e declared that they were glad to
see the haze of self-righteousness and cant at last dispelled by a whiff
of wholesome egotism. From the outspoken comments of the most widely
circulating journals in France and Britain the dictators in Paris, who
were indignant that the counsels of the strong should carry so little
weight in eastern Europe, could acquaint themselves with the impression
which their efforts at cosmic legislation were producing among the saner
elements of mankind.

In almost every language one could read words of encouragement to the
recalcitrant Rumanians for having boldly burst the irksome bonds in
which the peoples of the world were being pinioned. "It is our view,"
wrote one firm adherent of the Entente, "that having proved incapable of
protecting the Rumanians in their hour of danger, our alliance cannot
to-day challenge the safeguards which they have won for
themselves."[170]

"If liberty had her old influence," one read in another popular
journal,[171] "the Great Powers would not be bringing pressure to bear
on Rumania with the object of saving Hungary from richly deserved
punishment." "Instead of nagging the Rumanians," wrote an eminent French
publicist, "they would do much better to keep the Turks in hand. If the
Turks in despair, in order to win American sympathies, proclaim
themselves socialists, syndicalists, or laborists, will President Wilson
permit them to renovate Armenia and other places after the manner of
Jinghiz Khan?"[172]

But what may have weighed with the Supreme Council far more than the
disapproval of publicists were its own impotence, the undignified figure
it was cutting, and the injury that was being done to the future League
of Nations by the impunity with which one of the lesser states could
thus set at naught the decisions of its creators and treat them with
almost the same disrespect which they themselves had displayed toward
the Rumanian delegates in Paris. They saw that once their energetic
representations were ignored by the Bucharest government they were at
the end of their means of influencing it. To compel obedience by force
was for the time being out of the question. In these circumstances the
only issue left them was to make a virtue of necessity and veer round to
the Rumanian point of view as unobtrusively as might be, so as to tide
over the transient crisis. And that was the course which they finally
struck out.

Matters soon came to the culminating point. Th