unity for whose moral as well as
material welfare the Supreme Council was laboring in darkness against so
many obstacles of its own creation. Is it surprising that the states
which suffered most from these weaknesses of the potent delegates should
have resented their misdirection and endeavored to help themselves as
best they could? It may be blameworthy and anti-social, but it is
unhappily natural and almost unavoidable. It is sincerely to be
regretted that the art of stimulating the nations--about which the
delegates were so solicitous--to enthusiastic readiness to accept the
Council as the "moral guide of the world" should have been exercised in
such bungling fashion.

The Supreme Council then feeling impelled to assert its dignity against
the wilfulness of a small nation decided on ignoring alike the service
and the disservice rendered by Rumania's action. Accordingly, it
proceeded without reference to any of the recent events except the
disappearance of the Bolshevist gang. Four generals were accordingly
told off to take the conduct of Hungarian affairs into their hands
despite their ignorance of the actual conditions of the problem.[162]
They were ordered to disarm the Magyars, to deliver up Hungary's war
material to the Allies, of whom only the Rumanians and the Czechoslovaks
had taken the field against the enemy since the conclusion of the
armistice the year before, and they were also to exercise their
authority over the Rumanian victors and the Serbs, both of whom occupied
Hungarian territory. The _Temps_ significantly remarked that the Supreme
Council, while not wishing to deal with any Hungarian government but one
qualified to represent the country, "seems particularly eager to see
resumed the importation of foreign wares into Hungary. Certain persons
appear to fear that Rumania, by retaking from the Magyars wagons and
engines, might check the resumption of this traffic."[163]

What it all came to was that the Great Powers, who had left Rumania to
her fate when she was attacked by the Magyars, intervened the moment the
assailed nation, helping itself, got the better of its enemy, and then
they resolved to balk it of the fruits of victory and of the safeguards
it would fain have created for the future. It was to rely upon the
Supreme Council once more, to take the broken reed for a solid staff.
That the Powers had something to urge in support of their interposition
will not be denied. They rightly set forth t