been. We object
to being called a Balkan people."

I apologized for my slip, of course, and amicable relations were
resumed, but I mention the incident as an illustration of how deeply
the Rumanians resent the inclusion of their country in that group of
turbulent kingdoms which compose what some one has aptly called the
Cockpit of Europe. The Rumanians are as sensitive in this respect as are
the haughty and aristocratic Creoles, inordinately proud of their French
or Spanish ancestry, when some ignorant Northerner remarks that he had
always supposed that Creoles were part negro. Not only is Rumania not
one of the Balkan states, geographically speaking, but the Rumanians'
idea of their country's importance has been enormously increased as a
result of its recent territorial acquisitions, which have made it the
sixth largest country in Europe, with an area very nearly equal to that
of Italy and with a population three-fourths that of Spain. You were not
aware, perhaps, that the width of Greater Rumania, from east to west, is
as great as the width of France from the English Channel to the
Mediterranean. One has to break into a run to keep pace with the march
of geography these days.

Owing to the demoralization prevailing in Thrace and Bulgaria, railway
communications between Constantinople and the Rumanian frontier were so
disorganized that we decided to travel by steamer to Constantza, taking
the railway thence to Bucharest. Before the war the Royal Rumanian mail
steamer _Carol I_ was as trim and luxuriously fitted a vessel as one
could have found in Levantine waters. For more than a year, however, she
was in the hands of the Bolsheviks, so that when we boarded her her
sides were red with rust, her cabins had been stripped of everything
which could be carried away, and the straw-filled mattresses, each
covered with a dubious-looking blanket, were as full of unwelcome
occupants as the Black Sea was of floating mines.

[Illustration: THE RED BADGE OF MERCY IN THE BALKANS

American Red Cross women supplying food to a ship-load of starving
Russian refugees at Constantza, Rumania]

Constantza, the chief port of Rumania, is superbly situated on a
headland overlooking the Black Sea. It has an excellent harbor, bordered
on one side by a number of large grain elevators and on the other by a
row of enormous petroleum tanks--the latter the property of an American
corporation; a mile or so of asphalted streets, several surprisin