en they lodged their reserves in writing, but to no purpose.
One of the obligations imposed on Rumania by the Powers was a promise to
accept in advance any and every measure that the Supreme Council might
frame for the protection of minorities in the country, and for further
restricting the sovereignty of the state in matters connected with the
transit of Allied goods. And, lastly, the Rumanians complained that the
action of the Supreme Council was creating a dangerous ferment in the
Dobrudja, and even in Transylvania, where the Saxon minority, which had
willingly accepted Rumanian sway, was beginning to agitate against it.
In Bessarabia the non-Rumanian elements of the population were fiercely
opposing the Rumanians and invoking the support of the Peace Conference.
The cardinal fact which, in the judgment of the Rumanians, dominated the
situation was the _quasi_ ultimatum presented to them in the spring,
when they were summoned unofficially and privately to grant industrial
concessions to a pushing body of financiers, or else to abide by the
consequences, one of which, they were told, would be the loss of
America's active assistance. They had elected to incur the threatened
penalty after having carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages
of laying the matter before President Wilson himself, and inquiring
officially whether the action in question was--as they felt sure it must
be--in contradiction with the President's east European policy. For it
would be sad to think that abundant petroleum might have washed away
many of the tribulations which the Rumanians had afterward to endure,
and that loans accepted on onerous conditions would, as was hinted, have
softened the hearts of those who had it in their power to render the
existence of the nation sour or sweet.[144] "Look out," exclaimed a
Rumanian to me. "You will see that we shall be spurned as Laodiceans,
or worse, before the Conference is over." Rumania's external situation
was even more perilous than her domestic plight. Situated between Russia
and Hungary, she came more and more to resemble the iron between the
hammer and the anvil. A well-combined move of the two anarchist states
might have pulverized her. Alive to the danger, her spokesmen in Paris
were anxious to guard against it, but the only hope they had at the
moment was centered in the Great Powers, whose delegates at the
Conference were discharging the functions which the League of Nations
would be ca