own.

of Fate, no war-like measures could have been ventured upon without some external support. Roumania wishes to come to an understanding with her older Latin sister, Italy, whose situation offers certain analogies with her But between the positions of the two states there are also essential differences. Austria is in a position to offer her partner, who has found in the Triple Alliance no reason for joining the Germanic Powers in the war, compensations on the Balkan shores of the Adriatic, without reducing herself to political bankruptcy-a painful expedient even for those who find themselves in extremis. That is not, however, as we shall see, the position of Roumania. Bulgaria has every reason for opposing any policy on the part of Servia which aims at the dismemberment of the Dual Monarchy; and Greece has nothing to gain by a disastrous development of the Austro-Hungarian crisis. As for Turkey, she is already doing her best to assist her Germanic allies by all means in her power.

The support of a united Balkan Peninsula, which Roumania might at one time have hoped for, is in these circumstances out of the question. She must either fall back upon her old policy, the disastrous consequences of which she knows only too well, or embark on a new course whose risks she cannot foresee and dares not encounter. It is, nevertheless, incumbent on her to decide; and only one course is open to her.

There are in Russian Bessarabia some 2,000,000 Roumanians who have been deprived little by little of their rights of archbishop, bishops and priests of their own nationality, of schools and church services in their own tongue, and of any literary or cultural activities of their own. The Roumanian population in Austrian Bukovina, torn without a blow from Moldavia in 1775, is swamped by Jewish innkeepers, who rule the towns, and by peasants of Ruthenian and Little-Russian stock, who, favoured by the administration, have now attained a numerical majority, especially in the north. In Transylvania and the neighbouring districts as far as the Theiss, there are 3,500,000 Roumanians, while in the independent Kingdom of Roumania there are only about twice that number.

Has there ever been, is there anywhere at the present

day, a nation that would tolerate such a situation? To understand it one would have to imagine some fifteen millions of Frenchmen or ten millions of Italians, living under a foreign yoke and yet in close proximity to the State to which they naturally belong, a State founded on the basis of nationality by their independent compatriots. The whole policy of such a State must be primarily influenced by anxiety as to the fate of these brothers and by the duty of emancipating them.

The Roumanians of Hungary, it should be added, form the sanest element in the race, consisting as they do of peasants, hardy, thrifty and industrious, and closely attached to their priests and bishops, whom they look upon as their political leaders. The Roumania of to-day feels the need of this new, healthy blood to reinforce her after the reaction which necessarily followed on the great expenditure of force during the period of her heroic effort. Moreover, the support and example of these peasants, who have enjoyed a prolonged period of economic and social (though not political) liberty, is necessary for the salvation of those thousands who have only recently escaped from a state of wretchedness, the result of years of oppression and destitution. It is because they have enjoyed this partial liberty that our compatriots long for complete national emancipation. All their efforts have been directed towards this end. They sought it long ago through their bishops, who were buffeted and imprisoned by the Calvinistic Magyar aristocracy; through the 'union' of their priests with the Roman Catholic Church of the Emperor, when he became ruler of the country in 1692; later, by discussions in the provincial diets, by peasant risings (as under Horea in 1784), by petitions to the sovereign (e.g. the 'Supplex libellus' of 1791), by organisation of the self-governing churches among the 'united,' and especially among the 'orthodox,' combined with the participation of the laity in its administration (1850-60); by violent altercations in the Parliament of Budapest after the annexation of Transylvania to the Kingdom of Hungary and the establishment of the Dual Monarchy (1867); by energetic campaigns in the press; by appeals to the public opinion of Europe, to the interests of the Triple Alliance itself, and to their compatriots in independent Roumania.

Every effort has been made, but in vain. The result is that some four million human beings are looked upon as a people of the lowest status, their nation a mere ethnological feature of the unitary state of the Magyars, their individual members as worthless creatures, useful only to appease the savagery of a brutal police.

And now their devotion and their heroism are asked of them, to aid in swelling the triumph of a system which aims at their national annihilation. Only the other day Count Tisza, when, assuming the airs of a benevolent despot, he announced certain concessions,' so tactless that they were more like affronts, took the opportunity of affirming the absolute necessity of the unitary Magyar state.' Now it is this very attitude which is at the bottom of all the mischief. So long as this unjust and absurd idea prevails, all concessions' they may deign to grant to the Roumanians are nothing but narcotics, intended to deaden the pain of approaching death.

To this demand the Magyar race, by the voice of Count Tisza, master of the destinies of the Dual Monarchy, replies with a hard and brutal non possumus; and that at a moment when the plains of Galicia are stained with the blood of thousands of Roumanian soldiers, placed, not by accident, in the most exposed positions. A non possumus equally emphatic is the reply of the Roumanians themselves. They bide their time. This is clearly recognised in Roumania; and, whatever action she takes, it will be understood in this, the only possible sense. To live or die a united nation is no watchword of mere sentiment, but the outcome of a carefully thought-out policy, which is bound to have its results. If we are to believe those who neither understand her situation nor recognise her difficulties, Roumania waits too long, Well, let it be known that if she waits, it is not from hesitation as to her duty, but simply in order that she may discharge it more completely.

N. JORGA.

Art. 8. THE PRO-GERMAN PROPAGANDA IN THE UNITED STATES.

THE war has now been going on for eight months; and the ordinary reader of any of the American daily newspapers of the first class is as well informed of the diplomacy that immediately preceded the war, and of all that Germany has done in Belgium, in France, in Poland, and in England, as the ordinary reader of a London newspaper. A well-organised and widely-extended propaganda on behalf of Germany-a propaganda in which the German and German-American leaders and their numerous lieutenants in the press and on the platform are persistent, resourceful, and often unscrupuloushas been conducted during all this time. The propaganda is still going on. Neither the division of it that is worked through the post office and managed from Berlin, nor the division that is conducted from New York and Washington, shows as yet any signs of flagging. It is impossible for Americans who read newspapers or receive letters and printed matter by post to escape the pro-German propaganda. But in spite of this tremendous and continuous effort on behalf of the Kaiser and his mission, it can be affirmed that 95 per cent. of the American people of English or Scottish origin are with Great Britain and her Allies; and that the only sympathisers with Germany and Austria are Americans of German origin, Irish-Americans belonging to the Ancient Order of Hibernians and kindred Irish associations, and Americans of Anglo-Saxon lineage who have at German universities or elsewhere come under the influence of German Kultur.'

Americans who are with the Allies are not demonstrative in their sympathies. Most of the manifestations of sympathy are in the daily press; for ninety-five out of a hundred of the newspapers printed in English have from the first been outspoken in their condemnation of Germany's action in bringing on the war, and still more outspoken and severe in condemning the invasion of Belgium and the shelling of Hartlepool and other towns on the east coast of England. No great public meetings are held to express sympathy with the Allies as was the

case in England in 1861-1865, when the Federal armies were suppressing the rebellion in the southern states. With the exception of Ex-President Roosevelt, no man of prominence in national politics has attempted to assume the rôle that Bright played in England during the civil war of half a century ago. The churches, with only here and there an exception, have been loyal to President Wilson's plea for neutrality. There is, moreover, no widespread perception of the fact that the Allies are fighting for the political civilisation of the United States-defending the principles on which the republic has been based since 1783, just as much as for the political and social civilisations of Great Britain and France. But there was gloom all over the United States when in the early days of the war it seemed probable that the German army might reach Paris; and, apart from the Teutophil elements mentioned above, joy will be almost universal in the United States when the Allies reach Berlin.

It is easy to understand the disappointment at Berlin over this state of things. There are grounds for the conviction, widely held among Americans, that the pro-German propaganda carried on since August 1914 had been prepared some years in advance; and also for the conviction that Germany intended to secure, no matter at what cost, that American sympathy should be with her when the time arrived when she deemed herself ready to plunge Europe into war. The system of 'exchange professors' is now regarded as part of the pro-German propaganda-as one of the schemes for influencing public opinion in the United States. This system had been in operation for eight or nine years before the war; and it is now obvious that its aim was to use, in the interest of Germany, American professors who were sent to German universities, and also German professors who were sent to the United States. The Kaiser was more than courteous to American professors who went to Berlin under this system. Two of these professors, by their part in the pro-German propaganda of the last eight months, must have fully repaid the Kaiser. But Americans in general now realise that the ostentatious courtesies of Berlin, duly recorded by newspaper correspondents, were not accorded merely because the