sufficient. But
another explanation of their attitude was offered which gained
widespread acceptance. It will be unfolded presently.

The dispersed Bolshevist army, thus shielded, soon recovered its nerve,
and, feeling secure on the Rumanian front, where the Allies held the
invading troops immobilized, attacked the Slovaks and overran their
country. For Bolshevism is by nature proselytizing. The Prague Cabinet
was dismayed. The new-born Czechoslovak state was shaken. A catastrophe
might, as it seemed, ensue at any moment. Rumania's troops were on the
watch for the signal to resume their march, but it came not. The
Czechoslovaks were soliciting it prayerfully. But the weak-kneed
plenipotentiaries in Paris were minded to fight, if at all, with weapons
taken from a different arsenal. In lieu of ordering the Rumanian troops
to march on Budapest, they addressed themselves to the Bolshevist
leader, Kuhn, summoned him to evacuate the Slovak country, and
volunteered the promise that they would compel the Rumanians to
withdraw. This amazing line of action was decided on by the secret
Council of Three without the assent or foreknowledge of the nation to
whose interests it ran counter and the head of whose government was
rubbing shoulders with the plenipotentiaries every day. But M.
Bratiano's existence and that of his fellow-delegate was systematically
ignored. It is not easy to fathom the motives that inspired this
supercilious treatment of the spokesman of a nation which was
sacrificing its sons in the service of the Allies as well as its own.
Personal antipathy, however real, cannot be assumed without convincing
grounds to have been the mainspring.

But there was worse than the contemptuous treatment of a colleague who
was also the chief Minister of a friendly state. If an order was to be
given to the Rumanian government to recall its forces from the front
which they occupied, elementary courtesy and political tact as well as
plain common sense would have suggested its being communicated, in the
first instance, to the chief of that government--who was then resident
in Paris--as head of his country's delegation to the Conference. But
that was not the course taken. The statesmen of the Secret Council had
recourse to the radio, and, without consulting M. Bratiano, despatched a
message "to the government in Bucharest" enjoining on it the withdrawal
of the Rumanian army. For they were minded scrupulously to redeem their
promise t