ol pines of the Carpathians and the
villas of Sinaia, the summer home of the court, the diplomats, and the
people one does not see very often, perhaps, in the afternoon parade.

It is a pleasant and a rich little country. You can easily understand
why its ruling class should love it, and, set apart from their Slav and
Magyar neighbors by speech and temperament, want to gather all Rumanians
under one flag and push that, too, into its place in the sun.

And this, of course, is Rumania's time--the time of all these little
Balkan nations, which have been bullied and flattered in turn by the
powers that need them now, and cut up and traded about like so much
small change.

Rumania wants the province of Bessarabia on her eastern border, a strip
of which Russia once took away; she wants the Austrian province of
Bukowina and the Hungarian banat of Temesvar on the west, but most of
all the pine forests and the people of Transylvania, just over the
divide--you cross it coming from Budapest--largely Rumanian in speech
and sympathy, though a province of Hungary. As the Rumanians figure it
out, they once stood astride the Carpathians--"a cheval" ("on
horseback"), as they say--and so, they feel, they must and should stand
now.

We are a nation of fourteen million souls--six less than Hungary, but a
homogeneous state, solidly based. Our soil gives us minerals and fuel
and almost suffices for our needs. Our people are one of the most
prolific in the world and certainly not the least intelligent. We have
behind us a continuity of national existence lacking in other nations in
this quarter of the globe. In our modern epoch we have assimilated
French culture with indisputable success, and have given in every field
proof of a great faculty of adaptability and progress. We can become
the most important second-class power in Europe the day after the war
stops; in fifty years, when our population will have passed twenty-five
millions, a great power. We shall be a nation content with our lot, and
for that reason a factor for peace. A greater Rumania responds not only
to our ideas but to the interests of Europe. The Magyars have had every
chance, and they have lost. It is now our turn.

This is a characteristic editorial paragraph from La Roumanie, which is
the voice of Mr. Take Ionesco, who, more than anybody else, is the voice
of those who want war. Once in the government, but at the moment out of
it, Mr. Ionesco keeps up a co