nfluences--perhaps
unwittingly--the nature of which it was not easy to ascertain. In
support of these theories they urged that when the Rumanians were on the
very point of annihilating the Red troops of Kuhn, it was the Supreme
Council which interposed its authority to save them, and did save them
effectually, when nothing else could have done it. That Kuhn was on the
point of collapsing was a matter of common knowledge. A radio-telegram
flashed from Budapest by one of his lieutenants contained this
significant avowal: "He [Kuhn] has announced that the Hungarian forces
are in flight. The troops which occupied a good position at the
bridgehead of Gomi have abandoned it, carrying with them the men who
were doing their duty. In Budapest preparations are going forward for
equipping fifteen workmen's battalions." In other words, the downfall of
Bolshevism had begun. The Rumanians were on the point of achieving it.
Their troops on the bank of the river Tisza[147] were preparing to march
on Budapest. And it was at that critical moment that the world-arbiters
at the Conference who had anathematized the Bolshevists as the curse of
civilization interposed their authority and called a halt. If they had
solid grounds for intervening they were not avowed. M. Clemenceau sent
for M. Bratiano and vetoed the march in peremptory terms which did scant
justice to the services rendered and the sacrifices made by the Rumanian
state. Secret arrangements, it was whispered, had been come to between
agents of the Powers and Kuhn. At the time nobody quite understood the
motive of the sudden change of disposition evinced by the Allies toward
the Magyar Bolshevists. For it was assumed that they still regarded the
Bolshevist leaders as outlaws. One explanation was that they objected to
allow the Rumanian army alone to occupy the Hungarian capital. But that
would not account for their neglect to despatch an Inter-Allied
contingent to restore order in the city and country. For they remained
absolutely inactive while Kuhn's supporters were rallying and
consolidating their scattered and demoralized forces, and they kept the
Rumanians from balking the Bolshevist work of preparing another attack.
As one of their French critics[148] remarked, they dealt exclusively in
negatives--some of them pernicious enough, whereas a positive policy
was imperatively called for. To reconstruct a nation, not to say a
ruined world, a series of contradictory vetoes is hardly