umania's conduct. Were the action and inaction of
the plenipotentiaries merely the result of a lack of cohesion among
their ideas? Or was it that they were thinking mainly of the fleeting
interests of the moment and unwilling to precipitate their conceptions
of the future in the form of a constructive policy? The historian will
do well to leave their motives to another tribunal and confine himself
to facts, which even when carefully sifted are numerous and significant
enough.

During the progress of the events just sketched there were launched
certain interesting accounts of what was going on below the surface,
which had such impartial and well-informed vouchers that the chronicler
of the Conference cannot pass them over in silence. If true, as they
appear to be, they warrant the belief that two distinct elements lay at
the root of the Secret Council's dealings with Rumania. One of them was
their repugnance to her whole system of government, with its survivals
of feudalism, anti-Semitism, and conservatism. Associated with this was,
people alleged, a wish to provoke a radical and, as they thought,
beneficent change in the entire regime by getting rid of its chiefs.
This plan had been successfully tried against MM. Orlando and Sonnino in
Italy. Their solicitude for this latter aim may have been whetted by a
personal lack of sympathy for the Rumanian delegates, with whom the
Anglo-Saxon chiefs hardly ever conversed. It was no secret that the
Rumanian Premier found it exceedingly difficult to obtain an audience of
his colleague President Wilson, from whom he finally parted almost as
much a stranger as when he first arrived in Paris.

It may not be amiss to record an instance of the methods of the Supreme
Council, for by putting himself in the place of the Rumanian Premier the
reader may the more clearly understand his frame of mind toward that
body. In June the troops of Moritz (or Bela) Kuhn had inflicted a severe
defeat on the Czechoslavs. Thereupon the Secret Council of Four or Five,
whose shortsighted action was answerable for the reverse, decided to
remonstrate with him. Accordingly they requested him to desist from the
offensive. Only then did it occur to them that if he was to withdraw
his armies behind the frontiers, he must be informed where these
frontiers were. They had already been determined in secret by the three
great statesmen, who carefully concealed them not merely from an
inquisitive public, but also fro