“Within the next two or three years, in all probability, there will be a war between Jugoslavia and Italy over the Dalmatian question.  The day that Jugoslavia goes to war with Italy we will attack Jugoslavia and seize the Banat.  The Danube is Rumania’s natural and logical frontier.”

This would seem to bear out the assertion that there exists a secret alliance between Italy and Rumania, which, if true, would place Jugoslavia in the unhappy position of a nut between the jaws of a cracker.  I have also been told on excellent authority that there is likewise an “understanding” between Italy and Bulgaria that, should the former become engaged in a war with the Jugoslavs, the latter will attack the Serbs from the east and regain her lost provinces in Macedonia.  A pleasant prospect for Southeastern Europe, truly.

While we were in Bucharest we received an invitation—­“command” is the correct word according to court usage—­to visit the King and Queen of Rumania at their Chateau of Pelesch, near Sinaia, in the Carpathians.  It is about a hundred miles by road from the capital to Sinaia and the first half of the journey, which we made by motor, was over a road as execrable as any we found in the Balkans.  Upon reaching the foothills of the Carpathians, however, the highway, which had been steadily growing worse, suddenly took a turn for the better—­due, no doubt, to the invigorating qualities of the mountain atmosphere—­and climbed vigorously upward through wild gorges and splendid pine forests which reminded me of the Adirondacks of Northern New York.  Notwithstanding the atrocious condition of the highway, which constantly threatened to dislocate our joints as well as those of the car, and the choking, blinding clouds of yellow dust, every change of figure on the speedometer brought new and interesting scenes.  For mile after mile the road, straight as though marked out by a ruler, ran between fields of wheat and corn as vast as those of our own West.  In spite of the fact that the Austro-Germans carried off all the animals and farming implements they could lay their hands on, the agricultural prosperity of Rumania is astounding.  In 1916, for example, while involved in a terribly destructive war, Rumania produced more wheat than Minnesota and about twenty-five times as much corn as our three Pacific Coast states combined.  At frequent intervals we passed huge scarlet threshing machines, most of them labeled “Made in U.S.A.,” which were centers of activity for hundreds of white-smocked peasants who were hauling in the grain with ox-teams, feeding it into the voracious maws of the machines, and piling the residue of straw into the largest stacks I have ever seen.  As we drew near the mountains the grain fields gave way to grazing lands where great herds of cattle of various breeds—­brindled milch animals, massive cream-colored oxen, blue-gray buffalo with elephant like hides and broad, curving horns, and gaunt steers that looked for all the world like Texas longhorns—­browsed amid the lush green grass.