The New Rumania
THE boy King Michael has peacefully succeeded his grandfather, King Ferdinand, on the throne of Rumania. Prince Carol, the young monarch's father, who renounced his rights and now seems anxious to reassert them, has taken no action. The Regency, supported by Queen Marie and the veteran Premier, M. Jon Bratianu, seems assured of the loyalty of the army. The new Chamber, elected by the usual methods three weeks ago, has an overwhelming majority of the so-called " Liberals " whom M. Bratianu leads. Outwardly all is well with Rumania.
Yet it would be unwise to accept these facts at their face value. For the new Rumania, created by the Peace Treaties, is in as difficult a position as any of the Succession States. We must remember that the old Rumania, with about eight million people largely, though not wholly, of the same race, was more than doubled both in area and in population in 1919, and that the new provinces are very far from having coalesced with the old. These new provinces, Transylvania, the Banat, Bukovina and Bessarabia, are substantially Rumanian in speech, but they include great numbers of other peoples, Magyars, Germans, Russians, Bul- garians, and Jews, who were by no means predisposed to welcome the change of sovereignty and for whom the old Rumanians have no liking. Furthermore, the Rumanian-speaking peasants of Transylvania, like the Poles who were German subjects in Posen, are much more advanced in the social and political spheres than their kinsmen to whom they are now united. There has been a good deal of trouble in Transylvania because incompetent officials from old Rumania have been sent to man the local administration while the natives have been denied their share of the posts—or the spoils.
It would have been a hard task for any country to organize a good administration quickly for such large new territories as Rumania has acquired. Still, the transfer has been attended with more friction than was necessary. One very regrettable cause of trouble has been religious intolerance. There are many Uni- tarians in Transylvania, who, curiously enough, have a Bishop, the venerable Dr. Ferencz, as their spiritual head. They are peaceful and law-abiding people, but they seem from the first to have excited the wrath of the new Rumanian officials, who are members of the Greek Orthodox Church, and to have endured a very grievous persecution, nominally on political but really on religious grounds. As these Unitarians have many friends in Great Britain and America, their sufferings have been widely known, and it cannot be doubted that Rumania's reputation and credit have suffered in consequence. Then, again, the Rumanian Jews had long been complaining vainly that they had been denied the rights guaranteed to them by the Treaty of Berlin, under which Rumanian independence was fully recognized. In theory they are now Rumanian citizens, but their position is still unsatisfactory.
The agrarian question is prominent and formidable in Rumania, as elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Before the War Rumania was a country of great estates, and peasant holdings were relatively few and usually too small to be self-supporting. Peasant risings impelled by land-hunger were by no means uncommon. Politicians continually promised reform but did little. The War, however, and the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, across the Eastern border, compelled the ruling caste to provide more land for the peasants. King Ferdinand gave up some of the royal domains and virtually forced other great landlords. to alienate part of their estates. In Transylvania Magyar landowners were expropriated— often, it is said, on very unfavourable terms—so as to provide peasant holdings, although the Transylvanian cultivator was relatively better off than his Rumanian kinsman. -Whether the agrarian reforms have gone far enough, in view of the complete land revolution in Russia, is a debatable matter. It is to be noted that the National Peasant Party polled a quarter of the votes cast at the last Rumanian elections.
Rumania is naturally a rich country, deriving great wealth from her oil-wells and her fertile fields of wheat and maize. But her natural resources are still imper- fectly developed, and her finances are in disorder. For, apart from a costly administration, she has to spend much on her army. It is idle to deny that Rumania, placed between three neighbours at whose expense she has profited, namely, Russia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, has much to fear. Doubtless Bessarabia, which was given to Rumania at the peace, is much more Rumanian than Russian in population even now, and was originally part of Moldavia. But the Bolsheviks, for all their pretended internationalism, are just as reluctant as the Tsars would have been to renounce a province that was once Russian. Again, the Magyars, after holding Tran- sylvania for centuries, are not by any means reconciled to its loss ; and, as they regard the Rumanians as an inferior race, they will certainly try to recover the pro- vince, in the east of which, are large Magyar and German settlements. Bulgaria, too, resents the loss of the Southern Dobrudja, inhabited mostly by. Bulgarians. We must not idly assume that the Peace Treaties make such dreams of revenge idle, or that the League of Nations can prevent the dreamers from ever taking action.
Rumania's best means of retaining what she has gained lies in good government. It is to be hoped that M. Bratianu and his colleagues will infuse a new spirit into Rumanian politics, and that King Michael, when he has grown to man's estate, will find his throne secure and his country happier and more united.
Previous page
