A SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
BRITISH diplomats from the Balkans are flocking home this week, and cynics, I suppose, would suggest that some of them might with advantage stay at home. I have no idea of saying that, but the special case of Rumania does seem to me to need attention urgently. There is no European capital where our representation is more important. Rumania is the key to the Balkans, and it is the scene of ceaseless, pertinacious and unscrupulous German activity, both political and economic. Our present Minister in Bucharest is Sir Reginald Hoare, and I have no reason to think he falls short in any way of the average diplomatic standard. But Sir Reginald has, it is understood, been in poor health for many months. His retirement, indeed, and the appointment of Mr. Rex Leeper as his successor were an- nounced in August of last year. But owing to the war the change-over was suspended, and it has not been effected yet—an arrangement on the face of it most unwise. Mr. Leeper is a man of quite outstanding ability, and the fact that he has been second man in the News Department of the Foreign Office for six years and head of the department for four shows him to be possessed of an experience which in a centre like Bucharest would be of inestimable value. The fact that he has also served at Constantinople is by no means negligible. It is quite true that Mr. Leeper is doing important work at home, but there are other people capable of doing that, and it is hard to think the need for him here is so great as to justify laying on Sir Reginald Hoare the heavy strain which the indefinite retention of his post at Bucharest entails under present conditions.
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