RUMANIA.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 January 1921, Page 4

RUMANIA.

(By Eugene S. Bagger, in “New York

Tribune.”)

In these days when Rumania emerges from the wreckage of the old Continental order as the greatest and potentially strongest State of south-eastern Europe the realisation is needful that a Latin people, imbued with Latin culture and the consciousness of a Latin sorority of nations, exists on the ban its of the Black Sea, and occupies as an outpost of the \\ est one of the most important strategic positions at the gates of the Orient.

Through the union of Transylva nil and Bessarabia Rumania since times immemorial, with the old kingdom formed by the fusion of Wallac'-ia md Moldavia, Rumania comes to occuj y an area almost as large as that of Italy, with a population more than twice that of Belgium. Next to Russia she is the gieatest wheat country of Europe, and Her oil fields are the richest; she holds the estuary ol the Danube, most important of Continental waterways; and the shift in the lines of European communications, due to the great war, makes her guardian of one of the most important land routes to Asia. In the wake of its great political and economic rise follows closely the reorganisation of the Rumanian State on modern democratic lines. Originally n country of large estates, to-day Rumania possesses one of the most thoroughgoing land laws in Europe, limiting the maximum holdings to 100 hectares and allotting the area gained by expropriating the balance of estates among the peasantry. The rights of racial minorities incorporated through the annexation of the new provinces are safeguarded by law, and it is significant that whereas in Hungary Socialists arc outlawed there are a number of Hungarian Socialist Deputies from Transylvania in the Rumanian Parliament. In the field of foreign policy Rumania stands tor peace and reconciliation, and the Foreign Minister, M. Take Jonesco, is foremost among the statesmen who work for an alliance of all south-eastern European countries. There is in the history of every nation

;i central fact around which cr.vstalist the traditions, dreams and aspirations of its thinkers, leaders, artists and writers, which serves at once as the fountain head and the supreme goal of national consciousness. For the Rumanian people this central tact is represented by the idea of Latinity, ot the Roman origin of the Rumanian race, language and culture. The Latin origin of the Rumanians

and their autochthonous presence in their actual .homeland have formed the subject of bitter controversy. Certain historians, especially those advocating the claims of Magyar jingoes, denounce as spurious the idea that the Rumanian people descend trom the Roman legions and colonists that in the second and third centuries of our era -garrisoned the Roman province of Dacia and mingled with the Romanised native population. These same historians also contend that the Rumanian population of Transylvania is not aboriginal ; that it emigrated into that country from the mountains of Macedonia a century or two after its settlement by Hungarians. The most obvious argument in favour of the Latin origin of the Rumanians is the survival of their Latinity— language, tradition, physical and intellectual make-up—in an environment where every influence made for its destruction. The paramount fact about; the Rumanian nation is the preservation, in the face of tremendous odds and through nearly two thousand years of the Latin heritage handed down by the soldiers anti colonists of Rome. Thu force of national individuality which made this unique feat possible (it should he recalled that Romanism has not survived in placvs where it was comparatively much better sheltered) expressed itself historically in the tendency to reunite under one sovereignty the lands comprised within the boundaries of ancient Dacia. This tendency furnishes the proverbial red thread that runs through Rumanian history ; it animates all the great leaders of the race up to our very day, when at last its crowning success has been achieved. The idea of Rumania irredenta antedates the Italian version by several centuries; Rumanian unity was the leit-motif of the primes of Muntcnia and Moldavia many hundred years before the ideal of German unity resurged from the forgotten ruins of the Hobeiistauf empire.

In tlie Hold of art this same exuberant racial vitality demonstrated itself by welding into a distinctive entity a number of variegated external elements and influences: Byzantine, Gothic, Polish, Bussian, Bulgarian, Serb, Turkish, Venetian, even Arab and Armenian. Most remarkable is the fusion of these heterogeneous ingredients in a novel resultant that is unmistakably individual and Rumanian in the domain of architecture. The exigencies of Rumanian history produced a typical expression of constructive genius in, a series of monasteries which, built during the centuries of Turkish wars, were at once fortresses and places of worship, rocks of refuge for the population routed by the barbarous invaders, as well as centres of learning and depositories or artistic culture.