A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 134, 2 March 1929, Page 28

A BLOODLESS REVOLUTION

Roumania’s New Government.

Much favourable newspaper comment is being made upon the new Government of Rumania: the National Peasant Party under the leadership of M. Juliu Maniu. After what has been called the first free election ever held in Rumania this party has obtained complete control of the Government. The revolution was striking for its orderliness. Without firing a shot, the peasantry of Rumania, the largest of the stormy Balkan States, has gained for itself a National Peasant Party membership of nearly 90 per cent. The new leader, Juliu Maniu, has taken for his own Abraham Lincoln’s ideal “government of the people, for the people, by the people.” The entrenched oligarchy has been overturned by peaceful democratic methods. But the Peasants’ Party is not strictly agrarian. The professional classes are strongly represented in it, also the landed nronrietors and business men; and the fact that the Premier himself, though leading the peasants, is not a peasant, means that new life and ideas are at last being liberated in Rumania. The aims of the new Government are stated by its leader, Maniu. He says: “Our fi&ee wa iw taw.

ment, free elections, abolition of graft, untrammelled opportunity for domestic and foreign capital, and equality for every citizen.' We shall remove the Government from the harmful influences of the big banks, corporations, and oil companies, and place it in the hands of the common people.”

Ever since the present Royal dynasty was created in the nineteenth century the Bratiani clique in Bucharest have run the country in a way that too often fell short of honesty and efficiency. Many papers refer to the fact that the dictatorship of the Bratiani family was maintained through the army and control of the national banking organisation. The Maniu Government immediately abolished martial law, except in a zone six‘miles wide along the Russian border, and censorship was lifted. It is noteworthy that a Zionist is elected to the Senate, and Jewish writers hail with joy the opportunity opened by Maniu whereby, for the first time in the history of the Rumanian Kingdom, Jews are able to vote for representation in the National Parliament.

The new party appears to have come fully into power. It now must demon-