fact that the upper classes of Rumania have held up the French as their ideal for the past fifty years.  Indeed, wealthy Rumanians live in a fashion more French than if they dwelt in Paris itself.  This sudden unpopularity of the French is due to several causes.  After having expected much of them, the people were amazed and bitterly disappointed at their apparent indifference toward the future of Rumania.  Then there were the unfortunate incidents at Odessa, the withdrawal of the French forces from that city before the advance of the Bolsheviks, and the regrettable happening in the French Black Sea fleet These things, of course, contributed to loss of French prestige.  Another contributory factor has been the lack of enterprise of French capitalists, causing those who control the financial and economic development of Rumania to seek encouragement and assistance elsewhere.  But the underlying reason for the deep-seated distrust of France is to be found, I think, in France’s attempt to maintain the balance of power in Southeastern Europe by building up a strong Jugoslavia.  Now the Rumanians, it must be remembered, hate the Jugoslavs even more bitterly than they hate the Hungarians—­and they are far more afraid of them.  This hatred is not merely the result of the age-long antagonism between the Latin and the Slav; it is also political.  The Rumanians have watched with growing jealousy and apprehension the expansion of Serbia into a state with a population and area nearly equal to their own.  After having long dreamed of the day when they would themselves be arbiters of the destinies of the nations of Southeastern Europe, they see their political supremacy challenged by the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, behind which they discern the power and influence of France.  When the dismemberment of the Austro-Hungarian Empire began, Rumania demanded and expected the whole of the great rich province of the Banat, with the Maros River for her northern and the Danube for her southern frontier.

“But that would place our capital within range of the Rumanian artillery,” the Serbian prime minister is said to have exclaimed.

“Then move your capital,” the Rumanian premier responded drily.

As a result of this controversy over the Banat the relations of the two nations have been strained almost to the breaking-point.  When I was in the Banat in the autumn of 1919 the Rumanian and Serbian frontier guards were glowering at each other like fighting terriers held in leash, and the slightest untoward incident would have precipitated a conflict!  Although, by the terms of the Treaty of St. Germain, Jugoslavia was awarded the western half of the Banat, Rumania is prepared to take advantage of the first opportunity which presents itself to take it away from her rival.  When I was in Bucharest a cabinet minister concluded a lengthy exposition of Rumania’s position by declaring: